A federal judge in Arkansas was recently named in a Wall Street Journal news story about federal judges who heard cases involving companies in which they held a financial interest.
In the Eastern District of Arkansas, headquartered in Little Rock, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright was named as having presided over four civil cases involving two corporations in which she owned shares.
Although the Wall Street Journal story primarily focused on 685 cases heard by 131 federal judges between 2010 and 2018, the cases referenced involving Wright occurred in the mid-2000s. A few of the judges named in the story had presided over dozens of civil cases in which they held a financial interest over the eight-year period examined.
Wright initially presided over three cases involving the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. and the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa, two filed in 2005 and one filed in 2006. All three cases were transferred to the Eastern District of New York within months of the initial filing and Wright had made no rulings in any of the cases that would have affected the outcome.
A personal injury case against Home Depot was filed in 2005 and dismissed the next year after a settlement was reached. As in the Eli Lilly lawsuits, Wright made no rulings that would have had any effect on the outcome of the matter.
Wright, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the matter.
“The judge said she has nothing more to say on the matter beyond what was reported in the Wall Street Journal,” the spokesperson said. “She said there were safeguards in place to catch things like that and she doesn’t know why those cases got by the safeguards.” “I have my judicial salary, but the law really restricts what else judges can do for additional income,” Wright told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. “A judge has to be on her toes, and obviously I was not.” Wright, who was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush in 1989, told the Wall Street Journal that she held more stock when she was younger and trying to build a nest egg for her family. She told the Journal that regardless of what safeguards are in place, the ultimate responsibility for steering clear of conflicts lies with the judges themselves.
The court clerk’s office maintains a list of financial interests and recusals for each of the seven U.S. District judges and five U.S. Magistrate judges in Arkansas’ Eastern District. Wright’s list includes 26 corporations in which she holds a financial interest and 19 people or entities for which she is required to disqualify herself unless all parties agree in writing that recusal is not necessary.
U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton in 1993, making his tenure second only to Wright’s on the current court, has 41 entries on his recusal list. Of those listed, 11 are corporations and 30 are individuals or entities.
The most entries belongs to Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., with 78 total entries. U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker follows Marshall with 67, followed by U.S. District judges Lee Rudofsky with 44, James M. Moody Jr. with 40, and Brian Miller with 14.
In the 2010-2018 window used by the Wall Street Journal, none of the current sitting judges were deemed to have sat in on cases in which they had a potential conflict of interest. But, according to the data compiled by the Journal, one former judge, J. Leon Holmes, did preside over one case involving Exxon Mobil Corp. — one of 615 named defendants — filed by a federal inmate and dismissed soon after.
The lawsuit, Banks vs. Clinton et al, named as defendants then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton along with much of then-President Barak Obama’s cabinet, dozens of federal agencies, at least five state governors, oil and chemical companies, most major newspapers — including the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette — pharmaceutical companies and transportation companies, along with the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Exxon-Mobil Corp. was the 490th of the 615 named defendants in the case. Holmes dismissed the case without prejudice a few days after it was filed.