Welch's Significant Cases- How Does She Do It?

The comment originates with Wayne Turner, whose firm Hoover, Hull, Turner, LLP regularly finds itself in Judge Heather Welch's court. In a December 2017 review of the then pilot project for Commercial Courts, Turner offered the following suggestion:

Help the higher volume Commercial Courts to clear their dockets of matters from non-Commercial Court cases; I don't know how Judge Welch keeps up, but she does it somehow.

That's not even considering her numerous ongoing obligations and contributions to the broader legal profession detailed in this post Welch's Amazing Professional Contributions.

Let's see if maybe we can solve Mr. Turner's mystery for him.

First, some explanation to Turner's comment:

• When Turner says "higher volume Commercial Courts" in December 2017, he probably meant just Welch's court (singular).
• His experience at the time was with one Commercial Court. In the 2 years of the pilot, Turner filed 8 Commercial Court cases, all in Marion County, which defaults to Judge Welch. Addressed in this post, but in more detail in one on Simon Property Group in the next few days.
• All other lawyers from Turner's firm combined to file about the same amount as Turner. One case was filed in Vanderburgh, the others in Marion County that automatically goes to Welch.
• When Turner suggests clearing non-Commercial Court cases from Welch's docket, he means the large load of traditional civil cases she has randomly assigned to her.

In addition to commercial court cases, Judge Welch is one of the busiest state trial judges in Indiana. Exactly how and why is for another post. On top of that, she has an extraordinary number of professional positions. If you just want clues to Turner's question, scroll to the bottom.

So here's a "few" significant cases:

As a disclaimer, if any of the following information is inaccurate in any way, please contact me with corrections. I plan to regularly update as new cases show up. There may be inaccuracies because keeping up with Judge Welch accurately would be a full-time job. CC denotes filed as a Commercial Court case.

Elections / Politics

• James Holden v. State of Indiana, Office of the Treasurer, Board for Depositories, Kelly Mitchell
• 49D01-1503-CT-007090
• Wrongful termination suit, filed March 2015. 
• Timeline
• January 2007 - Holden was hired as Chief Deputy and General Counsel in the treasurer's office
• June 2014 - Holden entered a 3 year employment contract to represent the Board for Depositories and the Indiana Education Savings Authority.
• August 31, 2014 - Richard Murdock resigns as Indiana Treasurer. Huge appointed.
• November 17, 2014 - Huge resigns as Indiana Treasurer. Mitchell, already elected to take office on January 1, 2015, was appointed.
• November 17, 2014 - Holden, a member of the Army National Guard, gets notice he will be called to active duty, orders to follow. He notifies Deputy Treasurer Kimberly Logan the same day.
• November 18, 2014 - Mitchell terminates Holden, even with him notifying her of law regarding termination of guard called to active duty.
• August 2, 2017 - Parties settled. Holden paid $92,500. Mitchell agreed to remove the "not eligible for re-hire" code from Holden's name in the state Personnel Dept files.
• February 9, 2018 - Indiana State Unemployment Review Board ruled that Holden had been terminated "without just cause."
• The Indiana Treasurer oversees more than $8 billion in state assets
• Sole trustee of the Indiana State Police Pension Trust
• Chair of the Indiana Bond Bank
• Board of Depositories
• Indiana Education Savings Authority
• State of Indiana ex rel. James Holden v. Ice Miller, Kelly Mitchell / 6 other officials / 9 banks
• 49D14-2007-PL-022005 (Not Judge Welch, but initiated with discovery in the above case)
• Whistleblower Lawsuit
• Filed July 2020, under seal
• July 2021 court approved unsealing Complaint 
• Not available on mycase.in.gov
• Not sure how IBJ / IN Lawyer got ahold of filings when not online. They received the filing in digital form. Maybe forwarded by a party interested in making public for political reasons? Unless provided by appearing attorney, someone might want to subpoena IBJ emails, especially as posted complaint still marked as sealed.
• Claims of millions in kickbacks between parties
• All deserves its own post, especially related to timing and what else is / was going on.
• Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana v. Office of the Governor
• 49D01-1706-PL-025778
• CAC FOIA lawsuit to Holcomb admin to get Trump / Pence emails related to Carrier plant moving to Mexico WaPo article
• Lead plaintiff is Citizens Action Coalition 
• Directed by Kerwin Olson, CAC advocates for energy policy, utility reform, health care, pollution prevention, and family farms. Not sure how this lawsuit fits into their mission. 
• More to their mission, CAC exposed Duke Energy's ongoing regulator bribery and corruption, leading to numerous resignations including Jim Turner of Duke. 
• But then CAC supported Holcomb's rural broadband initiative in 2019 bills HB1395, SB526, and SB617 involving that same Jim Turner now of IFN (represents companies that install and manage fiber).
• I have been impressed by Olson and CAC in the past, so I am not sure what's happening here. I emailed Olson about Turner and CAC support of the bills. He never responded.
• Oh and BTW, since it was such a BIG DEAL, now that CAC has the emails, what did we find out? Nothing really.
• National Election Defense Coalition v. Connie Lawson, Secretary of State
• 49D01-1906-PL-024866
• NEDC filed lawsuit in June 2019 against Lawson under IAPRA (public access) "for unlawfully denying access to public records regarding the reliability and security of voting machines."
• Welch, a registered Democrat, awarded attorney fees to NEDC against Republican Lawson.
• Jarred Eib v. Indiana Election Commission, Bryce Bennett, Jr., S Long, et al
• Welch ruled against Republican candidate b/c voted on Democratic ticket in primaries 
• 49D01-1403-MI-007075
• 49S00-1404-OR-00195
• Represented by Paul Ogden
• Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Evanston Ins Company
• 49D01-2010-PL-036232 CC
• According to Reuters, PILF work was central to Trump claims of voter fraud 
• PILF files election integrity lawsuits. Very few attorneys are Indiana residents.
• PILF had E&O insurance through Evanston an Illinois company.
• One PILF attorney was sued by individuals incorrectly named publicly as non-citizens who had voted, even though they were actually citizens
• PILF is suing Evanston to cover legal fees for defending those attorneys

Government 

• Cities of Fishers, Indy, Evansville, Valpo v. Netflix, Disney DTC, Hulu, DirectTV, Dish Network
• 49D01-2008-PL-026436 CC
• Ars Technica report
• The streaming services transferred the case to federal court that then kicked it back.
• Best I can grasp, the cities are suing for the streaming services to pay some utility access fee to the cities for providing "video service" and be regulated by the IURC. 
• The Video Service Franchises Act (VSF Act) in IC 8-1-34-1 passed in 2006 requires the fee by any franchise that transmits "through facilities located at least in part in a public right-of-way." but "does not include a system that transmits video... without using any public right-of-way."
• So if Comcast is paying the franchise fee and a person has Comcast internet and uses that to watch Netflix, should Netflix also pay a fee? Or should Netflix share Comcast's fee? Is data encoded video actually video or just data? If data encoded video is video, what about Zoom and Facetime if using wifi? Should they also pay a franchise fee? 
• If this were an actual fact based lawsuit on the merits, it could be very interesting. But history by these parties in this court, suggests less pure motives. 
• Hull represents the cities with Fishers as lead, where Hull has a home and horse stables on 10.8 acres. More accurately the property is surrounded by Fishers, but Hull's home does not appear to be annexed.
• As a reminder, Camie Hull (Andy's wife) was an IURC commissioner.
• Appointment of special prosecutor in Dreasjon Reed shooting. 
• 49G12-2005-MC-015575
• By nature of her then position as Chief Judge of Marion County Courts.
• Tammy Raab v. Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles
• 49D01-1303-PL-008769
• Class action for the BMV overcharging residents
• Lead attorney now suing numerous banks / credit unions on overdraft fees, often in Welch's court
• IBM v. State of Indiana
• Actions at issue started in 2007.
• First lawsuits were filed in May 2010.
• Most recent ruling by the Ind. Supreme Court was July 2019 (outdated).
• 19S-PL-00019, 49S00-1605-OR-00294, 49A02-1303-PL-00224, 49A02-1709-PL-02006, 49D01-1005-PL-021451, 49S02-1408-PL-00513, 49A02-1301-PL-00049, 49A02-1208-PL-00645, 49A05-1209-PL-00462, 49A02-1202-PL-00135, 49A02-1211-PL-00875, 49A02-1112-PL-01151, 49S00-1201-PL-00015, 49D14-1111-PL-043513, 49D10-1005-PL-021452, 49D01-1005-PL-021451, 49D03-1005-PL-021452
• Yep, some trial courts were consolidated, so let's just count the bigger stuff. 8 appeals. 3 times to the Indiana Supreme Court. It's not worth my time to count how many legal filings and hearings. Attorney billings must easily be in the millions. Probably not far from whatever will finally be exchanged. But hey, they put distance between Daniels administration and implication of a quid pro quo, right?
• Here's links to highlights of events that started in 2007.
• Early ruling by the first trial Judge Dreyer, who got kicked off for insubordination (my assumption).
• Blog posts from now deceased Gary Welsh highlighting behind the scenes details of what actually happened.
• And don't forget the sad consequence of Sharon Land (below) related to all this.
• Indiana was represented by Barnes and Thornburg, that also lobbies for ACS, the subcontractor led by Daniels close contacts and major donors, who was still retained after IBM was terminated for a renewed and larger contract.
• Andy Hull of Hoover, Hull, Turner represented IBM
• Sharon Land v. International Business Machines Corp, State of Indiana, Indiana FSSA
• 49D01-1409-CT-031156
• I already addressed what appears to be an extreme injustice here.
• Mary Price v. Indiana Department of Child Services; DCS Director
• 49D01-1507-PL-23062 / 49A05-1602-PL-380 / 49S05-1705-PL-285
• Price, represented by the ACLU, is a DCS caseworker
• Sued Indiana over well-documented unreasonable case loads that regularly exceeded caps set in law IC 31-25-2-5, with obviously harmful consequences to children. 
• Welch ruled that she doesn't have the right to sue.
• Indianapolis et. al. v Kahlo and Elder
• 49D12-0807-PL-32808, Filed Jan 2009, 
• 49A05-0912-CV-00722, Filed Dec 2009, Aug 2011 trans. denied
• Ruled for Pan Am Plaza developers. Developers are amazingly successful in Indy courts.
• Paul Ogden represented defendants 
• Ogden has an active blog addressing numerous political issues, primarily on Indiana and Indy. Many officials and offices that he digs into do not appreciate his efforts to expose corruption.
• The attorney Disciplinary Commission filed a complaint against him in March 2013, which resulted in a 30 day suspension with automatic reinstatement. Thankfully he left law practice so his voice is not limited, and he continues to actively blog.

Sports

• University of Notre Dame v. HCC Specialty Underwriters dba Tokio Marine HCC
• 49D01-2104-PL-013118 CC
• This is a great case
• Notre Dame is suing to recover on an event cancellation policy for football
• There's no force majeure (act of God) clause. 
• ND paid $72,790 for an endorsement to include coverage for acts of terrorism
• Policy excludes "malicious use of of pathogenic or poisonous nuclear, biological or chemical materials regardless of any other cause or event contributing concurrently"
• So if HCC can prove that China maliciously released a biologic pathogen, they won't have to pay damages. HCC seeking that evidence from China would certainly cause this case to get national attention.
• Not sure what ND losses were, but the policy covers up to $60.6mm annually
• Removed to federal court on 5/21/21
• Klipsch Business Development Strategies v. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing LLC
• 49D01-2011-PL-039171 CC
• NCAA v. Westwood One / Westwood One v. NCAA
• 49D01-2009-PL-033961 CC / 49D01-2009-CT-033968 CC
• Related to broadcast rights licensing agreement when NCAA basketball was cancelled from Covid. It's millions of dollars.
• Captain Jack Racing Stable LLC v. Indiana Horse Racing Commission and staff
• 49D01-1506-MI-019713
• Illegal injection prior to a race
• USA Gymnastics v. Ace American DBA CIGNA
• 49D01-1804-PL013423 CC
• Trying to get insurance claims from Larry Nassar actions and lawsuits
• Various parties representing former athletes with CTE v. NCAA 
• Parties
• Ann Marsh for Estate of James Marsh 49D01-2010-CT-035556
• Jennifer Finnerty for Estate of Cullen Finnerty 49D01-1808-CT-033896
• Carol Anderson for Estate of Neal Anderson 49D01-1901-CT-002954
• Maura Solonoski for Andrew Solonoski Jr. 49D01-1905-CT-021770
• Pamela Crenshaw for Estate of James Crenshaw 49D01-2006-CT-018280
• Tial Gilbert for Estate of Zach Gilbert 49D01-2003-CT-012576
• Carlos Snow 49D01-2002-CT-007020
• Obviously damages could be serious to millions of former NCAA athletes if these parties could get Welch to rule that the NCAA had reason to know about the risk of concussions and causing CTE and withheld that information and therefore responsibility for later health issues. But that's not going to happen.*
• While plaintiffs may not be Indiana residents, the NCAA is based in Indy. This is important to know for this next month, because if anything goes wrong with March Madness, having your friendly judge in a state that just passed a law protecting organizations against liability for a covid infection from a hosted event, well this tells you a lot. Indy wants to keep the NCAA happy. College sports are very profitable to the NCAA and by extension Indianapolis.
• Plaintiffs are represented by Robert Dassow and Tyler Zipes of Hovde Dassow & Deets

Commercial 

• Cities of Fishers, Indy, Evansville, Valpo v. Netflix, Disney DTC, Hulu, DirectTV, Dish
• Cities represented by Andrew Hull
• Cities arguing that the streaming services are offering "video service" and are required to apply for a franchise from the IURC (Hull's wife is a former IURC Commissioner), and pay franchise fees to cities and other units of government under the VSF Act (IC 8-1-34-1). Guessing that was originally related to cable television services, but haven't confirmed. If so, this is a nice effort to garner gratitude from cable companies dying a slow fiber/wireless death.
• Streaming services requested transfer to federal court. I believe it might have now been sent back. 
• Indiana Repertory Theater v. Cincinnati Insurance
• Ford v. Mecum Auctions, Inc., Michael J. Flynn, Jr., Hollywood Wheels, LLC et al 
• 49D01-1805-PL-019206
• Ford sued over Mecum selling a 2017 Ford GT at auction for $1.8 mm in violation of Ford's contract with original buyers to not sell within the first 2 years of ownership.
• This is not the same car originally owned by John Cena, who sold it the month following delivery. Ford sued Cena and won. Donated the proceeds to charity and continues to follow this car around with attorneys. But Mecum did actually try to auction that car too!
• American College of Education, Inc. v. Triano Williams
• 49D01-1607-PL-025367
• Employer sued employee after firing him claiming that he changed passwords and would not release their data. 
• Former employee claims that he was subject to racial discrimination, and that they lost the new password to their data, not him. 
• Williams lives in a Chicago suburb (near his daughter), but the school filed suit in Welch's Indy court (shouldn't be allowed, but common for Welch to keep venue even if questionable). 
• Williams counter filed in federal court (running up his legal bills) asking them to take over. 
• Welch issued default ruling against him owing $248,350 in damages, citing his failure to appear in court. The federal court made it right. ACE attempted to look better by saying that they wouldn't seek to claim judgment.
• Here's Indy Star's take "About 12 hours after an IndyStar reporter contacted Google representatives on Friday, the college's attorney, Scott Preston, said the internet company unlocked the account and returned control of the emails and data to the school."
• But the other side of the story, from the federal court, not a locally slanted media, is entirely different.
• Herbert and Bui Simon v. Joseph A. Davis
• Filed May 2010- 49D12-1005-CT-020141
• Appealed January 2011- 49A04-1101-CT-00005
• Appealed to Supreme Court August 2012- 49S04-1208-CT-00498
• Yeah, that Simon of Simon Properties Group, Inc., the largest real estate company in the world. Oh and Indiana Pacers owner.
• Also connected to shell companies (here, here) from offshore leaks.
• Simon is closely connected to the DeBartolo family (listed in above leaks).
• DeBartolo properties merged with Simon in 1996 just before heir DeBartolo Jr. was convicted of gambling fraud in 1998. 
• DeBartolo family purchased the 49ers in 1977 for $13 million.
• Trump pardoned DeBartolo Jr. who still owns a major stake in Simon and other property development and management entities. Forbes estimates his net worth at $2.6 billion.
• In this case the Simons filed suit in Indiana for defamation against a California attorney. The California attorney moved to dismiss on lack of personal jurisdiction (meaning Indiana courts don't have jurisdiction over him, a California resident). Welch denied the dismissal. Appeal court reversed. 
• The California attorney simply answered questions by phone from a WTHR reporter regarding his representation of former California house managers that Simons terminated because they were unwilling to violate immigration laws with an undocumented worker. The Simon family is influential in Indy and appears to freely use the courts to bully others.
• David Herzog of Hoover, Hull, Turner represented the Simons.
• Simon Property Group LP v. Starbucks Corp dba Teavana
• 49D01-1708-PL-032170 CC filed 8/21/17
• Welch quoted by NY Post after her ruling saying, "no precedent for ruling this way."
• "No court has ever entered preliminary or permanent injunctive to specifically enforce a continuous operations covenant against a non-anchor tenant extending nationwide" until this Indy trial judge did. So is that groundbreaking, or simply going against precedent for Simon, her preferred litigant? 
• More on SPG and Welch in this coming post:

Judge Shopping > Forum Shopping Simon Property Group

• Whitesell Precision Components, Inc. v. Autoform Tool & Manufacturing LLC, Hitachi
• 49D01-1610-PL-036015 CC / 18A-PL-00848 / 18A-PL-02462 
• Filed 10/2016
• Hundreds (maybe thousands of filings)
• Numerous hearings
• Up and down the entire court system. This same law firm found IBM v. Indiana to be quite profitable, and seem to have leveled up on this one. 
• Centers around a supplier agreement for a fuel injector nozzle used in Cadillacs.
• Committee of HH Gregg v. Robert J Riesbeck, et al
• 49D01-1807-MI-028168 CC
• Synchrony Bank and others claim paid out $50 million for purchases HHGregg failed to deliver.
• The Finish Line Inc v Ryan Law LLP, Ryan LLC, Kevin Prins, Jon Sweet
• 49D01-1606-PL-021894 
• Finish Line suing Ryan Law over missing the deadline for claims against losses from the Deepwater Horizon / BP oil spill in 2010.
• Because you know how fishing / boating companies in the gulf lost money, just like mall retail shoe stores. 
• Tangiers Int'l LTD v. Damir Junicic
• 49D01-2010-PL-034771 CC
• Tangiers is a Maltese company
• Junicic is a California licensed attorney
• Tangiers contracted Junicic to investigate a claim of injury by a civilian employee on a US military base in Afghanistan for a third-party insurance company that would be liable to pay for the injury. 
• Junicic ended his contract with Tangiers and was already representing overseas workers in employment injuries.
• Tangiers is claiming that Junicic worked on case of client he is now representing. That case is of course not in Indiana.
• Settled October 2020.

Consumer / Personal 

• State of Indiana v. Purdue Pharma LP, et. al.
• 49D01-1811-PL-045447
• Indiana claims that Purdue minimized or denied the risk of opioid addiction.
• Indiana v. Equifax over the Equifax consumer breach
• 49D01-1905-PL-018398
• IndyStar article
• Equifax was represented by attorney Larry Mackey of Barnes & Thornburg LLP
• Mackey slept with a client's spouse and then married her around the time of advising the client, Keenan Hauke, to take a plea that included jail time. Yet in public statement, Mackey suggested that another person, Robert Beasley, was primarily responsible for the crime. 
• Mackey was lead prosecutor for the Oklahoma City bombing trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
• Hamilton v. Steak and Shake
• 49D01-1308-CT-30340
• 49A02-1704-CT-776
• Hamilton was shot in the face at a Steak and Shake by someone from a group that had been harassing her for over 30 minutes. Employees did nothing. 
• Welch ruled that Steak and Shake didn't owe Hamilton any duty, she was reversed on appeal.

Wow! Makes me wonder if any of the other 35 courts get any good civil cases or just deal with traffic violations all day, right?

So how does she do it?

• Find others to do the heavy lifting
• There are of course, certain parties happy to do the hard work, like writing rulings. 
• I can't find many instances where Welch actually appears to have written her own rulings given the metadata. Usually it is an attorney writes the final draft. In my case without giving me a chance to offer my own proposed version. 
• Avoid laborious work, like a trial
• She tries to avoid trials, and is getting pretty good at it. 
• Welch disposes of most cases by bench disposition, dismissal, or default. Since the attorney writes the order...  
• She actually issued in a ruling on my case while presenting at a conference along with the other attorney. 2nd chair actually wrote the order. He resigned the day my case was final. Recently took job at AG office.

2019- 1,755 disposed cases- 1 jury trial / 1 bench trial

2018- 2,159 disposed cases- 1 jury trial / 11 bench trials

2017- 2,586 disposed cases- 4 jury trial / 13 bench trials

2016- 2,000 disposed cases- 7 jury trial / 6 bench trials

2015- 1,868 disposed cases- 8 jury trial / 18 bench trials

So no need to solve Turner's "mystery" given that he already knows how. He knows because in the numerous cases his firm has in front of Welch, his firm frequently does the work for her. In some cases it appears that statements could not have originated with Welch as they were never shared in court. In one lengthy ruling in my case, the PDF was prepared by Turner's firm making conclusions of law and fact. The draft was never shared with me prior to Welch awarding it. Some scholars might suggest this clearly violates ex parte rules, in courts that have time to care about such antiquated and useless things as rules. 

Scholars meaning Indiana Code of Judicial Conduct Rule 2.9. But it's not like every judge can be constantly aware of those rules, maybe unless serving as Chair of the Indiana Courts Ethics & Professionalism Committee for the past few years, as Judge Welch has. 

*I get to make this assertion that Welch won't rule a certain way even if the facts and conclusions of law are indisputable. If I was a lawyer, I would certainly face the disciplinary commission, and would likely be disbarred for impugning the integrity of the court and a judge. I certainly hope Welch proves me wrong on the NCAA CTE cases, and I can revise this and issue a public apology. But there's far too much money riding on this, and too many very powerful influences will be making the decision far above her head. And she will be expected to play along if she wants to keep her position. And it appears that she has been willing to make those compromises in the past.