CA1: R. 11 and fiduciary duties

EIU Group, Inc. v. Gulf Insurance, Nos. 06-1932, 06-1933, 06-1934, 06-1935.  To an average person, this case would seem fairly straight forward: when you take out a loan, the bank isn’t your best friend.  If you can’t pay the loan, a defense isn’t “the bank-come-shareholder-of-a-floundering compnay didn’t help me.”  Nor is it a breach of a fiduciary duty.  Of course, if there was evidence submitted that the defendant (a bank’s nominee as a director) actually had actually been shown to have hurt the plaintiff’s interests (or even not helped them), it would be different.  There seems to have been a lot of vague words like “lobbied” or “influenced” used.  Strangely, a jury ruled in the debtor’s favor.
But, more interesting is a description of conduct that merits Rule 11 Sactions.  Told to negotiate a docket entry, one lawyer sent the other an email that read:

Giving you guys the benefit of the doubt, you still haven't figured out my concerns. Rather than continue this game of 20 questions, why don't you go ahead and file your motion -- consider the exchange of e-mail to have satisfied the . . . obligation to confer -- and I'll review it and respond as appropriate.

This sounds like a comment on a blog, and gets the sender Rule 11 Sanctions.  (The underlying subject matter is insurance, but that doesn't matter.)