Workers' Compensation: United States federal courts

Showing posts with label United States federal courts. Show all posts

Saturday, November 9, 2013

ABA: Too few judges, lack of funding hurting federal courts

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Goodlatte

The American Bar Association, in a letter last week, says the combination of too few judges and insufficient funding is diminishing the ability of the federal courts to “serve the people and deliver timely justice.”
Thomas Susman, director of the ABA’s Governmental Affairs Office, sent a letter to U.S. Rep. Robert Goodlatte to be made part of the record in a hearing on the need for federal judgeships.
Goodlatte
Last week, Goodlatte, R-Va. and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, held a hearing titled, “Are More Judges Always the Answer?”
Goodlatte contends President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats see the courts as an avenue to advance their agendas.
“When the Senate Majority Leader said, ‘We’re focusing very intently on the D.C. Circuit’ and ‘We need at least one more. There’s three vacancies. And that will switch the majority,’ he clearly wasn’t referring to the court’s needs,” he said during the Oct. 29 hearing.
But the ABA argues that when federal courts do not have sufficient judges to keep up with the workload, civil trial dockets end up taking a back seat to criminal dockets.
“As a result, persistent judge shortages increase the length of time that civil litigants and businesses wait for their day in court, create pressures that ‘robotize’ justice, and increase case backlogs that will perpetuate delays for years to...

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Friday, October 18, 2013

Thirty-one federal court facilities to be downsized

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

Judge Smith

Thirty-one federal court facilities will be downsized or closed as part of a nationwide program to reduce work space.

This week, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts announced the program will claim more than $1.7 million in incentives in releasing underused offices back to the U.S. General Services Administration, which helps manage U.S. federal properties.

During the program’s first year, which ended Sept. 30, probation/pretrial offices accounted for four of the five largest cost-saving projects.

“It has been enormously successful,” said Judge D. Brooks Smith, who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and chairs the Judicial Conference’s Space and Facilities Committee.
“By offering courts a monetary incentive, we have given them an opportunity to focus on space reduction — and space reduction is priority No. 1 for the Space and Facilities Committee.”
The space reduction incentive program was approved by the U.S. Judicial Conference last September, as part of a long-term campaign by the judiciary to reduce space costs.

Last month, the conference expanded its space reduction goals and called on federal courts to reduce their overall space inventory target 3 percent by the end of fiscal year 2018.

According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the initial participating projects and rent savings are expected to pay off all upfront costs, including the incentive...

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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Qui Tam Action for MSP Results in Costs to Plaintiff

A Federal court ruled that a plaintiff acted with an improper purpose and in bad faith by filing seven different putative qui tam actions against various health care providers under the Medicare Secondary payer Act (MSP). The Federal Court imposed sanctions against plaintiff pursuant to court's inherent power.

The Court reasoned that there was no legal support for plaintiff's claim that MSP was a qui tam statute, Court of Appeals had previously determined that plaintiff's claims were “utterly frivolous” and “unreasonable and vexatious,” and plaintiff had already filed dozens of almost identical cases across the country with similar results.

Stalley ex rel. U.S. v. Mountain States Health Alliance, 644 F.3d 349, C.A.6 (Tenn.), 2011, decided July 08, 2011

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