Civil Procedure – venue — mandamus

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Civil Procedure – venue — mandamus

Mandamus is available to challenge a transfer of venue.

“The doctrine of law of the case provides a possible but incomplete answer. In Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Corp., 486 U.S. 800 (1988), the Federal Circuit, ruling that it lacked jurisdiction over a case, had transferred it to this court—and we had transferred it back, insisting that the Federal Circuit was wrong: that it did have jurisdiction. The Federal Circuit was not persuaded, but it felt it had no practical choice but to decide the merits, lest the case continue bouncing between the two circuits. The Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Circuit had been right that it didn’t have jurisdiction, and so the Court vacated the Federal Circuit’s merits decision. The Court remarked in passing that our court’s erroneous jurisdictional ruling had nevertheless been the law of the case. Id. at 816. Yet it added that since law of the case, unlike res judicata, is not a rigid bar to revisiting a prior ruling, the Federal Circuit hadn’t been compelled to abide by our court’s jurisdictional ruling. See id. at 817. ‘A court has the power to revisit prior decisions of its own or of a coordinate court in any circumstance, although as a rule courts should be loath to do so in the absence of extraordinary circumstances such as where the initial decision was “clearly erroneous and would work a manifest injustice.”’ Id. So law of the case is not a complete solution to the problem we discussed in the Hicks case (for what would have happened had the Federal Circuit retransferred the Christianson case to us?), and so mandamus remains a potentially important remedy in transfer cases.”

Petition Denied.

13-1114 In re Hudson

Petition for a Writ of Mandamus to the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Baker, J., Posner, J.