U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick has declined to recuse herself from hearing a multimillion-dollar case pitting Izzo’s Illegal Burrito against Rouses Markets.
In late February, the lead attorney for Izzo’s—Robert Evans of New Orleans—accused Dick of lacking impartiality in the case, citing his involvement in an unrelated malpractice claim against the judge’s former law firm for the handling of a 2007 wrongful death case. The firm’s insurer recently paid an undisclosed sum to settle that matter.
But in a ruling issued Tuesday, Dick said that the 2007 case in question had been handed off to another law firm in 2013. She noted the malpractice claim itself was initiated more than a year after she was appointed to the bench and had already severed all financial ties with her own firm. “A reasonable person,” she writes, citing a Fifth Circuit standard for recusal, “would not harbor doubts about the judge’s impartiality.”
The decision came in a lawsuit filed in April 2016 by Izzo’s Illegal Burrito, alleging the developers of Juban Crossing in Denham Springs, the Long Farm in Baton Rouge, and Berryland Development in Tangipahoa Parish—all of which now have Rouses Markets—were “pressured, coerced, and induced by the Rouse Group to systematically target Izzo’s and its partners for discrimination and exclusion with the intent to economically damage and destroy Izzo’s and its partners.” Izzo’s seeks more than $10 million in damages.
The recusal request from the burrito eatery’s attorney came in February, just after Dick dismissed most of the company’s claims, including tortious interference with a contract, defamation, conversion and conspiracy. Only the trademark infringement claims—focused on the company’s “Roll Your Own” catchphrase—remain. A motion to file a second amended complaint is pending; Rouses opposes it.
This is the second time Dick has declined to recuse herself from a high-profile case. In 2014, she decided against bowing out of a criminal case being prosecuted by then-acting U.S. Attorney Walt Green, even though one of her law clerks was married to the federal prosecutor. The judge noted that Katherine Green was barred from working that case and any others in which the United States is a party.
—Penny Font
