Alliance for Justice Releases Report on Oil-Industry Ties to Fifth Circuit Judges Hearing Drilling Moratorium Case

July 7, 2010, Washington, DC—An Alliance for Justice report has found that many U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges have extensive and multi-faceted ties to the oil industry, a factor which will come into play this week as a three-judge panel hears the Obama Administration's appeal of a lower court decision blocking a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

With oral arguments scheduled for July 8 in Hornbeck Offshore Services v. Salazar, "Judicial Gusher: the Fifth Circuit's Ties to Oil," examines not only the circuit's judges' financial interests, but also the kinds of clients they had while in private practice, their attendance at industry-sponsored "seminars," and other connections. Detailed information is offered on the three Fifth Circuit judges assigned to hear the Administration's appeal of District Judge Martin Feldman's order prohibiting the drilling moratorium from going into effect.

Among its findings, the report reveals that two of the judges on the appeals panel, Judges Jerry Edwin Smith and William Eugene Davis, frequently represented the oil and gas industries while in private practice. They also attended all-expense-paid "seminars" held at resorts in Big Sky, Montana, and sponsored by the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), whose purpose is to oppose government regulation, promote free-market solutions to environmental problems, and to "explain why ecological values are not the only important ones." Judge James L. Dennis, the third member of the panel, has extensive financial holdings in at least 18 companies in the energy industry, a situation not uncommon among his Fifth Circuit peers.

The report points out that Judge Dennis was also one of the Fifth Circuit judges who heard the recent case of Comer v. Murphy Oil USA, which was notorious for having so many judges who were forced to recuse themselves due to conflicts of interest that the court couldn't get a quorum for an en banc opinion. The result was that the appeals court was compelled to reinstate a district court ruling that favored the oil industry. Judge Dennis was not one of the judges who recused himself, in spite of his financial holdings.

As the AFJ report explains, the deepwater drilling moratorium case being heard by the Fifth Circuit on Thursday was originally decided by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, whose financial disclosure documents revealed significant investments in offshore oil and gas drilling enterprises, as well stock in energy companies, including Exxon Mobil, and holdings in BlackRock Financial, the largest shareholder in BP. Judge Feldman rejected calls for his recusal and refused to vacate his order and assign the case to another judge.

In explaining why Alliance for Justice is releasing this report, AFJ President Nan Aron said, "A great deal of attention has been focused on the political agenda of the current Supreme Court and its tendency to favor large corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans. But we are also alarmed by clear evidence that many judges in the Fifth Circuit are marinating in a pervasive oil culture, raising legitimate questions about potential bias, but also threatening to do great damage to the public's perception of the courts as a haven of fair and impartial justice."

The full report is here: http://www.afj.org/about-afj/press/fifth_circuit_judges_report.pdf