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Tyler False Marking Cases Heard at Scheduling Conferences

By Michael C. Smith

I spent the day in Tyler enjoying the federal courts' hospitality while attending a lengthy series of scheduling conferences in false marking cases in U. S. District Judge Michael Schneider's court.  One nice thing about having 40% of the nation's false marking cases filed locally is that you can see a lot of the same kinds of cases at the same time - sixteen last month in Marshall and seven today in Tyler.  The rulings were, not surprisingly, generally similar to last month's before Judges Ward and Everiham in Marshall as well.  Motions to dismiss asserting standing defects and their associated motions to stay were generally either withdrawn in light in the Federal Circuit's rulings, or denied, while motions to transfer were uniformly granted.

The morning presented four cases, three of which had motions to transfer.  All three motions to transfer were granted, and in the one remaining case the Court denied the motion to dismiss asserting that the pleadings as to intent to deceive were insufficient - again, same as the judges in Marshall - and accepted the parties' proposed scheduling order.

The afternoon's three cases proceeded similarly - the two cases where defendants filed motions to transfer were granted, and in the third Judge Schneider denied the motions to dismiss attacking standing and the adequacy of the intent to deceive allegations and adopted the parties' proposed scheduling order, although he looked askance at the parties' initial proposal that the case would take 24 hours to try.

In toto, the five cases in which defendants sought transfer were transferred and the other two were set for trial.  The initial motions to dismiss were uniformly denied, with one case preserving for later review the defendant's challenge to the constitutionality of the statute.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on January 06, 2011 (boomark / email).