It appears that federal activist judges got themselves into a bit of trouble recently. Ruling on cases where you have money invested in the parties involved is ethically wrong, m'mkay? http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Judges-financial-conflicts-of-interest-revealed-5434148.php [h=1]Judges' financial conflicts of interest revealed in report[/h] [h=5]Bob Egelko[/h] [h=5]Published 12:02 am, Monday, April 28, 2014[/h] A new report says some federal appeals court judges, including at least five on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, have taken part in cases in which they held stock or other financial interests in one of the opposing sides, in violation of a federal conflict-of-interest law. The report by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity appears to have surprised the Ninth Circuit and the judges named in the report, who said they were unaware of their financial holdings or the legal implications of those holdings when they participated in the cases. Based on the center's disclosures, the court has contacted lawyers in each case, who could ask for a new hearing. That decision would be up to the panel that ruled on the case, without participation by the conflicted judge. The law prohibits federal judges from taking part in a case in which they have any financial interest, no matter how small. There is no punishment for violations, but the law entitles the opposing parties to be heard by jurists who have no monetary incentives for their rulings. An investigation by the Washington Post in 2006 exposed numerous conflicts, leading the federal appellate court system to install software to check the judges' financial-disclosure statements against the parties in each new case - more than 30,000 cases a year nationwide. It's still up to each judge, however, to fully reveal his or her holdings, and to catch any cases that slip through the software. The new report issued Monday cites some apparently serious violations. One involves Judge James Hill of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta who, the Center for Public Integrity said, owned as much as $100,000 in Johnson & Johnson stock when he and two colleagues voted in 2011 to dismiss a suit by an ailing Florida woman against the company over a malfunctioning medication pump. The report said Hill had ruled on three other cases in which he owned stock in one of the parties. His court issued a statement saying Hill had been unaware of his holdings in a complex family-owned trust. In another case, Joel Dubina was part of a three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit in 2011 that unanimously dismissed a suit against DuPont by a Florida man who was dying of cancer, a disease his family blamed on a now-recalled DuPont chemical. The report quoted Dubina as saying he hadn't realized that he owned as much as $15,000 in DuPont stock and should have disqualified himself. The center said it found 26 such cases involving appellate judges throughout the system between 2010 and 2012. In another 20 cases, the report said, judges had financial ties to a company, such as bonds or the right to receive royalties, but no stocks or other ownership interests, so disqualification wasn't necessarily required. [h=3]Some privacy allowed[/h]Fifty-nine percent of the appeals court judges reported owning stocks, the report said. It said its information on conflicts of interest may be incomplete because judges are allowed, for security reasons, to delete some of their financial holdings from the public record - for example, Ninth Circuit Judge Carlos Bea did not say where he earned $73,000 in outside income or who paid for five of his trips. A spokesman for the federal court system told the center that the statistics suggested occasional human error rather than a systemwide problem. Ninth Circuit spokesman David Madden gave a similar assessment to The Chronicle. [h=3]'Mistakes can be made'[/h]"These cases are exceptions to an otherwise very effective system that determined where conflicts of interest lie," Madden said. "There are humans involved in every system and mistakes can be made." The cases involving the Ninth Circuit, the largest of the nation's 13 federal appeals courts, mostly concerned relatively minor rulings in which it wasn't clear that participation by an individual judge affected the outcome. (Page 2 of 2) A new report says some federal appeals court judges, including at least five on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, have taken part in cases in which they held stock or other financial interests in one of the opposing sides, in violation of a federal conflict-of-interest law. The report by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity appears to have surprised the Ninth Circuit and the judges named in the report, who said they were unaware of their financial holdings or the legal implications of those holdings when they participated in the cases. Based on the center's disclosures, the court has contacted lawyers in each case, who could ask for a new hearing. That decision would be up to the panel that ruled on the case, without participation by the conflicted judge. The law prohibits federal judges from taking part in a case in which they have any financial interest, no matter how small. There is no punishment for violations, but the law entitles the opposing parties to be heard by jurists who have no monetary incentives for their rulings. An investigation by the Washington Post in 2006 exposed numerous conflicts, leading the federal appellate court system to install software to check the judges' financial-disclosure statements against the parties in each new case - more than 30,000 cases a year nationwide. It's still up to each judge, however, to fully reveal his or her holdings, and to catch any cases that slip through the software. The new report issued Monday cites some apparently serious violations. One involves Judge James Hill of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta who, the Center for Public Integrity said, owned as much as $100,000 in Johnson & Johnson stock when he and two colleagues voted in 2011 to dismiss a suit by an ailing Florida woman against the company over a malfunctioning medication pump. The report said Hill had ruled on three other cases in which he owned stock in one of the parties. His court issued a statement saying Hill had been unaware of his holdings in a complex family-owned trust. In another case, Joel Dubina was part of a three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit in 2011 that unanimously dismissed a suit against DuPont by a Florida man who was dying of cancer, a disease his family blamed on a now-recalled DuPont chemical. The report quoted Dubina as saying he hadn't realized that he owned as much as $15,000 in DuPont stock and should have disqualified himself. The center said it found 26 such cases involving appellate judges throughout the system between 2010 and 2012. In another 20 cases, the report said, judges had financial ties to a company, such as bonds or the right to receive royalties, but no stocks or other ownership interests, so disqualification wasn't necessarily required. [h=3]Some privacy allowed[/h]Fifty-nine percent of the appeals court judges reported owning stocks, the report said. It said its information on conflicts of interest may be incomplete because judges are allowed, for security reasons, to delete some of their financial holdings from the public record - for example, Ninth Circuit Judge Carlos Bea did not say where he earned $73,000 in outside income or who paid for five of his trips. A spokesman for the federal court system told the center that the statistics suggested occasional human error rather than a systemwide problem. Ninth Circuit spokesman David Madden gave a similar assessment to The Chronicle. [h=3]'Mistakes can be made'[/h]"These cases are exceptions to an otherwise very effective system that determined where conflicts of interest lie," Madden said. "There are humans involved in every system and mistakes can be made." The cases involving the Ninth Circuit, the largest of the nation's 13 federal appeals courts, mostly concerned relatively minor rulings in which it wasn't clear that participation by an individual judge affected the outcome. In one 2011 case, the report said, Judge Andrew Kleinfeld, who owned up to $15,000 in Verizon stock, was part of a panel that issued a brief 3-0 ruling rejecting a consumer lawsuit that accused the telecommunications company of deceiving customers about the speed of its Internet service. Kleinfeld's office told the center that he had been unaware that his wife owned the shares. "He regrets the error and thanks you for bringing it to his attention," his office said. Judge Sandra Ikuta had a different type of financial interest - future benefits from her former law firm - when she took part in a series of rulings from 2010 to 2013 over the right of South Pacific islanders to seek damages for alleged human rights abuses by the multinational mining company Rio Tinto, which the firm represented. The court said Ikuta learned only recently that she should have stepped down from the case. She joined a dissenting opinion in the company's favor in 2011, when a 6-5 majority allowed the suit to continue. The court later dismissed the suit after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a separate case last year, limited the right to sue corporations for actions in other countries. [h=3]Free legal aid[/h]The Ninth Circuit said Judge Jay Bybee was also unaware that he should have removed himself from an immigration case argued in 2010 by a lawyer from a firm that had given Bybee more than $78,000 in free legal aid. The firm had represented Bybee in cases arising from his role as a Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration who signed a memo saying waterboarding was not torture. In the immigration case, Bybee joined a unanimous ruling against the law firm's client, a Guatemalan woman seeking asylum in the United States. The other Ninth Circuit cases involved: -- Judge Arthur Alarcon, who owned as much as $15,000 worth of Nokia stock in 2010, when as a visiting judge on the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals he took part in a ruling dismissing a suit against the information technology company. Alarcon said he was "shocked to learn" that he should have disqualified himself, and promised that it wouldn't happen again. -- Judge Jerome Farris, who reported owning as much as $15,000 in Hewlett-Packard stock in 2009 when he took part in a ruling dismissing a suit that accused an outside firm of colluding with a Hewlett-Packard-owned company in investment fraud. Farris thanked the center for pointing out his error, saying, "I'm glad somebody is on the case." For the Center for Public Integrity's 12-page report: http://bit.ly/1jOvRKM
