Why Circuit Courts Reassign Cases To Different District Judges On Remand.

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Judges, Civil Procedure, Court Orders, Federal Civil Procedure, Federal Judges, Judges

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Case Reassignment, Federal Courts, Federal Judges, Louisiana Civil Appeals, Raymond P. Ward, Remand

Standards For Reassignment To A Different Judge On Remand, by Raymond P. Ward, Louisiana Civil Appeals

http://raymondpward.typepad.com/la-appellate/2015/02/standards-for-reassignment.html

In U.S. ex rel. Little v. Shell Exploration & Production Co., 14-20156 (5th Cir. Feb. 23, 2015) (unpublished), the Fifth Circuit not only reversed a summary judgment, but also ordered that, on remand, the case be reassigned to a different district judge. Why? Here is the sequence of events in a nutshell:

The district court rendered summary judgment in defendants’ favor.

On appeal, the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that the district court applied the wrong legal standard. The Fifth Circuit remanded with instructions for the district court to apply the correct legal standard.

A year later, the district court again rendered summary judgment in defendants’ favor, apparently applying the same legal standard that the Fifth Circuit had rejected. The Fifth Circuit concluded that, in rendering this judgment, the district court disregarded the Fifth Circuit’s instructions on remand.

Starting at page 25, the decision includes a survey of case law enunciating various standards applied by circuit courts in deciding whether to reassign a case to a different judge on remand. So this decision is worth tucking away for future reference in case you ever find yourself in need of similar relief.

The Right Way to Assemble Attachments To Appellate Supervisory Writs.

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Appellate Writing, Legal Writing, Louisiana Supreme Court, Readability

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Appellate Law, Appellate Procedure, Appellate Writs, Legal Writing, Louisiana Civil Appeals, Raymond P. Ward

Practical Tip For Assembling A Writ Application, by Raymond P. Ward, Louisiana Civil Appeals

http://tinyurl.com/o2or5jy

Today [January 14. 2015] I started working on an application to the court of appeal for a supervisory writ, and was reminded of my # 1 tip for this task: the first thing you do—before you write a word—is assemble the attachments. Uniform Rule 4-5 lists the attachments that must be included. I like to put them all together and give them provisional page numbers before I start writing the application itself, starting with A1, A2, etc. If your attachments are in PDF (if they’re not, they should be), putting them together and page-numbering them is a snap with Adobe Acrobat or other PDF-handling software.

Assembling the appendix on the front end has at least two advantages. First, when you draft the writ application, you can include pinpoint citations to items in the appendix. Second, you find out immediately if you’re missing something that you need (such as the hearing transcript).

There is one little hitch to my system: Uniform Rule 4-5(B) requires all pages of the application, including the application itself and all attachments, to be consecutively numbered. And if you don’t know how long the application itself will be until you write it, you don’t know until the end of the process the number of the first page of the attachments. But this problem is easy to solve. Once the application is in almost-final form, you know how long it will be. If it’s 25 pages, you know that the number of the first page of attachments will be 26. So when I’m finalizing, say, a 25-page application, I just add 25 to all my “An” citations to the attachments and remove the “A”. A1 becomes 26, A2 becomes 27, etc. Is this time-consuming? A bit. But not nearly as time-consuming as trying to fill in totally blank citations to the attachments.

Which leads to another tip: when, in writing a writ application, you cite one of the attachments, cite it by its consecutive-page number. If it’s a multi-volume writ application, cite by volume and page number. Example: “See writ app. vol. 2 p. 301.” Your job as the writer is to make it as easy as possible for the reader to locate what you’re citing. So give the reader the information needed to instantly locate whatever it is you’re citing.