Dfinity Foundation v. New York Times Company
- Lewis Kaplan
- 1:22-cv-05418
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Dfinity v. New York Times, Judge Kaplan denied Dfinity’s motion to recuse him because his spouse’s past employment did not reasonably question his impartiality.
Dfinity Foundation’s motion to recuse Judge Kaplan was denied, so Judge Kaplan was not disqualified from handling the case.
What happened
Dfinity Foundation sued The New York Times Company, two reporters, and others in a defamation case. Dfinity asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to remove himself because his spouse had worked for The New York Times and Random House years before their marriage and received pension benefits from plans connected to those employers.
Dfinity argued that these facts created a reasonable question about Judge Kaplan’s impartiality under federal recusal law. The court explained that recusal is required only when a reasonable person who knows all the facts could reasonably question the judge’s impartiality, not when a party raises an unreasonable concern.
Judge Kaplan denied the motion to recuse. He concluded that his spouse’s employment decades earlier, occurring before their marriage, and her pension benefits did not provide a reasonable basis to question his impartiality.
The detailed version
- Dfinity Foundation v. New York Times Company · No. 1:22-cv-05418
- Lewis Kaplan
- Aug. 9, 2022
Background
Dfinity Foundation brought a defamation case against The New York Times Company, two of its reporters, and other defendants. Dfinity moved under 28 U.S.C. § 455(a), the federal statute governing judicial disqualification when a judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, to recuse Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
Dfinity relied on the fact that Judge Kaplan’s spouse had been a reporter for The New York Times from 1969 to 1979 and had served as in-house media counsel for Random House through 2000. The opinion states that Judge Kaplan married his spouse in 2004. The court also noted that she had been an Assistant United States Attorney in the district from 1979 to 1983, although Dfinity did not mention that fact. In addition, she received pension payments from a Newspaper Guild-New York Times pension plan and a pension plan for retirees of Random House.
Legal standard
The court cited Second Circuit precedent stating that recusal under Section 455(a) is required only when a reasonable person who knows all the facts would conclude that the judge’s impartiality could reasonably be questioned. The court also explained that the statute addresses reasonable appearances of partiality, not unsupported or unreasonable fears that a judge may rule against a party.
Ruling
Judge Kaplan concluded that a reasonable person could not reasonably question the court’s impartiality based on his spouse’s work for The New York Times more than 43 years earlier and for Random House more than 20 years earlier, in both instances before the marriage. He stated that the pension benefits did not change that conclusion and that her long retirement made Dfinity’s contention even less reasonable. The court therefore denied Dfinity’s motion to recuse, docketed as Dkt. 18.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.