Federal Judiciary

Federal Circuit Denies Mandamus in In re Telular

By Michael C. Smith

September 10, 2008 may go down in Eastern District lore as an important date.  Until today it was known, if at all, as the date that the district court denied the motion to transfer in what would become known as In re TS Tech.  But there was another venue order issued that day in the proceeding known as Gellman v. ADT, which will now be known for an opinion the Federal Circuit handed down this afternoon under the style of In re Telular, which denied a petition for writ of mandamus asking the trial court to transfer a patent case from Marshall to Chicago.
In this case the plaintiff, a Dallas resident, filed a patent infringement case against a number of security companies with various locations.  One of the defendants, Telular, sought transfer to Chicago, where its head offices were located (its monitoring offices were in Atlanta).  Judge Ward denied the motion in this case, and several months later In re TS Tech issued.  Several weeks later, the defendant apparently decided it had a Rembrandt in the attic, so it dusted off the court's venue order and shipped it off to Washington with a cite to In re TS Tech.  After reviewing the standards, the Federal Circuit observed that "Telular faces an extraordinary burden in this case. First, the equities lie considerably against granting mandamus".  Why?  Because, as the Court noted, Telular waited five months after the court's ruling to seek mandamus - unlike TS Tech had done..
The court goes on to say, citing In re Volkswagen for each and every sentence (and quoting it several times), that

One other points bears brief mention.  Telular had argued that the only relationship between this case and the Eastern District of Texas was only that a distributor installs Telular's cellular alarm security systems in homes in the venue, but the Federal Circuit declined to agree that this fact necessitates transfer under the "clearly more convenient" test mandated by In re VW. "The Eastern District of Texas may have no more of an interest in this case than any other district in which Telular's systems are ultimately installed. This alone, however, does not mean that Telular's alternative choice of venue, in this case the Northern District of Illinois, is clearly more convenient. . . . The district court weighed competing positions which were reasonably supported by the facts. This situation is in stark contrast to the circumstances leading to the grants of mandamus in TS Tech and Volkswagen, in which the facts overwhelmingly supported transfer. In such situations, courts may be required to grant mandamus to correct an order that clearly exceeds the bounds of judicial discretion. Here, however, a rational legal argument exists in support of the trial court's ruling, and mandamus is inappropriate."

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on April 03, 2009 (boomark / email).