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Random math in the Halls of Justice

Enviado 18 de diciembre de 2005 - 15:11 por Bill Conroy
Reber,

Here are the rules I was able to find for the DC Circuit on such matters

Rules of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colombia

LCvR 40.3
Manner of Assignment

RANDOM ASSIGNMENT.

Except as otherwise provided by these Rules, civil, criminal and miscellaneous cases
shall be assigned to judges of this court selected at random in the following manner….

THE EXCEPTION

LCvR 40.5

Related Cases

(a) 3

Civil, including miscellaneous, cases are deemed related when the earliest is
still pending on the merits in the District Court and they (i) relate to common
property, or (ii) involve common issues of fact, or (iii) grow out of the same
event or transaction or (iv) involve the validity or infringement of the same
patent.

Now, here’s a bit of additional information on the handling of Sibel Edmonds’ case. First, Judge Reggie Walton dismissed her original lawsuit in the summer of 2004. The second pending lawsuit was not filed until March 2005. So that appears to fail to meet the “still pending” requirement of the DC Circuit’s rules on these matters.

But of more interest, according to my sources on this, is the following timeline on how Edmonds’ original case was handled. [Along with the original whistleblower litigation, Edmonds also filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) at about the same time.]

Timeline

  1. Edmonds’ initial case was filed in the federal District Court in D.C. in July 2002. Judge Richard Roberts was assigned to the case, randomly.
  2. After some initial action in the case, things bogged down for about two months. Then, all of a sudden, the case was reassigned to Judge Reggie Walton.
  3. Edmonds’ attorneys filed a motion asking the case to be assigned to Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, who is also the judge for Edmonds’ FOIA case filed in May 2002. Edmonds’ attorneys argued that the cases were related under the D.C. circuit rules, and so they should both be handled by Judge Huvelle.
  4. The court granted the request and Edmonds’ whistleblower case was transferred to Judge Huvelle’s court in the spring of 2003
  5. About two weeks later, however, the case was removed from Judge Huvelle, and sent back to Judge Walton, randomly, no reasons cited.
What happened?

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