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Asbestos MDL Judge Has Left The Courtroom
By asbestoshub | October 14, 2008
Senior U.S. District Judge James T. Giles has left the federal bench to return to private practice at the firm where he worked for 11 years prior to being appointed to the court in 1979.
Giles garnered national attention for his handling of several massive cases, including In re Asbestos School Litigation and In re Asbestos Products Liability Litigation, a case that now involves more than 13 million claims and was first presided over by the late U.S. District Judge Charles R. Weiner. He appeared to be making progress, urging settlement of 95,000 pending asbestos lawsuits in February 2008.
Giles, who served a seven-year term as chief judge of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1999 to 2006, said in an interview that he decided to leave the bench for “financial reasons.” The federal judiciary hasn’t had a salary hike in more than a decade, Giles said, and the cost-of-living increases it did get were “insufficient.” “If there’s not some movement on the salary front, more senior judges will leave,” Giles said.
Federal district court judges are currently paid $169,300 a year, appellate judges $179,500, associate Supreme Court justices $208,100, and the chief justice $217,400. All are permitted to earn an additional $21,000 a year for teaching.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has urged Congress to pass a pay hike, complaining that while the national average wage rate has risen by 17.8 percent since 1969, the average salary for federal judges has effectively dropped by 23.9 percent.
Giles said that he was at one point hopeful that Roberts’ lobbying efforts would pay off, but that he ultimately realized that the issue was too “politicized” and that judicial salaries were likely to remain stagnant.
Giles said he plans to focus mainly on mediation and arbitration matters, as well as advising clients and assisting the firm’s litigators in crafting their briefing and trial strategies.
Giles, 65, graduated from Amherst College and earned his law degree at Yale in 1967.
After brief stints as a clerk at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and as a field attorney at the National Labor Relations Board, Giles joined Pepper Hamilton in 1968 as its first black lawyer and in 1974 was the first person of color to be elected to the firm’s partnership.
In choosing to return to Pepper, Giles cited his strong and long-standing friendships with the lawyers who had served as his mentors early in his career.
Topics: Law |
