The appellate court's 2-page ruling cited this NYT article in a footnote to criticize Scheindlin for the way the related-case rule has directed stop-and-frisk cases against the police to her ever since 1999, when she was randomly assigned the case dealing with the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. The NYT had this (last May):
In a city with dozens of Federal District Court judges, it is striking that a single judge has so many opportunities to rule on one of the Police Department’s signature crime-fighting tactics — a development that has frustrated city officials....
The language of the court rule leaves it to the discretion of individual judges to accept the case as related or not. It instructs judges to consider whether placing the cases in the same courtroom would result in conserving judicial resources, allow more efficient litigation or serve the convenience of the various parties.
The rule calls for related cases to have a “similarity of facts and legal issues” or to stem from the “same transactions or events.” But cases are not related merely because they involve identical legal issues or litigants....
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