Magistrate Judge Removed

The father of this blog’s publisher was born in Orange, Texas, so developments in Lake Charles, Louisiana are always of interest. In IFG Port Holdings v. Lake Charles Harbor & Terminal District, which produced a $125 million judgment, a panel majority found that the losing party had not given effective consent to proceeding before a magistrate judge when the party lacked knowledge of a close personal relationship between the judge and opposing counsel:

Overwhelming evidence shows a close family friendship between Judge Kay and Monk. And vanishingly little direct or circumstantial evidence suggests the Port actually knew about the friendship before judgment. The district court applied the right knowledge standard to these facts: Only the Port’s actual knowledge of the nature and extent of the Monk-Kay friendship before judgment is sufficient to show their knowing consent.

No. 24-30552 (Sept. 8, 2026). A dissent was concerned that this result would encourage satellite litigation involving ill-founded attacks on judges.