Financial Conflict Forces Judge From Amazon Case

A U.S. district court judge has stepped down from a long-running Amazon civil case following a news article that revealed his family owned stock in the retail giant.

As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (Jan. 12), Judge Liam O’Grady had ruled in Amazon’s favor throughout his almost two-year tenure on the case, which centers on the company’s allegation that two ex-employees took payments from a real estate developer and violated Amazon’s conflict-of-interest policies.

Last month, O’Grady apparently notified the parties in the case of a possible conflict of his own: that his wife owned around $22,000 in Amazon stock. When the Journal questioned the judge about the stock, his wife sold her shares.

Read more: Amazon Investigating Bribery Claims in India

The judge denied knowing his wife owned stock in Amazon, and said he was reluctant to step down, as his wife no longer held the stock and the defendants hadn’t shown any evidence of bias in the company’s favor.

“However, perception of the fair administration of justice—both by the public and by the parties in the case—is of the highest importance to the Court,” O’Grady wrote.

O’Grady’s departure will likely cause a delay in the case, as a new judge will have to get a handle on a case that includes close to 500 docket entries and more than 4,000 pages of filings.

Filed in April 2020, the case involves more than $400 million in development in northern Virginia, where Amazon has set up massive data farms that power its cloud-computing operation, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

See also: FTC Moves Forward With Amazon Web Services Investigation

AWS is itself the target of a federal investigation, as PYMNTS reported last month. The Federal Trade Commission is looking at the company over competition issues, part of a probe that began under the Trump administration and that also looked at Facebook, Google and Apple.

In the Virginia lawsuit, Amazon accuses two former employees of steering contracts to a developer called Northstar Commercial Partners, in exchange for millions in kickbacks. The defendants deny Amazon’s allegations.

Last year found Amazon involved in a similar case in India, where the company was investigating whether a member of its legal team used company money to bribe public officials.