The Senate turns a harsh gaze toward Texas. Will recent heat from Washington result in more cases being transferred out of Texas? Or will the Federal Circuit's continued tinkering with venue make a difference?

 

SPEAKERS

Wayne Stacy, Michael Smith

 

Wayne Stacy 0:00 Welcome, everyone to the Berkeley Center for Law and technologies last week in Texas podcast. I'm your host, the Executive Director of BCLT, Wayne Stacey. And once again, we are here with Michael Smith. And as you know, if it happened in Texas, and if it matters, Michael knows about it. So Michael, tell us what we need to know about the last couple of weeks.

Michael Smith 0:22 Well, the last couple of weeks, the main thing is we've seen a bunch of letters, we had letters coming out of the clerk's office in Eastern District, and we had letters coming out of the United States Senate and Washington. And that got a lot of attention over the last week.

Wayne Stacy 0:35 Well, the ones that are coming out of the clerk's office look like an administrative nightmare to kind of get all of this cleaned up or in compliance with the exact letter of the rule.

Michael Smith 0:47 Yeah, what what appears to have happened is the Eastern District clerk's office is sending letters out to everybody who was ever involved in a case that Judge Gilstrap ever had since he's been on the bench in which his family had a trust, in which a trust that a family member had an interest in owned a stock of one of the parties. So I know I saw it in I don't know, a dozen or so maybe a little less than that cases, all of which are closed. Presumably, if it's an open case, there would be a recusal, and that would then require appointment under the local rules of the other judge in the division, and then he would continue with the case. Coincidentally, I had one of those situations come up three weeks ago, where a party raised had nothing to stock ownership had to do with a case Judge Gilstrap had worked on before he came on the bench, and they raised it and he recused that afternoon. So we got to see how quickly the thing went through the process. Within 24 hours, another judge was appointed that judge had asked a magistrate to go ahead and go forward with a case. But what will happen with these letters is clerk's office wrote and said, "Here's the situation: Judge's family member had an interest in the stock of one of the parties. If you want to raise any issues in connection with this, please do so in the next 30 days and another judge will take a look at him." So presumably people will be looking at that. Again, that's a universe of about 130 cases. I think so we'll know. In the next couple of weeks. How many of those actually generate a request.

Wayne Stacy 2:19 Just to be clear, there's absolutely no accusation that Judge Gilstrap ever did anything wrong, that he was biased in any way, this is really an administrative issue related to a family trust.

Michael Smith 2:33 Right, right. No, no accusation I've seen from anybody. It's simply a situation where the judge has said publicly, he didn't believe he needed to recuse, apparently, they've made the determination that they're going to go ahead and invite people to file any motions they think are necessary as a result of it. And any pending cases will move to another judge. Now, because we know the judges involved, as soon as I got the notices, they went and trashed because it's not something that I think had anything to do with anything. And again, if it was a defendant, they already knew who held their stock. So the only way this would come up is if there is a plaintiff, who felt like they can make the argument that the stock ownership had something to do with them losing the case. And I just -- I know most of the people that filed claims cases around here, and I'm not aware of anybody that thinks that has anyth