Amul Roger Thapar

Amul Roger Thapar (born April 29, 1969) is a United States federal judge.

Early life, education, and private practice

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Thapar received a B.S. from Boston College in 1991 and a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley in 1994. He was a law clerk to S. Arthur Spiegel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio from 1994 to 1996, and for Nathaniel R. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 1996 to 1997. He was an adjunct professor in the University of Cincinnati College of Law from 1995 to 1997 and from 2002 to 2006.

He was an attorney in the corporate law firm of Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., from 1997 to 1999. He was a trial advocacy instructor in the Georgetown University Law Center from 1999 to 2000. He was an assistant U.S. Attorney of the U.S. Attorney's Office, Washington, DC from 1999 to 2000. He was general counsel to Equalfooting.com from 2000 to 2001. He returned to private practice at the Squire, Sanders & Dempsey firm in Cincinnati, Ohio from 2001 to 2002.^[1]

United States Attorney

Thapar returned to the U.S. Attorney's Office as an assistant in the Southern District of Ohio from 2002 to 2006, and was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 2006 to 2007.

While an Assistant U.S. Attorney, he was appointed to the Attorney General's Advisory Committee ("AGAC") and chaired the AGAC's Controlled Substances and Asset Forfeiture subcommittee. He also served on its Terrorism and National Security subcommittee, Violent Crime subcommittee, and Child Exploitation working group.

Thapar also led the Southern Ohio Mortgage Fraud Task Force, which successfully prosecuted approximately 40 perpetrators of mortgage fraud. And he led the successful investigation and prosecution of a conspiracy ring to provide illegal aliens with fraudulent driver's licenses.

Federal judicial service

On May 24, 2007, Thapar was nominated by President George W. Bush to a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky vacated by Joseph M. Hood. Thapar was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 13, 2007, and received his commission on January 4, 2008. Thapar sits in Covington, Kentucky outside of Cincinnati, as well as in London, Kentucky, and in Pikeville, Kentucky. While on the bench, Thapar has served as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, University of Virginia School of Law, and Northern Kentucky University. He has been an invited guest at Federalist Society programs. Thapar is America's first federal district judge of South Asian descent.

In 2013, Thapar was assigned to a case in the Eastern District of Tennessee due to the impending retirement of Judge Thomas Phillips from the Knoxville court. The case involves a high-profile break-in by peace protesters at the Y-12 National Security Complex's Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility in July 2012.^[2] The three protesters, aged 57 to 82, were convicted. On May 10, 2013, Thapar cited the definition of "federal crime of terrorism" to rule that the protesters must remain in jail until their sentencing on September 23, which has been delayed until January 2014.^[3] Thapar sentenced one of the defendants, 84-year-old nun Megan Rice, to three years in prison for breaking into the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and defacing a bunker holding bomb-grade uranium, a demonstration that exposed serious security flaws. The two other defendants were sentenced to more than five years in prison, in part because they had much longer criminal histories. The activists' attorneys asked the judge to sentence them to time they had already served, about nine months, because of their record of goodwill. Thapar said he was concerned they showed no remorse and he wanted the punishment to be a deterrent for other activists.^[4] On appeal, the Sixth Circuit reversed the most serious convictions against the protesters and, in May 2015, ordered their immediate release from custody, noting that the protesters' sentencing guidelines now recommended substantially less time in custody than they had already served.^[5]

He was named as a possible Supreme Court nominee by President-elect of the United States Donald Trump.^[6]

Noteworthy opinions

May v. Walmart Stores, Inc., 751 F. Supp. 2d 946 (E.D. Ky. 2010),^[7] is one of a series of opinions in which Judge Thapar has rigorously enforced the limits on federal court jurisdiction. Wal-Mart removed a slip-and-fall lawsuit filed in Kentucky state court to federal court. There was no evidence that the case satisfied the amount-in-controversy requirement of $75,000, so Wal-Mart requested permission to conduct "jurisdictional discovery"—discovery in federal court to establish that the amount in controversy was in fact greater than $75,000. Judge Thapar rejected the request, explaining that jurisdictional discovery is fundamentally inconsistent with the limited nature of federal jurisdiction and contrary to long-standing Supreme Court precedent requiring that facts establishing federal jurisdiction must be present in the record at the time of removal. Judge Thapar remanded the case back to state court, and advised Wal-Mart that it could try to remove the case again if and when discovery in the state court action established the required amount in controversy.

In Turner v. Astrue, 764 F. Supp. 2d 864 (E.D. Ky. 2010),^[8] Judge Thapar held that the U.S. government did not have to pay the attorney's fees of a social security disability claimant. The Commissioner had denied disability benefits and the claimant had appealed to the district court, securing a reversal and remand. But the Commissioner had not yet awarded any benefits, and the claimant accordingly had not paid his attorney any fees because under the contingency-fee agreement the claimant only had to pay if and when he actually received benefits. The Equal Access to Justice Act ("EAJA") requires the government to reimburse a litigant who prevails against the government for fees "incurred by that party in any civil action." Applying the canon that waivers of the government's sovereign immunity must be strictly construed, Judge Thapar held that a contingent fee that had not yet been paid (and which might never become due) has not been "incurred," and therefore could not be reimbursed under the EAJA.

In Freeland v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co., 632 F.3d 250 (6th Cir. 2011),^[9] Judge Thapar, sitting by designation on the Sixth Circuit, held that the federal courts did not have jurisdiction over an insurance coverage dispute because the amount in controversy was one penny short of the jurisdictional requirement. A statute limits federal court jurisdiction over diversity cases (those where no federal question is present but the parties are citizens of different states) to cases where "the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000." In this case, Judge Thapar held that the amount in controversy was $75,000.00 exactly. The face value of the insurance policy was $25,000, and the plaintiffs were suing to increase coverage to $100,000. Only the difference between the two figures was actually "in controversy," and that amount was one penny short of the jurisdictional minimum. The opinion famously included an ode to the humble penny: "The penny is easily the most neglected piece of U.S. currency. Pennies tend to sit at the bottom of change jars or vanish into the cracks between couch cushions. Vending machines and parking meters will not accept them. Many people refuse to bend down to pick up a penny off the ground, deeming the reward not worth the effort. And a member of Congress even introduced legislation that would effectively eliminate the penny by requiring merchants to round their prices to the nearest nickel. See Currency Overhaul for an Industrious Nation (COIN) Act, H.R. 5818, 109th Cong. § 3(a) (2006). In this case, however, the penny gets a rare moment in the spotlight. The amount in controversy in this declaratory judgment action is exactly one penny short of the jurisdictional minimum of the federal courts."

In United States v. Williams, 641 F. Supp. 2d 758 (6th Cir. 2011),^[10] the Sixth Circuit held that the district court had erred by conducting a sentencing hearing via video conference, rather than with the unruly defendant in person. The court reached that conclusion by applying de novo review, instead of plain-error review, even though the defendant had not objected. According to the court, the United States had waived plain-error review by failing to invoke that standard on appeal. Judge Thapar concurred, writing that the Sixth Circuit should reconsider its position that parties may waive plain-error review. He explained that the Sixth Circuit's position was inconsistent with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b)'s text and Supreme Court precedent. He also explained that plain-error review plays an important role in the judicial system: District-court judges are not like the "supercomputer Watson" and thus cannot spot every error, so they rely on parties to raise objections when errors arise. And parties have an incentive to do so if they must show on appeal that an error is plain whenever they had failed to object below.

In Sergent v. McKinstry, 572 B.R. 387 (2012),^[11] Judge Thapar addressed (among many issues) whether to withdraw from bankruptcy court the plaintiff's claims that the defendant had breached a fiduciary duty and acted with gross negligence. The plaintiff argued that the Seventh Amendment guaranteed her a jury trial on those claims, which if true would automatically justify withdrawal. To evaluate that argument, Judge Thapar first analyzed whether such claims would have been equitable or legal in the eighteenth century, because the Seventh Amendment generally guarantees a jury trial only for claims that would have been legal then. Judge Thapar concluded that the fiduciary-duty claim would have been equitable but that the gross-negligence claim would have been legal. He nonetheless held that both claims were legal for the Seventh Amendment's purposes because the remedy the plaintiff sought for both was a legal one.

References

Sources

• Amul Roger Thapar at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Vanderbilt Law Profile
• UVA Law Profile
• Northern Kentucky University Profile
• Knoxville News Sentinel article, 5/11/2013