Shipyard bias case judge is removed
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES » A federal judge was removed from a discrimination case against the U.S. Navy by an appellate court that said he committed five abuses of discretion, including preventing an expert witness from testifying.
Los Angeles-based Judge Manuel Real was sitting in Hawaii as a visiting judge when he was reassigned by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Real has appealed the decision to the Judicial Conference of the U.S. in Washington.
He had been hearing a case involving Ronald L. Obrey Jr., a Pearl Harbor shipyard supervisor who contends he was denied promotion because he is part Hawaiian.
In its Dec. 26 ruling, the three-member appellate court said Real showed "apparent unwillingness" to follow a ruling it made last year that ordered him to admit certain testimony and statistics into the case.
The appeals court also said Real refused to allow live rather than written testimony from three of Obrey's witnesses, who claimed they had been passed over for shipyard jobs because of their race.
Real's actions "were prejudicial to Obrey," the 9th Circuit panel said, adding that "the trial would have been quite different had these significant errors not been made."
The ruling will give Obrey another chance to prove his claims.
The 9th Circuit's action is not unprecedented. In 1986 the court reassigned a long-running, contentious case involving Sears that Real had been hearing, and in 2005 it stripped the judge of a case involving chemical giant E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.
In each instance the 9th Circuit said it acted to "preserve the appearance of justice."
The decision on the current case came six weeks after a disciplinary panel of the court voted to publicly reprimand Real for improperly seizing control of a bankruptcy case involving a defendant whose probation he was supervising.
A congressional subcommittee has called for a hearing on a resolution to consider Real's possible impeachment. No action has been taken on the proposal.