Cite as: 523 U. S. 26 (1998)
Syllabus
Held: A district court conducting pretrial proceedings pursuant to
§ 1407(a) has no authority to invoke § 1404(a) to assign a transferred case to itself for trial. Pp. 32-43.
(a) Two sources of ostensible authority for Milberg's espousal of self-assignment authority are that the Panel has explicitly authorized such assignments in Panel Rule 14(b), which it issued in reliance on its rule-making authority; and that § 1407(a)'s limitations on a transferee court's authority to the conduct of "coordinated or consolidated" proceedings and to "pretrial proceedings" raise no obvious bar to a transferee's retention of a case under § 1404. Beyond this point, however, the textual pointers reverse direction, for § 1407 not only authorizes the Panel to transfer for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings, but obligates the Panel to remand any pending case to its originating court when, at the latest, those pretrial proceedings end. The Panel's remand instruction comes in terms of the mandatory "shall," which normally creates an obligation impervious to judicial discretion. Anderson v. Yungkau, 329 U. S. 482, 485. Reading the statute whole, this Court has to give effect to this plain command, see Estate of Cowart v. Nicklos Drilling Co., 505 U. S. 469, 476, even if that will reverse the longstanding practice under the statute and the rule, see Metropolitan Stevedore Co. v. Rambo, 515 U. S. 291, 300. Pp. 32-37.
(b) None of Milberg's additional arguments based on the statute's language and legislative history can unsettle § 1407's straightforward language imposing the Panel's responsibility to remand, which bars recognizing any self-assignment power in a transferee court and consequently entails the invalidity of the Panel's Rule 14(b). Pp. 37-41.
(c) Milberg errs in arguing that a remedy for Lexecon can be omitted under the harmless-error doctrine. That § 1407's strict remand requirement creates an interest too substantial to be left without a remedy is attested by a congressional judgment that no discretion is to be left to a court faced with an objection to a statutory violation. The § 1407 mandate would lose all meaning if a party who continuously objected to an uncorrected categorical violation of the mandate could obtain no relief at the end of the day. Caterpillar Inc. v. Lewis, 519 U. S. 61, distinguished. Pp. 41-43.
102 F. 3d 1524, reversed and remanded.
Souter, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, which was unanimous except insofar as Scalia, J., did not join Part II-C.
Michael K. Kellogg argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Mark C. Hansen, Sean A. Lev,
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