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New Report Identifies the Slowest Federal Judges in the Land

Semiannual report on pending cases and motions identifies the judges with steep backlogs in cases
Joe Palazzolo
Legal Times
January 22, 2008

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Judge Stephen Robinson was confirmed to the federal bench in New York's Southern District in 2003, and he's been trying to dig himself out of his docket ever since.

Robinson, according to a new report by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, had 155 motions pending for more than six months as of March 2007 -- the second-heaviest motions backlog in the country.

Lawyers who practice in his court describe Robinson as hard-working, conscientious and well-liked, but the judge is also widely known for his inertia when it comes to making decisions.

Robinson says the raw numbers fail to account for the complexity of some cases or the size and age of the docket a new judge inherits. The court yoked him with more than 350 cases and nearly 100 outstanding motions when he came aboard, he says. Still, he admits to having trouble. "For a new judge to dig themselves out from under that is difficult sledding," Robinson says. "I have not been particularly successful in that task."

Last month, the Administrative Office released its semiannual report on pending cases and motions, which -- however imperfect -- is the closest thing there is to a judicial report card.

The difference between a docket that moves on rails and one that drags along on gravel can come down to one mammoth case or 1,000 smaller ones, and there are no apparent penalties or rewards one way or the other.

THE BACKLOG STATS


The Backlog of Cases
The Backlog of Motions


The office's data, current as of March 2007, show that most dockets are somewhere in between, but 13 judges had at least 100 civil cases pending for longer than three years, and 22 judges had 50-plus motions pending for six months or more. A handful had more than 100 motions and more than 200 cases pending -- the kind of backlog that doesn't go unquestioned.

"It's not that we don't realize that these aren't just files," says U.S. District Judge Lawrence O'Neill of the Eastern District of California, who had 105 pending cases. "We know these are real people, and delays can ruin a person."

MISTAKES AND DEADWOOD

The backlog, according to the data, cuts across age and experience, but those with the deepest dockets, almost uniformly, say the rankings fail to account for the nuance of law. "The list doesn't distinguish between the complicated and the mundane," says Robinson, who notes that simple torts and class actions go undistinguished.

Lawyers say he's a hard worker and a deliberate judge. "I don't think anyone can accuse him of being lazy," says Bill Aronwald, a white-collar defense attorney in White Plains, N.Y. "I would rather a judge go slow, take his time, and decide a motion having considered all the legal authorities and all the arguments on the motion than a judge who makes a knee-jerk reaction."

The judge says that docketing and case management systems offer no relief. Sometimes one motion splinters into several because it raises multiple issues, or because letters are filed as motions, which are resolved in conference but linger in the system, Robinson says.

"I think most judges are either driven to distraction by the [report] or try to remain happily ignorant of its contents," he adds.

Sluggishness comes at little price for judges with lifetime appointments, at least in the sense of career advancement. Chief judges can't dock the pay of slowpoke judges or fire them, but there are methods for bringing them in line.

"There are certainly peer pressures that you can bring, and obviously the chief judge has power of persuasion more than anything else," says Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan of the District of Columbia.

Hogan says the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit punishes judges for lethargy by throwing them off cases, a policy instituted long ago.

But at the district level, Hogan says, "We thought that would be rewarding a slow judge, by taking them off the docket."

The Administrative Office's reports are mandated by the Civil Justice Reform Act, enacted in 1990 to bring more transparency to the third branch. Some judges keep up with them more than others.

"Until you called, I wasn't aware of those figures," says Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa, a 36-year veteran of New York's Southern District and No. 9 among judges with cases pending for three years or more. "We worked very, very hard to get the motions down, but sometimes a list like this can go up."

Griesa's motions count mounted to 29 in the latest report, eight more than were reported in September 2006, and he had 146 cases pending for more than three years, up from 111. The judge says he was saddled with a 7-year-old securities class action involving Abercrombie & Fitch until the parties settled last January.

"But the list deserves more scrutiny than I've been giving it," he says, adding that "undoubtedly, there are some mistakes, some deadwood."

True, the bare numbers can mislead. The electronic filing systems occasionally misreport dead cases as alive and decided motions as pending, several judges and court administrators say.

Karen Redmond, a spokeswoman for the office, says the report was pulled off the judiciary's online database, PACER, in December after administrators in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida reported an error in the number of pending bench trials. According to the report, pending trials exploded more than 400 percent because of land condemnation trials in South Florida. Court officials there say most of those cases were terminated before the reporting period, a fact that was lost on the new case management and docketing system the district adopted in November 2006. (The corrected report will be available online this week, Redmond says.)

WHO'S NO. 1?

More than half of the judges with 100-plus cases pending are handling multidistrict litigation, which smothers the docket like kudzu.

Judge Harvey Bartle III of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania leads the list of judges in the caseload category, with an improbable 473 pending cases. According to the report, the vast majority of those cases consist of personal-injury matters related to multidistrict litigation. Bartle did not respond to a call for comment.

U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum, who sits in Minnesota, is No. 1 in pending motions, with 189. The judge declined to comment, but the Administrative Office's records show that he had three or fewer outstanding motions in the last two reporting periods. The upsurge in motions comes from hundreds of cases in Rosenbaum's court over a 2002 train derailment in Minot, N.D., that let loose a cloud of toxic anhydrous ammonia, killing one man and injuring hundreds more.

Another judge in the Southern District of New York, Shira Scheindlin, showed 379 pending cases -- an exceptional load, rating her the No. 2 spot -- but nearly all are part of a multidistrict class action that began as more than 1,000 pieces. The complaints were eventually swept into about 300 cases, In re IPO, and assigned to Scheindlin in 2001. Then they lumbered up to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and lay there for 2 years, Scheindlin says.

"It so happens that this is one of the most efficient chambers in the district," Scheindlin says matter-of-factly.

As a measure of efficiency, Judge O'Neill's 105 pending cases could be damning, but he has as good an excuse as any: At the time the figures were reported to the Administrative Office, O'Neill had been a judge in California's Eastern District for about two months. That is, he inherited his debt.

O'Neill, who had been a magistrate judge for seven years, says he was assigned more than 1,000 cases after his January 2007 confirmation. He, his courtroom clerk, and his three career clerks picked through the cases in 30 days, prioritizing them by litigation phase.

O'Neill, perhaps liberated by this fact, speaks frankly about judicial backlog: "It is not acceptable for a judge, no matter what the caseload, to simply whine about it. You have to get in there, roll up your sleeves, and deal."