Legal News

Volkswagen Lawyers Raise Challenge to Texas?s ?Rocket Docket?

By Dan Slater

For a long time the Law Blog has spilled pixels over Marshall, Texas, and the rocket-docket that is the Eastern District of Texas. Will the plaintiff-friendly district be no longer?

Yesterday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard a decidedly unsexy appeal with decidedly big implications for lawyers who flock to Marshall to file civil suits — particularly patent and product liability cases — and for the lawyers who defend them. In a mandamus case, In Re: Volkswagen, the Fifth Circuit heard arguments over whether a trial judge’s discretion should be limited when a party moves to transfer venue pursuant to — dust off your civ pro books — 28 U.S.C. §1404(a).

Under federal law, plaintiffs may file product-liability suits in “any district in which a defendant resides,” allowing them to file in Marshall, where the judges are known for moving cases expeditiously, and juries have a reputation for doling out fat money judgments. According to today’s story in The Texas Lawyer, the Eastern District of Texas leads the nation in patent suits filed with 359 for the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007.

Danny Ashby, a lawyer for defendant Volkswagen, which is being sued on a product liability theory for allegedly faulty seats, reportedly argued to the 5th Circuit that U.S. District Judge T. John Ward abused his discretion by refusing to transfer the suit out of the Eastern District. Ashby, a partner at K&L Gates in Dallas, argued that “The parties and the witnesses have no connection to Marshall. And the case has no connection to Marshall.” Click here for a Texas Record backgrounder on the issues.

But plaintiffs lawyer Martin Siegel, a solo practitioner in Houston, argued that Judge Ward gave proper weight to his clients’ choice of venue, that the witnesses located where the defendants want to try the case are not important to its resolution and that the defense has not proven that Ward’s venue ruling is an “extraordinary cause” that justifies mandamus.

“It could hurt lawyers all over the state,” especially in Dallas, which has a large contingent of firms that practice in the Eastern District, said Michael C. Smith, a partner in the Marshall office of Siebman Reynolds Burg Phillips & Smith who also represents the plaintiffs in the Volkswagen case.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 23, 2008 (boomark / email).