Sanctions against a company, sure. But sanctions against a lawyer, up to and including the threat of disbarment, threatens a person's entire career and livelihood. Not that you can't find a lawyer willing to stomach the risk of walking close to that line and use their career as table stakes, but you'll pay them accordingly.

A federal judge calling out your defendant's shenanigans so strongly raises that personal risk of sanctions to the lawyer of continuing to defend that client. And the defendant will keep having lawyers bail out until they either get their act together or the case ends (probably not in their favor, since they can't even keep a lawyer around for long).