Today’s New York Times contains a troubling article about Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York, who the Times reports is the “unchallenged king of delayed decisions.” (Link: Howard) Acccording to the Times, Judge Daniels “had 289 motions in civil cases pending for more than six months, by far the highest total of any federal judge in the nation.”
For some plaintiffs, the waits have seemed like forever.
There was the woman in Queens who had to fend off creditors while she waited more than three years for the judge to decide that she was entitled to her late ex-husband’s pension benefits. And there was the prisoner with H.I.V. who filed a petition challenging his state court conviction. By the time Judge Daniels got around to issuing an order – three years later – the prisoner had died.
. . .
Court records and interviews show that in at least eight cases, including Mrs. Adams’s, people were so frustrated by Judge Daniels’s slow pace that they went over his head. They filed petitions with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit asking that it order Judge Daniels to rule or perhaps transfer their cases to another judge.
Typically, shortly after the petitions were filed in the higher court, Judge Daniels did rule.
Who is Judge Daniels? You can check out his bio here.
UPDATE: A VC reader writes in to note a possible explanation for the delay. When a new federal trial judge takes the bench, it is common for other active judges (and semi-retired judges) to dump complicated and difficult cases that they don’t want on the new judge’s docket. New judges get the usual run of new cases, plus a backlog of old cases that no one else wanted. I don’t know the details of whether this happened in Judge Daniels’ case, but the newbie backlog may explain some of the delay.
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