The latest interest in Judge Weinstein doesn’t stem from any of his Page 1-worthy rulings but the more arcane question of how some of his cases got assigned to the judge in the first place. At issue is how more than a dozen lawsuits brought against the tobacco industry — and several suits against firearm manufacturers — ended up before the judge.
By and large, these suits, about 20 in all, against the tobacco and firearm industries didn’t arrive on Judge Weinstein’s docket through a “spin of the wheel” — the random case assignment process by which suits are sent to judges. Instead, plaintiffs in the know have long used an administrative shortcut to maneuver lawsuits against the same set of defendants into the courtroom of their choice. Their choice is often Judge Weinstein.
In one of Dashiel Hammetts' books a character says something like "The law is a bunch of rules written by lawyers so they can argue about them in front of other lawyers called judges, with all of them getting paid each step of the way." You can argue about points of that, but we do have a big problem with lawyers writing/influencing the writing of laws for their own benefit, and screw the people. This is a good example: screw the proper legal procedure, we want a judge we know will rule our way, so let's game the system.
Lamppost, rope, lawyer...
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