If a federal judge has to land on Texas Lawyer ‘s annual Slowpoke Report, it might as well be for an interesting reason. That’s what happened in 2011 to U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville, who had an unusually high 173 civil cases pending for more than three years on his docket — more than any other federal judge in the state.
Pursuant to the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990, each year U.S. district judges must disclose the number of civil cases they have pending for more than three years and the number of civil motions they have pending for more than six months. Most judges like to keep those numbers below 10 in both categories.
