Matthew James Hollis v. Joshua Thomas Patton, et al.

Hollis paid the filing fee and brought civil rights and RICO claims in the Central District of California. Over Hollis’s docketed refusal of consent, a magistrate judge issued an order to show cause under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), then transferred the action under a different statute — 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a) — without addressing 18 U.S.C. § 1965, the RICO venue provision within the statutory range the order to show cause itself cited. The order was entered as final and the case terminated on the docket. No findings and recommendations issued. The file reached the transferee district three business days later, inside the fourteen-day objection period; the district judge overruled the timely objections seven days after his court’s jurisdiction had ended. The court of appeals denied mandamus in a single paragraph that located magistrate authority in 28 U.S.C. § 626 — a compensation statute — quoted the five-factor Bauman standard, applied no factor, and barred further filings in the same order. Eight months into the action, no Article III judge has adjudicated any claim. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the court of appeals satisfied its supervisory mandamus obligation when it denied relief by (a) citing 28 U.S.C. § 626 — the Federal Judicial Center Director’s compensation statute — instead of 28 U.S.C. § 636, the magistrate judge authority statute; (b) quoting the governing fivefactor standard of Bauman v. U.S. District Court as restated in In re Mersho and applying no factor of it; and (c) foreclosing further filings before any petition for rehearing could be filed.

2. Whether Article Ill’s requirement of de novo district judge review of a magistrate judge’s dispositive ruling is satisfied when (a) the magistrate judge entered a case-transfer order without the consent 28 U.S.C. § 636(c) requires for any dispositive act; (b) the case file was physically transmitted to the transferee district three business days after the order, inside the fourteen-day objection period of Rule 72; and (c) the transferor district judge ruled on the objections only after the case had been docketed in the transferee district, rendering his review a post-divestiture act.

3. Whether a district court may enter a transfer order under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a) — a statute conditioned on venue being “wrong” — without addressing 18 U.S.C. § 1965, the RICO venue provision falling within the statutory range the court’s own order to show cause explicitly cited, when § 1965 independently established venue in the transferor district and the order to show cause had noticed transfer under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), a different statute with a different standard.