Jack B. Weinstein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jack B. Weinstein (born 1921, Kansas) is a United States federal judge in the Eastern District of New York. Judge Weinstein was appointed in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson. From 1980 to 1988, he served as chief judge of the district. In 1993, he took senior status; however, unlike some senior judges, he has maintained a full docket (and more) as a senior judge.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Cases 3 Controversy 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

Judge Weinstein was born in Kansas in 1921, and raised partly in Brooklyn. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1943. He served as an officer in the United States Navy during the Second World War. He was a professor at Columbia Law School from 1952 to 1998, continuing to hold his job as a federal judge.

He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1948. After law school, he worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and was a member of the litigation team for Brown v. Board of Education. His colleagues included future Columbia Law colleagues such as Charles Black and Jack Greenberg.

As a federal judge, he has worked with a number of mass tort cases including cases relating to Agent Orange, asbestos, tobacco, Zyprexa and handguns. He is often viewed as a particularly creative judge in the area of mass torts (depending on the point of view of the speaker, this may be a compliment or a criticism). Judge Weinstein is also well-known for his personal, informal courtroom style (Weinstein conducts most hearings seated at a table in the middle of the courtroom with counsel, rather than from the bench, and often chooses to wear an ordinary business suit with no judicial robe). He tends to avoid harsh criminal sentences. He has been known to take on large numbers of cases from other judges, and on one occasion collected most of the unresolved habeas corpus petitions in the Eastern District to bring finality to the claims of many prisoners.

Judge Weinstein's publications include leading treatises on evidence and New York practice. He has also written a number of law review articles, and several books including Individual Justice in Mass Tort Litigation.

The judge's former law clerks include a number of judges and law professors, including judge Denise Cote of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and Dean Joan Wexler of Brooklyn Law School.

[edit] Cases

Second Circuit Appeals court REVERSED Judge Weinstein's Ruling in favor of the City of NY (Mayor Bloomberg) over Gun Manufacturers. The Second Circuit found the suit to be barred under Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). From the Decision of April 30, 2008; "We conclude that the City’s claim, predicated on New York Penal Law § 240.45, does not fall within an exception to the claim restricting provisions of the Act because that statute does not fall within the contours of the Act’s predicate exception. We also hold that the PLCAA is a valid exercise of the powers granted to Congress pursuant to the Commerce Clause and that the PLCAA does not violate the doctrine of separation of powers or otherwise offend the Constitution in any manner alleged by the City." ([1]):

The judge presided over a controversial wiki case in 2006-2007 (EFF article):

At today's hearing, federal district Judge Jack B. Weinstein refused to change his order blocking publication of material that would "facilitate dissemination" of the Lilly documents. A further hearing on the issue is set for Tuesday, January 16.

Fred von Lohmann files a preliminary motion to lift, or at least clarify, the injunction against this wiki. The Honorable Judge Weinstein will not consider changing the language of the order until the hearing scheduled for 16 January.

Eli Lilly moved the judge to censor the links to the documents one journalist posted on the free wiki site.

According to a New York Times article published on December 17, 2006,^[1] Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers. These documents and e-mail messages were soon made publicly available as a location hidden Tor service^[2], and then made available on the public Internet. Eli Lilly got a temporary restraining order from a US District Court signed on January 4, 2007 to stop the dissemination or downloading of Eli Lilly documents about Zyprexa, and this allowed them to get a few US-based websites to remove them; on January 8 2007, Judge Jack B. Weinstein refused the Electronic Frontier Foundation's motion to stay his order^[3]. The documents can now only be downloaded from public Internet sites outside the US.^[4] These health risks include an increased risk for diabetes through Zyprexa's links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar. Zyprexa is Lilly’s top-selling drug, with sales of $4.2 billion last year.

On March 10, 2005 Judge Jack Weinstein of Brooklyn Federal Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange against producers of chemicals defoliants/herbicides, denying millions to those poisoned by the rainbow defoliants.

[edit] Controversy

Judge Jack Weinstein has been criticized for being sympathetic towards plaintiffs in litigation against the tobacco and firearm industries.^[5] An investigation by the New York Sun found that big lawsuits with billions of dollars at stake tend to get assigned to Judge Weinstein.^[6] According to the newspaper, some plaintiffs, particularly in tobacco and firearms cases state at filing time that their cases are related to other cases that are or have been before Judge Weinstein. This results in their cases being assigned to him as well. Judge Weinstein has been criticized for this practice by other judges including Judge George Pratt and Judge José Cabranes of the 2nd Circuit.^[6] Defense attorneys for the firearm and tobacco industries have alleged judge shopping and have long tried to get their cases reassigned away from Judge Weinstein's courtroom, with mixed results.

The article reports that on Dec 6, 2007, John Renzulli, a firearms industry attorney will ask Judge Weinstein to recuse himself from City of New York v. A-1 Jewelry & Pawn, et al.^[7], a firearms lawsuit brought by New York City against out-of-state gun dealers, arguing that "the assignment of this entire chain of firearms cases to Your Honor can only be characterized as a poisonous tree".

The Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights organization has called upon Judge Weinstein to step down from the bench or step aside from hearing any further gun industry lawsuit cases, arguing that the judge has become known more for activism than judicial neutrality.^[8]

In June 2008, in the case of Adventure Outdoors, a Georgia gun dealer sued by the City of New York, Judge Weinstein was accused of having "already made up his mind about the case, making any trial “a mere formality.”" Judge Weinstein had decided to seat an advisory jury — one whose decision would not be binding and would leave the judge himself as the final arbiter of fact and law. This caused the gun dealer to withdraw from the trial in order to move more quickly to an appellate court.^[9] The Second Amendment Foundation echoed concerns that the dealer could not get a fair trial before Judge Weinstein and called for Weinstein to recuse himself from firearms industry cases.^[10]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Findlaw Directory Listing