Profile of Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain

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Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Appointed by: President Reagan, 1986

Born: March 28, 1937 in New York, New York

Education: BA, St. John's 1957; JD, Harvard 1963; LLM, University of Virginia 1992

Law Practice: Private practice (1963-69, 1975-86); Oregon Deputy Attorney General (1969-71); Oregon Public Utility Commissioner (1971-73)

Judicial Appointments: Ninth Circuit (1986-present)

Opinions Reported in Appellate Decisions Noted:

• Ninth Circuit discusses speech rights of public employees in two cases
• Two Ninth Circuit decisions explain preclusive effect of shareholder derivative suit settlement
• Ninth Circuit rules anti-affirmative action proposition constitutional
• Ninth Circuit okays secret taping of interview
• Ninth Circuit deals blow to statutes barring marital status discrimination
• Ninth Circuit affirms dismissal of ADA suit by learning disabled student
• “MovieBuff” trademark claim trumps “moviebuff.com” domain registration
• “Rio” portable music player is not a digital audio recording device
• Three Stooges film clip is not an enforceable trademark
• Use of screen shots in comparative advertising constitutes fair use
• College soccer player does not have antitrust claim against the Pac-10
• Cell assignments based on race are permissible
• No copyright claim against television program that explained magic tricks
• Union Contract May Require Employer To Pay For Full-Time Union Representative

Additional Sources of Information:

Comments from Visitors to the Appellate Counsellor Home Page:

Patrick Sullivan (5/17/02)

You can read O'Scannlain's ideas about activist interpretations in an online article he wrote for Open Spaces Magazine, "On Judicial Activism," at http://open-spaces.com/article-v3n1-oscannlain.php 

Ronald Williams (11/16/97)

This is a for your information, regarding the decisional stance taken by this appeals judge regarding affirmative action programs:

I, as an Afro-American, sought the federal courts' intervention in the matter of my federal complaint declaring/alleging a discriminatory employment termination. The case was Williams vs. City of Los Angeles, CV-90-1252. However, instead of the federal courts allowing me to try these matters before a jury of my peers, apparently federal judges who have a bias in favor of such entities as municipalities, summarily dismissed all of the 3 causes of action, constituting my federal complaint. See Circuit Court (unpublished) opinion, CA-94-56250, decided by Circuit Judges Beezer, Brunetti and Noonan, on March 25, 1996. To make a long story short, these federal judges' denied my right to respond to a discriminatory employment termination, based, entirely on a (perjured) declaratory filed/interposed by one of the person, co- defendants (C. Castruita). The perjury was the declared statement of Castruita, purporting to summarized the findings of the State appeals court under Williams v. City of LA, 229 Cal.App.3d 1627. The "Castruita" declaration represented, falsely, that the State appeals court had held I arranged to be retired from my employment with the City, after the City terminated me from my employment. When, in fact, the State appeals court had merely held that I applied for a pension, after my termination.

What is even more perplexing, and what makes a case that we must continue with affirmative action law, is that all the Circuit judges needed to have done, to ascertain that the Castruita Declaration was perjury, was to themselves read the content of the May 10, 1991 State appeals decision. Instead, by their decision (under CA-94-56250) the named Circuit Judges simply scrapped the contents of the State Appeals decision, in favor of how it was represented by the Castruita declaration. This may be the first time that federal courts dismissed federal causes of action, based entirely on a declaration of one of the defendants, that denied liability.

As long as the system includes federal judges who conduct themselves as described above, there will continue to be a need for affirmative action, anti-discrimination programs.

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