The District of Delaware held its annual FBA luncheon today. The presentations were wonderful, as usual, and covered the typical topics. Here are some of the notable points from Chief Judge Connolly's presentation:
- The state of the Court is excellent, and we are back to having a full bench.
- The Court will be doing even better next year, when Judge Andrews is planning to take senior status but continue to take cases, which will effectively give the Court an additional judge.
- The nomination process for filling Judge Andrews' seat once he takes senior status next year is proceeding "expeditiously."
- The Court remains very busy:
- It's the 4th busiest court by weighted case volume, although two of the higher-weighted courts have a lot of MDL filings (which are over-weighted).
- The W.D. Tex. is busier than the District of Delaware.
- D. Del.'s weighted case average for civil cases is 737, as compared to the 351 national average.
- Our judges are about 3x as busy as those of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, for comparison.
- Case filings are down nationally by 20%, but are only down 9% in D. Del.
- The Court remains happy with its visiting judge program.
- The threat of re-assignment to visiting judges has been effective in encouraging parties to consent to magistrate judge jurisdiction.
- The court wants to continue to foster a culture of magistrate judge consents, and says that parties should feel comfortable and confident that the magistrate judges will perform like the district judges.
- An update to the court reporting & transcript redaction policy is coming soon from the Advisory Committee (Great! The policy can be a bit confusing.)
- The Court provided updates about recent security issues regarding threats and security measures. I won't repeat these here, because I'm not sure if the Court wants them to be further publicized.
- The Court recognized Dan Silver and Alexandra Joyce for doing an outstanding job on a CJA prisoner's rights case that went to trial, where they won a $500,000 verdict for the prisoner. (Chief Judge Connolly told a truly hilarious story about the transcript which, sadly, we could never repeat to its full effect here.)
There was no word on the courtroom situation once the Court has an additional judge, but I have heard rumors that there is ongoing construction on a new courtroom.
Chief Judge Silverstein of the Bankruptcy Court provided the state of that Court as well. Since we have fewer bankruptcy readers, I'll just give the highlights:
- The state of the Court is "excellent"
- Filings are down over the last few years, but up recently, particularly in the first quarter of this year (a 20% increase, which is more than the SDNY)
- Ours is still one of the busiest bankruptcy courts.
- On September 27, the Bankruptcy Court will hold a triple investiture covering its three newest judges.
- Going forward, we will have 8 bankruptcy judges but only 7 courtrooms. This will not be resolved in the foreseeable future, so they will begin to rotate courtrooms. Watch the docket!
Other notes:
- Ilana H. Eisenstein and her team from DLA Piper (I unfortunately did not catch all of their names) were awarded the Caleb R. Layton, III Service Award for providing employment counseling assistance to the Court during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The FBA elected its new slate of officials, including our former co-blogger Jeff Castellano as president, Bindu Palapura as vice president, Shamoor Anis as secretary, and our current co-blogger Emily DiBenedetto as treasurer. Congratulations!
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