Case Information
*2 Before REAVLEY, DENNIS, and SOUTHWICK, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
Plaintiff-Appellant Albert G. Hill III (“Hill III”) appeals three district court orders: (1) denying Hill III’s motion to recuse a magistrate judge, (2) denying Hill III’s motion to vacate a final judgment in light of a trial judge’s sua sponte recusal, and (3) denying Hill III’s motion to vacate a final judgment in light of new evidence. For the following reasons, we AFFIRM each of the district court’s orders.
This appeal arises from litigation involving the management and
beneficiaries of the Margaret Hunt Trust Estate (“MHTE”) and the Haroldson
L. Hunt, Jr. Trust Estate (“HHTE”)—litigation that has been protracted,
complicated, and, most importantly,
settled
with a Global Settlement and
Mutual Release Agreement (the “settlement”) implemented by a final
judgment from the district court. This appeal brings to four the number of
times this court has weighed in on the settlement.
See Campbell Harrison &
Dagley, L.L.P. v. Hill
, No. 14-10627,
Despite the complexity of the underlying litigation, the relevant facts here are relatively simple. Oil tycoon H.L. Hunt established the two trusts in the names of his eldest children, Margaret and Haroldson Hunt. Margaret Hunt had three children, including defendant-appellee Albert G. Hill, Jr. (“Hill Jr.”), who were all beneficiaries of both the MHTE and the HHTE. Hill Jr. also had three children including Hill III. In 2007, Hill III sued his father, Hill Jr., along with fiduciaries of the trusts, alleging inter alia that Hill Jr. had disclaimed his interest in the MHTE, in effect passing it directly to Hill III and Hill III’s siblings while Hill Jr. still lived.
In 2010, the parties agreed to the settlement and Judge O’Connor of the
United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas incorporated
the settlement into his final judgment. Hill III subsequently challenged Judge
O’Connor’s implementation of the settlement and moved to compel Judge
O’Connor to recuse himself from the case and vacate the final judgment.
Hill
,
Now, four years after reaching the settlement agreement, Hill III again asks this court to reopen the case so that he might have yet another bite at the apple. First, Hill III asks this court to reopen the case and vacate a magistrate judge’s order regarding a fee dispute related to the settlement agreement because the magistrate judge should have recused herself due to a conflict. Hill III alleges that a close friend of the magistrate judge was a material witness in the fee dispute. The friend filed a declaration on behalf of an adversarial party to Hill III, but the friend filed the declaration with the court just two hours before the magistrate judge issued her Report and Recommendation, which neither cited nor mentioned the declaration.
A judge’s decision to recuse herself is in the discretion of the judge, and
we review the magistrate judge’s refusal to recuse herself for abuse of
discretion.
United States v. Bremers
, 195 F.3d 221, 226 (5th Cir. 1999). A
federal judge “shall disqualify [herself] in any proceeding in which [her]
impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). The goal of
the statute “is to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”
Liljeberg v.
Health Servs. Acquisition Grp.
,
Both the magistrate judge, whose partiality Hill III questions, and Judge
O’Connor found that the magistrate judge’s partiality could not reasonably be
questioned. This finding is not an abuse of discretion on the part of either
Judge O’Connor or the magistrate judge. A reasonable person would not
harbor legitimate doubts about the partiality of the magistrate judge here
because the magistrate judge had already written her Report and
Recommendation when the declaration was filed and the magistrate judge did
not even know of its existence at that time. Furthermore, even if the
magistrate had seen the declaration before issuing her Report and
Recommendation, an allegation of friendship alone generally does not establish
a conflict.
See Jordan
,
Next, Hill III seeks to vacate the final judgment under Rule 60(b) of the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 60 grants the district court discretion
to reopen a case to “correct obvious errors or injustices” but “it is not a
substitute for appeal.”
Fackelman v. Bell
,
Hill III seeks Rule 60(b) relief on two unrelated grounds. First, Hill III once again questions Judge O’Connor’s impartiality as a basis for reopening the case. Second, Hill III cites newly discovered evidence in the form of deposition testimony from another case as justification for reopening this case. We address each in turn.
Hill III’s questions Judge O’Connor’s partiality based on Judge O’Connor’s sua sponte recusal after presiding over the case for several years and issuing a final judgment implementing the settlement agreement. Judge O’Connor provided no reasons for his sua sponte recusal. Earlier in this case, before Judge O’Connor’s recusal but after the final judgment implementing the settlement, Hill III attempted to force Judge O’Connor’s recusal because Judge O’Connor’s wife owned a substantial amount of stock in ExxonMobil Corporation, which had come to own the former Hunt Petroleum Company, a major asset of both the MHTE and HHTE. Hill , 495 F. App’x at 483. Judge O’Connor denied Hill III’s motion to recuse and this court affirmed on appeal, holding that the motion was untimely because it came only after Hill III unsuccessfully attempted to alter the final judgment even though Hill III knew of the ExxonMobil stock earlier. Id. at 484. Hill III now argues that Judge O’Connor’s subsequent recusal demonstrates that Judge O’Connor must have had some unspecified conflict of interest all along because nothing material changed in the case between the time when Hill III unsuccessfully moved for Judge O’Connor’s recusal and the time when Judge O’Connor recused himself sua sponte .
The district court’s denial of Hill III’s Rule 60(b) motion for relief from
final judgment based on Judge O’Connor’s recusal was not an abuse of
discretion. Hill III cannot challenge Judge O’Connor’s partiality on the basis
of the ExxonMobil stock now because this court has already addressed that
issue.
Id.
The “mandate rule” precludes a district court from reexamining an
issue of law or fact that a court of appeal has decided unless the court of appeal
resubmitted the issue to the district court on remand.
United States v. Pineiro
,
Hill III provides no evidence to suggest that any other fact or
circumstance should have compelled Judge O’Connor to recuse himself before
he actually did so. The district court’s denial of Hill III’s motion did not
“preclude[] examination of the full merits” of this issue,
Seven Elves, Inc.
, 635
F.2d at 402, because Judge O’Connor, a magistrate judge, another district
court judge, and this court all have examined Judge O’Connor’s partiality.
Accordingly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Hill III’s
Rule 60 motion. Furthermore, Hill III points to no authority that would
require Judge O’Connor to provide reasons for his recusal or that
would allow Hill III discovery to uncover those reasons. To the contrary, this
court has recognized (in this very litigation, no less) that when a judge recuses
himself, the standard practice is
not
to give reasons.
Hill
,
Hill III also seeks to reopen the final judgment under Rule 60(b) because of newly discovered evidence, namely deposition testimony by Cynthia Camuel, a witness in another case, that allegedly supports Hill III’s contention in this case that Hill Jr. disclaimed his interest in the MHTE. In separate litigation between Hill III and the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) that occurred after final judgment in this case, Hill III deposed Camuel, a former IRS attorney. Camuel indicated that she believed Hill III might have a vested interest in the HHTE because Hill Jr. had signed a disclaimer. But the MHTE is at issue in this case, not the HHTE. While it is possible, even likely, that Camuel confused the MHTE and HHTE, Camuel further testified that she had no first-hand knowledge of any disclaimer, but only that she may have read about it in the newspapers and heard about it from an unidentified representative of HHTE.
Hill III argues that Camuel’s testimony justifies reopening the case
under Rule 60 for additional discovery into the existence of a disclaimer. The
district court denied Hill III’s motion to reopen. That denial was not an abuse
of discretion. After several years of litigation, Hill III has had ample
opportunity for discovery into the issue of whether a disclaimer exists. Hill III
can hardly argue that the denial “precludes examination of the full merits”
here.
See Seven Elves, Inc.
, 635 F.2d at 402. The district court found that
Camuel’s “fuzzy recollection” of the purported disclaimer based on what she
had read or heard, not even a fuzzy recollection of her own independent
knowledge of a disclaimer, did not justify reopening a case closed for four years.
Here, it is doubtful that Rule 60(b) relief would even be “warranted or
permissible” on such sparse evidence and it follows that denial of that relief
cannot be “sufficiently unwarranted as to amount to an abuse of discretion.”
Fackelman
,
On a final note, in his brief on appeal, Hill Jr. requests that this court
restrict Hill III’s right to file additional appeals related to the settlement
agreement on the grounds that Hill III is “a serial litigator, with the inclination
to appeal every adverse decision, no matter how frivolous.” Although the
“district court has the power under 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a) to enjoin litigants who
are abusing the court system by harassing their opponents,” Hill Jr. has not
asked the district court for such an injunction here.
Harrelson v. United States
,
For the foregoing reasons, the district court’s decision is AFFIRMED.
Notes
[*] Pursuant to 5 TH C IR . R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5 TH C IR . R. 47.5.4.