New Chief Judge of Fifth Circuit

United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Edith Jones (Wikipedia still thinks she has her old job, and I don't have the time to fix it.) stepped down early from her term as chief judge, citing family reasons. She's still going to stay on the court. The new Chief Judge is Carl E. Stewart of Shreveport, Louisiana. Getting to be Chief Judge is a kind of seniority process. Immediately following admission to the Louisiana Bar Association in October 1974, he entered the Army and was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. He was a Judge Advocate General's captain until October 1977. After leaving the military, Stewart served as:

• a Staff Attorney with the Louisiana Attorney General's Office,
• an Assistant United States Attorney,
• a Special Assistant City and District Attorney, and
• a private practitioner.

In 1985, he became a District Judge in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, and was reelected without opposition five years later. In 1991, again without opposition, he was elected to the Louisiana Second Circuit Court of Appeal. President William J. Clinton appointed Judge Stewart as United States Circuit Judge on May 9,
1994. Judge Stewart is the second African American appointed to the Fifth Circuit.

Fifth Circuit Allows Warrantless Use of Slap-On GPS Tracker.

A Fifth Circuit panel of Chief Judge Edith Jones, and Circuit Judges Patrick Higginbotham, and Leslie Southwick held that a borrower of a truck has "standing" to challenge the use of a slap-on tracker which sent out an intermittent signal accurate to 50 yards on that truck, but not to challenge the placement of the tracker on the truck. The Court's reasoning in this case, United States v. Jose Juan Hernandez, was that the truck was not his and  that it was parked on a public street. He did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy that was violated by putting the tracker on the truck. Chief Judge Edith Jones's opinion contrasted the facts of this case with the facts United States v. Maynard, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir. 2010), cert. granted sub nom, United States v. Antoine Jones, No. 1259 (April 15, 2011) in which the GPS device continuously monitored a suspect for a month, which the D.C. Circuit found to be an illegal warrantless search. The Hernandez  court appeared to think that Maynard is the only federal case which threw out a case on the ground that GPS tracking was an illegal search. The Hernandez device operated gave off pings on a regular basis. The government's agents found out how Hernandez had begun his drug delivery run, but after that, the battery in the device failed, and the agents tracked him the rest of the time by visual surveillance.
That the Supreme Court of the United States voted to hear Maynard/Jones makes me think it likely that the conservative wing of the court did not like the circuit opinion and wants to reverse it.
Hat tip to the weekly case summary of the Texas District and County Attorneys' Association.

No Supplemental Jurisdiction for a Diversity Case with a Local Intervenor for Chump Change

The only published opinion that came down from the Fifth Circuit Thursday is Griffin v. Lee, No. 09-30734, a per curiam from Chief Judge Edith Jones, Circuit Judge Edward C. Prado, and District Judge Halil S. Ozerden. Sylvester Griffin, a Mississippian, represented by Robert A. Lee, a Louisianan, sued persons from Delaware, Louisiana, New York and Ohio to reform a trust he was the beneficiary of. The suit was filed in Louisiana and was removed to the Monroe, Louisiana federal court under diversity jurisdiction. Lee was allowed to withdraw and intervened under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24, seeking his fee from out of the funds of the suit. His claim was less than $75,000. The trial court allowed Lee's claim under supplemental jurisdiction, and the Fives reversed and rendered a take-nothing judgment to Lee because, under 28 U.S.C. section 1367(b), there is not supplemental jurisdiction where complete diversity of citizenship has been destroyed and the amount in controversy is not great enough.