Venue and Judge shopping is rampant and embarrassingly easy in the Federal Judiciary. Both parties are extremely and equally guilty.
And the system makes it ridiculously easy to do.
Senator Hirono just filed a bill that would make the District of Columbia the default venue for all actions attempting to enjoin statutes, executive orders or agency actions.
Unfortunately, it replaces one evil with another, mandating a venue that could be perceived as unfriendly to one side.
I prefer my original proposal, which would randomly select venue from among all 91 Article III Judicial Districts and then randomly select from all Judges (Active and Senior) in the selected district. This would apply to the limited category of cases described above.
But venue reform is needed beyond that. Take Alan Albright’s Intellectual Property clown show in Waco, Texas. In his single man courtroom in Waco, one Judge (out of 1000+ active and senior federal judges) managed to accumulate fully 25% of the intellectual property caseload of the United States. The Chief Judge of the District Court recently changed case assignment rules for Intellectual Property cases, requiring all cases filed in Waco to be randomly assigned to any Judge in the district, rather than going straight to Albright as under the previous rule. But what one Chief Judge grants, the next might take away.
A corporation should be required to file its civil cases (whether for Intellectual Property or otherwise) either in the District Court where its primary headquarters are located or in the District Court where the defendant is domiciled (if a real person) or where the defendant company is primarily headquartered.
I would go further and shutdown single Judge courthouses, such as Waco and Amarillo, both of which are nuisance Judge shopping destinations.
But Congressional action is badly needed to accomplish this badly needed venue reform.
