“Phila. Zantac Plaintiffs Move for Judge to Recuse Over Alleged Conflict” —

• “The plaintiffs in Philadelphia’s mass tort over the antacid Zantac are asking the supervising coordinating judge to recuse himself from the case.”
• “The plaintiffs contend that Judge Joshua Roberts of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has ties to a key drugmaker defendant through his wife’s position at an Am Law 200 law firm representing the company in the national litigation.”
• “‘Although these issues in no way call into question counsels’ belief that this honorable court will expend every effort to always proceed ethically with the intention of ruling without bias, the appearance of impropriety and potential for unconscious bias compel plaintiffs’ counsel to move for recusal in order to protect the interest of plaintiffs in this litigation,’ the plaintiffs said in a motion.”
• “The plaintiffs moved for recusal after Roberts disclosed that his wife, Shannon McClure, is a partner at Reed Smith, which represents Zantac manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline in litigation over the drug.”
• “The law firm has performed Zantac-related legal work for GSK in multiple states, according to the motion. Though Reed Smith’s Zantac work for GSK did not extend to Pennsylvania, the plaintiffs asserted, Reed Smith was involved in the Philadelphia mass tort through its representation of a different pharmaceutical company that is no longer actively part of the case.”
• “Plaintiffs in the Zantac litigation generally allege that the over-the-counter heartburn medication, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recalled in 2020, caused various forms of cancer.”
• “The plaintiffs do not allege that McClure, who works in Reed Smith’s global commercial disputes group, is directly involved in the Zantac litigation. However, they argue that McClure’s role at her firm means she—and, by extension, her husband—has a stake in the litigation’s outcome.”
• “Before filing the motion for recusal, plaintiffs counsel sought an ethics opinion from retired U.S. District Chief Judge Lawrence Stengel of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, now a shareholder at Saxton & Stump. In his review of the matter, Stengel determined that Roberts’ connection to GSK could potentially raise concerns about the appearance of impropriety or bias. He found that Reed Smith appears to derive a significant portion of its business from its pharmaceutical practice and that GSK appears to be an important client for the firm. He also noted that several Reed Smith attorneys regularly author posts, many about Zantac, for a pro-defense blog.”
• “‘While I offer no opinion as to whether Judge Roberts harbors any actual bias in favor of pharmaceutical companies, specifically including GSK, there are many reasons why Judge Roberts’ ability to rule impartially in this case may reasonably be questioned,’ Stengel wrote.”

“Judge Reed O’Connor Seems To Own Too Much Tesla To Rule Against CVS, Just Enough To Rule Against Liberal Fact-Checkers” —

• “Because the Northern District of Texas loves indulging forum shopping to benefit its political fellow travelers, Elon Musk loves bringing cases that have a 1 in 1 shot of being assigned to O’Connor. But sometimes that doesn’t work out! Like the recent case Musk brought against CVS, Unilever, Mars, and — for pretty glaring forum shopping reasons — Orsted. Musk alleged that advertisers who don’t give him money are violating his free speech rights and probably doing the RICO to him.”
• “O’Connor quickly recused himself from the case amidst reporting that he owned a sizable amount of Tesla stock. Which makes sense because, while X (Twitter) is a separate entity, Tesla is a meme stock that ebbs and flows with Musk’s personal brand — having nosedived from heights around $360/share before he launched his X misadventure to the low $200s now.”
• “So a lawsuit involving X’s fight for advertising dollars would likely impact Tesla’s share price were a judge to rule on it. Though O’Connor refused to offer the transparency generally sought by basic tenets of legal ethics. While the federal rules do not require disclosure, that’s supposed to protect judges from divulging embarrassing personal issues as opposed to investments, but that doesn’t stop anyone.”
• “And now we might have some insight into why O’Connor didn’t want to go on the record citing Tesla stock as a specific reason for recusal! Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog that Musk sued in O’Connor’s court, also raised Tesla as an interested party to their case in a roundabout bid that could implicate O’Connor’s investments and get a new judge. Last week O’Connor rejected that request because… reasons.”
  • “‘First, there is no evidence that shows Tesla has a direct financial interest in the outcome of this case. Tesla neither directly nor indirectly holds equity in X, Tesla is not a director or advisor, and it does not participate in the affairs of X. In other words, there is no indication that Tesla has any control over X or any financial ties to X, and Defendants do not claim as much.'”
• “Sure. It’s totally normal for an unrelated entity to lose a third of its value based on what happens with another unrelated entity. There are quantum particles less entangled than Tesla and X, though O’Connor shrugs all this off:”
• “To support this contention, Defendants allege that (1) Tesla’s share price dropped because Musk sold Tesla shares to purchase X; (2) Tesla shares fell in response to Musk’s attack on advertisers; and (3) analysts’ predictions that further losses at X could lead to Musk selling Tesla stock. But these assertions are speculative.”
• “Moreover, O’Connor seems to know it happened because that would be the only plausible excuse for recusing himself in the other case based on Tesla investments. But he didn’t state a reason for that decision, which sure feels like hiding the ball to avoid flagging a conflict in a case amongst a bunch of companies holding no partisan interest for him that could hamstring him in this case where he can find himself hammering liberals.”
• “Maybe this isn’t O’Connor’s rationale. Maybe he really believes his Tesla ownership was not the reason to recuse himself in the advertising case and there’s some other conflict. If O’Connor has some other reason to recuse himself from one case and not the other he is welcome to publicly declare it any time he wants.”
• “Indeed, avoiding the appearance of impropriety in the Media Matters case now demands that he give a clear, defensible, and public explanation for his disparate treatment of the recusal issue.”

“Justice Alito’s Stock Portfolio Stands Apart on US Supreme Court” —

• “Justice Samuel Alito is the only US Supreme Court member with a stake in more than two dozen individual companies, a distinction that threatens to sideline him from major business cases. “
• “Alito or his wife own tens of thousands of dollars of stock in companies including Raytheon Co., ConocoPhillips and a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. The holdings may force him to recuse as oil companies challenge lawsuits blaming them for climate change and J&J tries to settle talc lawsuits by placing a subsidiary into bankruptcy.”
• “Alito’s 2023 financial disclosure report was publicly released last week and shows he continues to own stock in over two dozen companies. Supreme Court disclosures extend to financial interests of spouses and dependent children. In Alito’s case, the filings don’t clarify whether the stocks are owned by the justice or his wife.”
• “Supreme Court justices are allowed to hold individual stocks, but ethics rules deem they should disqualify from cases involving the companies. In the past, more justices held shares in individual companies, but that has become rare. Meanwhile, scrutiny of the judicial ethics has increased after revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas, and to a lesser degree Alito, accepted undisclosed gifts and travel from billionaire benefactors. “
• “‘It’s a question not of ethics, but of judgment,’ said Steven Lubet, emeritus professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, who focuses on legal and judicial ethics. ‘Not everything that’s legal is a good idea.'”
• “Alito has recused from 64 cases involving corporations he owns shares of since 2021, according to Fix the Court, an advocacy group that supports court reform, including judicial term limits. During the last term, he recused from 15 cases due to stock ownership, far outstripping the number of recusals from all of his colleagues, according to the group’s data. Justices are not required to say why they disqualified themselves from a particular case but the tally is based on the publicly available information.”
• “Chief Justice John Roberts, who previously owned stocks in many individual companies, has sold all but two. Justice Stephen Breyer owned a multitude of stocks before he stepped down from the bench in 2022. Most of the current justices own mutual funds, which do not create a conflict under the court’s ethics code unless the the justice is involved in the fund’s management.”
• “As a reliably pro-business vote, Alito and his family’s stock holdings could make a difference in major cases over the coming years.”
• “‘He’s got major holdings in consumer products, oil and gas, aviation, beverages, and chemicals,’ said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court. ‘These are industries where there’s a ton of lawsuits making their way through the lower courts.'”
• “Alito has already recused from a pending bid by oil companies to quash a lawsuit alleging they contributed to global warming, likely because he owns stock in ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, two of the companies involved in the suit. The case, Sunoco LP v. City and County of Honolulu, centers on whether state and local governments can sue fossil fuel companies for damages over harmful greenhouse gas emissions.”
• “Alito didn’t take part in June when the court asked the Biden administration for input on whether to take up the case.”
• “Alito’s recusal leaves the oil companies without a friendly face on the court. Alito has been a critic of federal environmental regulations for decades, and he has a long history of siding with the Chamber of Commerce, which filed in support of the oil companies in the climate change case. Alito last term agreed with the Chamber of Commerce in 73% of cases where the business group weighed in, according to the left-leaning Constitutional Accountability Center.”
• “Johnson & Johnson said in July it would ask the high court to revive the company’s plan to use a bankruptcy maneuver to settle tens of thousands of talc cancer lawsuits. In the time since, the company has continued to engage in settlement talks. A J&J spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.”