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Law360 (March 18, 2021, 5:00 PM EDT) -- The Western District of Texas' top judge further postponed federal jury trials in the district until May, citing concerns for the "health and safety" of the public, litigants and court employees, but the order leaves room for the country's busiest patent judge to make his own determination.
U.S. District Chief Judge Orlando Garcia on Wednesday extended his order first issued last year continuing all civil and criminal jury trials scheduled in the district through April 30. He repeated his assertion included in previous orders that "the best interests of the public are served by these continuances."
Texas has reported a total of more than 2.7 million COVID-19 cases as of Thursday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Judge Garcia cited that case count in his order.
"The court is concerned with the health and safety of the public, court employees, staff of other entities with whom court personnel interact, litigants, including defendants in criminal matters, counsel, interpreters, law enforcement officials and jurors, who must work in close quarters to hear evidence and to deliberate," Judge Garcia wrote.
However, the chief judge noted that the "public health situation related to the novel coronavirus in each division may differ" and, similar to his previous orders, left the door open for Texas federal judges to make the final decisions for their divisions.
The order allows for bench trials and other in-person hearings, sentencing proceedings and conferences to proceed unless counsel seeks "relief from those matters by appropriate motions."
Judge Garcia's order will likely not affect U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright's patent docket, however, which now consists of 19.5% of all of the U.S.' new patent cases, according to 2020 court filings compiled by Lex Machina.
In fact, Judge Albright recently held an in-person jury trial in a patent dispute between VLSI Technology LLC and Intel Corp., which ended March 2 when a Waco, Texas, jury awarded VLSI $2.175 billion for Intel's infringement of two computer chip patents.
The trial kicked off Feb. 22 after Intel's numerous attempts to delay the trial due to the coronavirus pandemic. In what seemed to be a nod to Intel's concerns, Judge Albright ordered myriad COVID-19 safety protocols, including daily rapid antigen testing for all trial participants.
The next trial on Judge Albright's docket is scheduled to begin April 19. It is a dispute between grocery store chain H-E-B Grocery Co. LP and startup Digital Retail Apps Inc. over scan-and-pay technology used to facilitate in-store shopping. The case had originally been scheduled to begin Feb. 19 but Judge Albright agreed in January to postpone it six weeks.
Judge Albright's office didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
--Additional reporting by Dani Kass, Andrew Karpan, Ryan Davis and Britain Eakin. Editing by Stephen Berg.
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