Judge Slams U.S. Over ‘Laughable’ Shutdown Delay Request

* Government sought stay in suit because of partial closure
* Judge calls lack of funding an abdication by Congress

A U.S. judge overseeing a veteran’s multimillion-dollar
negligence lawsuit in Puerto Rico rebuked the Justice Department
for attempting to use the partial government shutdown to put the
case on hold, calling the request “laughable.”

In a ruling denying the government request, U.S. District Judge
William G. Young said lapses in federal appropriations, like the
current one triggered by President Donald Trump’s demand for
funding for a border wall with Mexico, aren’t a government “policy”
that could theoretically justify staying such a lawsuit.

“Let us talk plain — they are simply an abdication by the
president and the Congress (which could override a presidential
veto) of the duty to govern responsibly to the end that all the
laws may be faithfully executed,” Young said in the Jan. 2 ruling
in San Juan. “Nor does such a lapse in any way excuse this court
from exercising its own constitutional functions.”

Young, who is based in the Boston federal court but sitting in
San Juan as a visiting judge, sarcastically compared the situation
to a major corporation that “for whatever reason” decided not to
pay its attorneys involved in pending litigation and instructed
them not to interact with the court.

“Then the corporation says to the court, ‘We greatly regret any
disruptions caused to the court and to other litigants, but please
stay all proceedings until we get our act together.’ This does not
constitute ‘good cause’ for any stay,” Young wrote. “In fact, it is
laughable.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rafael López-Rivera in San Juan made the
request for a delay on Dec. 26 in a two-page document that was
similar to others filed in cases that day across the U.S., with
mixed success.

The government faces a March deadline for evidence discovery in
the case and a trial is set for July. Filed in 2017, the suit seeks
about $18 million in damages for a man who says the VA Medical
Center in San Juan misdiagnosed him during a 2015 visit and sent
him home early. He claims the facility failed to treat him for what
turned out to be a dangerous septic illness that resulted in the
amputation of five fingers, a hand and both legs below the
knee.

“Appropriations or no, this court will continue to sit daily,
attending to the quotidian details of getting all cases ready for
trial and trying them in a timely fashion as required by the
Constitution,” the judge wrote.

Culled from Bloomberg