Monday, June 08, 2009

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.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:13 PM

    Hey, some dude entered the King Buidling said he wanted to kill someone (didn't give a name) and tried to take the gun off of one of the CSOs. He got away and then came back a few minutes later and tried to do the same thing to another CSO. The guy apparently is not right in the head.

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  2. Anonymous5:10 PM

    Sounds like my client Bernie. Hey, Bernie, stop acting stupid.

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  3. fake fred moreno8:38 PM

    Keep quoting me correctly Meeeeeester Markus or you will find your cases assigned to Ft. Pierce.

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  4. Anonymous10:39 AM

    Hack attack

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  5. Anonymous11:11 AM

    Does ANYONE like that judge?

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  6. Anonymous11:38 AM

    I can't begin to tell you what a nut job this guy is. He hires assistants and law clerks, threatens them about telling the bar association about their conduct and then fires them before 90 days so he doesn't have to give them their raise and benefits and so he doesn't have to pay unemployment. He'll take your money and sit on your case for months before he does anything. He can't calendar or keep dates. He yells at his clients, calls them idiots and then files motions blaming the client for his shortcomings. He can't understand that it's not because Judge Zloch is a "right-winged fanatic" that his cases get thrown out but more because he's inept as an attorney. I feel sorry for anyone that goes to him for assistance. As I've heard and seen, you will regret it.

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  7. Anonymous2:28 PM

    Is there any cases spolter has won? how come he has no bar complaints about him?

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