Federal Judiciary

From torture memos and firing U.S. attorneys to ... Eastern District of Texas patent litigation?

By Michael Smith

Just when you thought neither the DataTreasury case nor patent litigation in the Eastern District could get any weirder, along comes  news that former U.S. Attorney General and White House Counsel (and former Texas Supreme Court justice) Alberto Gonzalez has been hired by a special master to help him in the DataTreasury Corp. v. Wells Fargo & Co., 2:05cv291 patent litigation.
The special master is former U.S. District Judge Layn R. Phillips, who is overseeing settlement talks between the plaintiff and various bank who it accuses of violating its patents for taking and transmitting digital images of checks. Phillips is a former U.S. attorney who spent four years on the bench in Oklahoma City after being appointed by President Reagan. In an order signed recently, Phillips said that he needed Gonzales's help because of the number of parties in the case and the "overall complexity of this litigation" and said that the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge David Folsom of Texarkana had no objection to the appointment. 
I have not been able to confirm related rumors that former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be joining the Eastern District soon as a "special assistant" to chief clerk Dave Maland, heading up a radical restructuring of the clerk's office, said to include new deputy locations in Baghdad and Kabul and deployment of deputy clerks to litigation hotspots via new Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) or older Seal Delivery Vehicle (SDV) ?mini-subs".
Okay, so it could still get a little weirder.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on June 09, 2008 (boomark / email).