I think her totally unhinged-from-any-law whackadoodle ruling eliminates any question about the purpose of Trump’s choice to file in that district. It certainly wasn’t arbitrary.
I don’t think this discussion is really the purpose of @Northern_Piper’s thread, though.
At least she modified her ruling in response to the appeal. What could have happened if she refused to do that?
There is a major problem with this in intellectual property cases. The judges in the Eastern District of Texas are very friendly to patent holders so patent trolls will rent an office in the district so that ED of T has jurisdiction. It is so bad that the trolls don’t even try to fake that they are doing business there. There is no staff or furniture or any way to get a hold of them at the office (they are never there) but none of that matters to the judges in the district.
There are a lot of ways to game the judge-assignment system in district courts, but this doesn’t seem to be a good example.
Under the Southern District of Florida Internal Operating Procedures, there are five divisions in the district. If I read it correctly, cases are randomly assigned to any judge in the district (regardless of division), except that the case is supposed to be assigned to a judge that sits in the originating division or one division away. So, relevant to our example, a case that originates in the West Palm Beach Division (perhaps because the relevant acts took place in Palm Beach County) would be randomly assigned to a district judge in the Palm Beach Division, the Ft. Lauderdale Division, or the Ft. Pierce Division. (The Clerk’s Office is supposed to regulate caseload across the district).
In Trump v. United States (docket sheet here), unless I’m missing something, the case was filed in the West Palm Beach Division (because the acts took place in Palm Beach County) and the case was (randomly) assigned to Judge Cannon (who sits in the Ft. Pierce Division – one division away).
Interestingly, cases originating in the the Ft. Pierce Division or Key West Divison are treated differently, presumably because Ft. Pierce has one judge (Cannon) and Key West has no resident judges. I find the internal operating procedures a little confusing, but I think that any judge in the district can agree to be on the assignment wheel for those divisions and can then be assigned cases there – assignments to the other three divisions do not appear to be optional.
The assigned magistrate judge (Reinhart) sits in the West Palm Beach division (and, of course, was also involved in the search warrant), which is a pretty clear sign that it was filed in the division, since magistrate judges are not randomly assigned cross-division. You might also note that Judge Cannon’s orders are styled as from the West Palm Beach Division.
So, in sum, the case appears to have originated in the appropriate division (West Palm Beach) and could have be assigned to any district judge in West Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, or Ft. Pierce (8 judges total, of which 5 are Trump appointees, 2 Clinton, and 1 Obama – decent odds for a favorable judge, but again, it’s the appropriate division for an action arising out of Palm Beach County).
Everything I’ve read said the appropriate venue to have filed would have been with Reinhart himself, because he was already handling the case.
Instead, he applied in Ft. Pierce, where Cannon is indeed the only judge. According to this article, he tried that before but failed, and was called out by the judge in question for attempted judge shopping:
U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks called him out in a snarky footnote.
“I note that Plaintiff filed this lawsuit in the Fort Pierce division of this District, where only one federal judge sits: Judge Aileen Cannon, who Plaintiff appointed in 2020. Despite the odds, this case landed with me instead. And when Plaintiff is a litigant before a judge that he himself appointed, he does not tend to advance these same sorts of bias concerns,” Middlebrooks wrote in April.
I do note that the article as a whole very much argues that Trump went judge shopping. My issue is that I’ve not really seen a counter argument anywhere. (Until this thread, of course.)
Based on @Falchion’s excellent write up of Southern District procedures, it looks like Trump tried to go judge shopping, but it’s entirely possible that he and his lawyers did not understand the process for how cases are assigned and only managed to end up with Cannon through dumb luck. That would be about par for the course for him.
There was also a case, during the period of the mad cow disease, where opponents of Canadian beef filed an application in a Federal District in Montana, where there was only one judge and he was known to be hostile to Canadian imports. He gave an injunction banning Canadian beef from being imported, because there had been a case of mad cow in Alberta.
Reinhart is not a district judge, so he’s obviously not going to be the presiding district judge.
Several posters, including you, have made this factual claim in this thread and while I’m sure that it would not happen without basis, I don’t see any evidence to support it.
Your linked article is a good illustration. The linked civil cover sheet for Trump v. Clinton identifies St. Lucie County as the “County Where Action Arose”. St. Lucie County is in the Ft. Pierce Division. And, given the lack of apparent connection of either Trump or Clinton to St. Lucie County, this probably was an attempt at judge shopping (and the assignment of the case to a judge in the West Palm Beach Division demonstrates how the cross-division assignment wheel works).
But the civil cover sheet for Trump v. United States (available here) says that the action arose in “Palm Beach County” and, to me, indicates that the matter was originated in the West Palm Beach Division.
My thoughts may change if you (or @Procrustus , who has also made this claim) will show me that the case was originated in the Ft. Pierce Division, but I’m not seeing it. (But I don’t practice in S.D. Fla., so I could be wrong).
To the contrary, my reading is that he filed in the case in the most-appropriate division (West Palm Beach) and got a favorable outcome on the random assignment wheel.
I can’t find the cover sheet you’re referring to. Why was Trump suing Clinton?
It was linked to in the Daily Beast article that was linked. (Direct link here).
Trump sued Clinton and various other entities and individuals for conspiring to spread false information about the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election. It was not successful.
Ah, not current. Thanks.
Not current. Just a comparison.
But it does illustrate how judge shopping actually works in the US federal system. You find a claim that can be brought in a number of venues and then find a venue that has an appealing bench.
S.D. Fla. seems to have a comprehensive case assignment system to mitigate this, but next door to me in the Western District of Virginia you can (or, at least, could) file a case in several of the divisions with a 95% chance of knowing exactly who your district judge would be. The Eastern District of Texas is notorious for this.
It’s why challenges to Republican administration actions take place in the 9th Circuit and challenges to Democratic administration actions take place in the 5th Circuit.