Candidates for the vacant judgeship are reported

It was reported in the Delaware Grapevine by Celia Cohen that the candidates for the vacant judgeship in this district are rumored to be Andre Bouchard, managing partner at Bouchard Margules & Friedlander, U.S. Magistrate Judge Leonard Stark, and Mary Graham, a partner at Morris Nichols Arsht & Tunnell.

Nearby judges to assist during vacant judgeship

Chief Judge Sleet announced today that the court would be assigning every fourth case to a judge selected from a roster of about 6 judges from the E.D.Pa. and possibly later from the D.N.J. until the vacancy is filled with a fourth judge in this district.  It is expected that the pretrial proceedings will take place where those judges normally reside, but the trials will take place in Delaware.  It is unclear at this point whether those cases will be reassigned once the vacancy is filled.

Bush nominates U.S. Attorney Colm F. Connolly for U.S. District Court Seat

The White House confirmed today that it has sent U.S. Attorney Colm F. Connolly's name to the U.S. Senate as its nominee to fill a vacancy on the federal bench in Delaware.

Connolly's name was submitted for consideration by President Bush along with three others last year to fill the position left vacant by Kent A. Jordan after he was appointed to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

 

 

Efiling of Complaint

The Delaware District Court has now started a six month pilot program which grants registered CM/ECF users the right to file civil and miscellaneous case opening documents via the efiling system with the use of a credit card.  Previously, all new complaints needed to be filed in hard copy and on CD directly with the Clerk's office.  The Clerk's office would then give the new case a civil action number and upload the documents to the efiling system, after which users would be able to access and add new documents to the case.

District Court moves to resolve log jam over vacant judgeship

Given that the vacancy in the fourth judgeship has lasted for over one year and is not likely to be filled in the near future, the District judges entered an Order on January 23, 2008 rescinding their prior Order "In Re: Assignment Of Civil Cases To United States Magistrate Judges" which was made effective on August 6 2007.  By this Joint Order, all cases assigned pursuant to the Order of August 6, 2007, and all cases filed in the future in the District shall, until further notice, be divided among the three active District Judges in accordance with the method currently employed by the Court for the allocation of assignments.

A copy of the full article is available here.