Judge who overturned verdict against Boeing bought and sold Boeing stock | Hacker News Reader

Judge who overturned verdict against Boeing bought and sold Boeing stock

businessinsider.com

81 pointspeutetre17 comments

Sounds like a nothing story. It was not a significant trade. It was just the money was in a pooled fund that was trading individual stocks rather than a mutual fund, which is in practical terms, not really meaningful.

We should strive to have good laws about this (and more than we currently do for politicians) but 95% of the time people are losing their shit for complete nothing stories about people making mundane trades that aren’t even particularly profitable.

This is a non-issue. Lost money on one of the trades, may have gained on the other, very short term and quickly identified and reported, didn't involve a lot of money.

There are things worth outrage, this isn't one of them.

It doesn't matter if he lost money on the trades, what matters is that he had a position in Boeing that was impacting his ability to make an impartial ruling.

It matters in principal that these things should be avoided. And he didn’t handle it right.

But you’d be fooling yourself if the facts of this story suggest it had any meaningful impact on his ruling.

He sold the stocks as soon as he found the conflict of interest and reported it.

> what matters is that he had a position in Boeing

Only if he knew about it and kept the position. Which, according to the disclosure he filed, he didn't.

The article says they sold the stocks a year before the ruling. Assuming he didn't re-buy any, what would he gain from making a ruling while he's not holding any of the stock?

I could be seen the other way around: theoretically he gould have known that the ruling would make the price drop so selling before ruling (which he did) would be better for his wealth than selling after the ruling. I have no idea if that is meaningful if done a year before actual ruling and in the amount he held.

I don’t know if it necessarily impacts the ruling. I have long positions in companies I overall hate. There can be other factors that affect judgement more is my key point. Money isn’t everything.

It was a conflict of interest if the judge knew and was trading those stocks at the time. But it seems like that wasn’t the case.

We prosecute bank robbers even if they don’t get away with much money. The issue of conflicting interests is an issue independently of how much money was lost or gained.

In some parts of some governments you can't even do something that has the appearance of impropriety, this should be the standard for judges in the US.

This is an obvious conflict of interest. While he may not have been recused, it should have been disclosed on the outset.

Sloppy and ineffective psuedo-journalism. There should be more investigative reporting and outrage for greater concerns like a particular former President acting as Boeing's pimp and using the DOJ to espouse untruths contradicting the NTSB during an ongoing probe investigation for PR reasons.

>but says his wife's IRA was to blame

Yes, blame the wife. If the Judge divorces, will the Wife get 100% of the gains ?

Time for these people to be fired, or after 2 ethics violations you are fired and disbarred.

  Judge James Robart told Business Insider a bank that managed his wife's individual retirement account purchased Boeing stock in April 2023. He said as soon as he learned about it, he had the stocks sold; his financial disclosures said the shares were sold on two dates in May and June.

That sounds perfectly legit if true. Maybe not disbar him before finding out?

Seems more like it was the bank that administered his wife’s IRA. I could easily see how someone could have an IRA account and not be aware of the individual trades and investments it makes. Now you would think a federal judge would ensure things like this wouldn’t happen but I don’t think this is on the same level of what we have been seeing with the SCOTUS.

I think people here should understand what the law and precedent is. He knew he had it, sold it (twice?), knew it was wrong, and still, to this day, has not told the parties.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2024-07-02/us-...

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said that while U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman "almost certainly unknowingly" had a conflict of interest, his partiality could reasonably be questioned because his wife's ownership of Bank of America stock created an "appearance of impropriety."

A spokesman for the Manhattan federal court, where Liman works, declined to comment.

Tuesday's unsigned decision came nearly three years after a Wall Street Journal investigation found that more than 130 federal judges had since 2010 violated federal law and judicial ethics by overseeing cases involving companies in which they or family members owned stock.

Bond investors accused Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, NatWest and Wells Fargo of overcharging them since 2006 on "odd-lot" trades, which are worth less than $1 million and comprise most corporate bond trades.

Liman, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, was assigned the lawsuit in April 2020 and dismissed it with prejudice in October 2021, three months after his wife sold $15,000 of Bank of America stock.

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