Opinion ID: 1388652
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Recusal/Reassignment

Text: In the district court, Plaintiffs moved for recusal citing 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). Plaintiffs appeal the district court's denial of that motion and ask further that we exercise our authority under 28 U.S.C. § 2106 to assign the case to a different judge on remand. The motion for recusal, filed nearly six months after the December 15 hearing, was untimely. See Tri-State Fin., LLC v. Lovald, 525 F.3d 649, 653-54 (8th Cir.2008) (holding a recusal motion untimely when brought seven months after the last act alleged as a basis for recusal); Rabushka ex rel. United States v. Crane Co., 122 F.3d 559, 566 (8th Cir.1997) (finding a § 455(a) motion for recusal untimely when filed after a district court granted summary judgment); In re Kan. Pub. Employees Ret. Sys., 85 F.3d 1353, 1360 (8th Cir.1996) (stating that § 455 requires timely action and that [m]otions to recuse should not be viewed as ... additional arrow[s] in the quiver of advocates in the face of [anticipated] adverse rulings.). Nevertheless, because we have determined remand is appropriate, we may address the issue of reassignment notwithstanding the untimeliness of the § 455(a) motion. See United States v. Tucker, 78 F.3d 1313, 1323-24 (8th Cir. 1996) (invoking the authority of § 2106 and directing reassignment to a different judge on remand even though the party seeking reassignment had failed to present the issue of recusal to the district court); see also Liteky v. United States, 510 U.S. 540, 554, 114 S.Ct. 1147, 127 L.Ed.2d 474 (1994) (Federal appellate courts' ability to assign a case to a different judge on remand rests not on the recusal statutes alone, but on the appellate courts' statutory power to `require such further proceedings to be had as may be just under the circumstances.' (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 2106)). We apply the § 455(a) standard in determining whether to order reassignment pursuant to § 2106. Tucker, 78 F.3d at 1324 (equating the § 455(a) appearance of partiality standard with the standard for reassignment under § 2106). In accordance with that standard, recusal or reassignment is appropriate where impartiality might reasonably be questioned by the average person on the street who knows all the relevant facts of a case. In re Kan. Pub. Employees Ret. Sys., 85 F.3d at 1358-59 (applying § 455(a)). Although, in general, reassignment should rest upon an appearance of bias or prejudice derived from an extrajudicial source, reassignment may be necessary based solely on events transpiring in current court proceedings or on a court's statements or rulings where they reveal such a high degree of favoritism or antagonism as to make fair judgment impossible. Liteky, 510 U.S. at 554, 114 S.Ct. 1147 (rejecting strict application of the extrajudicial source doctrine). Here, there is no extrajudicial source indicating an appearance of partiality. The proceedings leading up to and including the sanctions hearing, however, and the ultimate order of dismissal, reflect a sufficiently high degree of antagonism to require reassignment of the case on remand. In the course of numerous in-person and telephone conferences and hearings, the court directed profanities at Plaintiffs or Plaintiffs' counsel over fifteen times. In addition, at the December 15 sanctions hearing, the court denied Plaintiffs a meaningful opportunity to respond following Defendants' lengthy presentation, and in doing so, misconstrued the language of its own discovery orders and dismissed Plaintiffs' attempt to explain those orders. The court adopted Defendants' characterization of the four discovery orders as all having required production of the same Walls documents. This was the case even though the first three orders had temporal or qualitative limitations on the documents subject to the order, and the third order demanded only the production of one document. When Plaintiffs attempted to explain at the sanction hearing that you have not ruled four times to give them those 58 documents, the district court cut off Plaintiffs and moved toward dismissal. In these circumstances, we believe the reasonable man, were he to know all the circumstances, would harbor doubts about the judge's impartiality. United States v. Poludniak, 657 F.2d 948, 954 (8th Cir. 1981). This is not merely a case, then, where a court's use of salty language should be overlooked. See Liteky, 510 U.S. at 555-56, 114 S.Ct. 1147 (1994) ( Not establishing bias or partiality, however, are expressions of impatience, dissatisfaction, annoyance, and even anger, that are within the bounds of what imperfect men and women, even after having been confirmed as federal judges, sometimes display.). Here, the court's statements must be viewed in context alongside the court's adoption of Defendants' mischaracterization of the discovery orders, its apparent distrust of Plaintiffs as manifested early in the litigation, and its reliance on the Badger affidavit without giving Plaintiffs an opportunity for discovery or a hearing as to its contents.