26
OCTOBER TERM, 1997
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 96-1482. Argued November 10, 1997—Decided March 3, 1998
Petitioners, a law and economics consulting firm and one of its principals (collectively, Lexecon), were defendants in a class action brought against Charles Keating and the American Continental Corporation in connection with the failure of Lincoln Savings and Loan. It and other actions arising out of that failure were transferred for pretrial proceedings to the District of Arizona under 28 U. S. C. § 1407(a), which authorizes the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to transfer civil actions with common issues of fact "to any district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings," but provides that the Panel "shall" remand any such action to the original district "at or before the conclusion of such pretrial proceedings." Before the pretrial proceedings ended, the plaintiffs and Lexecon reached a "resolution," and the claims against Lexecon were dismissed. Subsequently, Lexecon brought this diversity action in the Northern District of Illinois against respondent law firms (hereinafter Milberg and Cotchett), claiming several torts, including defamation, arising from the firms' conduct as counsel for the class-action plaintiffs. Milberg and Cotchett moved for, and the Panel ordered, a § 1407(a) transfer to the District of Arizona. After the remaining parties to the Lincoln Savings litigation reached a final settlement, Lexecon moved the Arizona District Court to refer the case back to the Panel for remand to the Northern District of Illinois. The law firms filed a countermotion requesting the Arizona District Court to invoke § 1404(a) to "transfer" the case to itself for trial. With only the defamation claim against Milberg remaining after a summary judgment ruling, the court assigned the case to itself for trial and denied Lexecon's motion to request the Panel to remand. The Ninth Circuit then denied Lexecon's petition for mandamus, refusing to vacate the self-assignment order and require remand because Lexecon would have the opportunity to obtain relief from the transfer order on direct appeal. After Milberg won a judgment on the defamation claim, Lexecon again appealed the transfer order. The Ninth Circuit affirmed on the ground that permitting the transferee court to assign a case to itself upon completion of its pretrial work was not only consistent with the statutory language but conducive to efficiency.
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