The nonprofit Center for Public Integrity has released a report which indicate that several federal judges, and even from the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, had taken part in cases wherein they have financial interests in either one of the opposing sides, like owning stock. SFGate said that should there be some truth to the claims, the judges could be charged with violating a federal conflict-of-interest law.
SFGate said that according to the federal conflict-of-interest law, federal judges are prohibited from taking part in cases they have conflicts of interest in. Although there is no punishment for individuals who have violated such law, the law could have the affected parties in cases to be heard by jurists who have no monetary interests in the cases.
It was noted by the local news blog that the Ninth Circuit and the judges who were named in the report were surprised with the revelations, as they said they are not aware that they have financial holdings with one of the opposing parties or the legal implications their participation has caused in such cases. The disclosures of the Center for Public Integrity indicate that the court have contacted the lawyers in each of the affected cases, and that there is a likelihood that a new hearing without the participation of the conflicted judge could be requested.
The report had claimed that 59% of the appeals court judges reported that they own stocks from the opposing parties in cases they have handled. The report noted that its information could be incomplete as judges are allowed to delete some of their financial holdings from the public record for security reasons.
Ninth Circuit spokesman David Madden commented to the Chronicle about the nonprofit report and the possibility about occasional human error that the statistics suggested in the report might have, "These cases are exceptions to an otherwise very effective system that determined where conflicts of interest lie. There are humans involved in every system and mistakes can be made."
