Calabrese on Making Law While Denying Mandamus

Mandamus is supposedly an extraordinary remedy. But a new paper from Jonas Anderson, Paul Gugliuzza, and Jason Rantanen shows that grants of the writ have become somewhat ordinary in Federal Circuit. And those grants have largely addressed venue issues in patent cases filed in the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas. (I discussed a trio […]

In In re Google LLC, the Federal Circuit used mandamus to order that a case be dismissed or transferred due to improper venue. The district court had concluded that Google’s having cache servers (but no employees) within the Eastern District of Texas was enough for venue to be proper in a patent-infringement suit. The Federal […]

In In re Williams-Sonoma, Inc., a district court had ordered a defendant to produce a list of its customers so opposing counsel could identify a lead plaintiff to pursue a class action. A split panel of the Ninth Circuit concluded that this discovery order was clearly erroneous and warranted reversal via mandamus.

The following guest post is by Alan B. Morrison. Mr. Morrison is the Lerner Family Associate Dean for Public Interest & Public Service Law at George Washington University Law School, where he teaches civil procedure. He is also the co-author, with Howard Eisenberg, of an article dealing with similar appeal issues: Discretionary Appellate Review of Non-Final […]

Update, September 4, 2019: Back before the district court, the court certified its decisions for an immediate appeal under § 1292(b). Trump then petitioned to appeal, and on September 4, 2019, the D.C. Circuit granted the petition. In the emoluments suit brought by members of Congress, the D.C. Circuit tried to avoid weighing in on whether […]

May saw several decisions on effective injunction denials. One of those decisions raised an interesting question about the Supreme Court’s test for when a district court order effective denies a preliminary injunction. In other developments, the Fifth Circuit sat en banc to jettison its rule barring review of waiver-based remands. Other decisions addressed the finality […]

In Heidi Group, Inc.v. Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the Fifth Circuit reviewed the denial of federal and state immunities but declined to exercise pendent appellate jurisdiction over other issues. In the course of doing so, one judge questioned the collateral-order doctrine’s application to state immunities, and the entire court questioned the doctrine of […]

The Supreme Court granted cert in GEO Group, Inc. v. Menocal. The case asks if defendants can immediately appeal from the denial of derivative sovereign immunity via the collateral-order doctrine. I wrote about the petition and the underlying circuit split earlier this year. And I wrote about the Tenth Circuit decision from which the petition stems […]

Injunction appeals have been in the spotlight of late. We’ve seen a few recent decisions on appeals from temporary restraining orders. And this month has already produced three cases involving effective denials of preliminary injunctions. One of these cases raised a question about the test for effective—and thus appealable—injunction denials. Under the Supreme Court’s decision […]

In Abraham Watkins Nichols Agosto Aziz & Stogner v. Festeryga, the en banc Fifth Circuit held that 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d) does not bar review of waiver-based remands. In so holding, the court overruled its decision in In re Weaver.