Civil Procedure
Commissioners; bias

An attorney is not disqualified from serving on a condemnation commission, even though his firm represents clients in the same business as the plaintiff.

"Appellants rely on §455(b)(1), (b)(4), and (b)(5)(iii). Subsection (b)(1) says that 'personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding', is disqualifying. Ewert is not alleged to know any fact material to this proceeding or to have had any dealings with Guardian or any of the landowners. So subsection (b)(1) is not remotely applicable. One might as well say that someone who becomes a judge following a career as a prosecutor is disqualified in all criminal cases, not just those on which he worked, because prosecutors are partisans and all partisans favor the causes they have espoused. Likewise Justice Goldberg, who came to the Supreme Court (via the Department of Labor) from a law firm that represented unions in contests with management, could not have adjudicated a suit in which labor and management disagreed. That is not, however, what §455 provides.

Disqualification is case-specific; the statute does not put a whole subject matter out of bounds to a judge with no concrete interest in a particular dispute. A lawyer's role as an advocate in one dispute does not disqualify him from serving as a neutral in another, even if the subject matter overlaps."

Affirmed.

07-2267, 07-2283 & 07-2308 Guardian Pipeline, L.L.C., v. 950.80 Acres of Land

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Moran, J., Easterbrook, J.

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