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Loring Spolter does not like Judge Zloch

And he has alleged a conspiracy involving the clerk to have his cases assigned to Zloch. Yikes.

Here is the study that Spolter relies on to say the assignments aren't random. It's been a while since I took statistics, but the sample size here (Spolter has had 15 cases from 2006-2009) does not seem to be all that significant. Only 5 of those cases were assigned to Judge Zloch.

Anyway, from today's DBR:

Two years ago, Fort Lauderdale employment lawyer Loring Spolter accused U.S. District Judge William Zloch of allowing his conservative political and religious views to color his decisions on the bench. Spolter failed to get Zloch to remove himself from a case centering on overtime pay against SunTrust Bank. But this time the attorney is brandishing a new weapon: statistics. Spolter has filed motions for reconsideration in three cases, asking Zloch to recuse himself because evidence shows Spolter?s cases are predestined to end up before the former chief judge. He said he has suspicions the clerk?s office may be funneling his cases to Zloch.

So what's up with the study:

Judges are randomly assigned cases by computer in what is generally referred to as ?the wheel.? Spolter hired Florida Atlantic University professor Dragan Radulovic to look at his case assignments in South Florida over the last 15 years and said ?with 99.9 percent certainty the mechanism responsible for judges? distributions was not random blind assignment.? But there appears to be a problem with the study. Spolter insists the 24 sitting judges are assigned at random throughout a district that stretches from Key West to Fort Pierce. But the current chief judge says it is much more complicated. A tiered system is used that gives weight geographically to where the case is filed as well as how heavy a judge?s docket is at the time, said U.S. District Court Judge Federico Moreno, who took over the chief judge position from Zloch in 2007. For instance, a case filed in Fort Lauderdale would circulate at random among the three judges and one senior judge there. If their case load is heavy, the new case would then be directed to either West Palm Beach or Miami. Zloch is one of the judges who sits in Fort Lauderdale, where Spolter filed all of his cases. Senior judges also take a smaller portion of cases available, and there are special provisions for Fort Pierce, Key West and death penalty cases. For instance, Senior U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who sits in West Palm Beach, takes a number of Miami cases.

Gotta love the chief:

All in all, the wheel is more akin to a logarithm than a game of roulette. ?It?s not like the Wheel of Fortune,? Moreno said.

Pacenti's article goes on about the wheel and how cases are assigned. It's worth a read.

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on June 08, 2009 (boomark / email).