Victim says that she was sexually assaulted by Defendant, but Defendant says it's not true. Victim has some mental health records that Defendant wants to inspect in order to establish his defense. These records are generally privileged, but Victim waived this privilege with respect to at least two pages by including them as part of a request to her employer to be transferred. Plus Defendant says that disclosure is constitutionally compelled anyway (since he has a right to a defense) and, also, that the crime-fraud exception to the privilege applies because Victim went to the doctor to advance a fraudulent claim against Defendant in order to help her transfer request.
Judge reviews the documents in camera and decides to produce two pages. Judge subsequently orders other pages produced on, inter alia, crime-fraud grounds. Victim files an appeal, but the appellate court doesn't provide any relief.
Defendant is subsequently acquitted at trial.
You'd think that what's described above is all a description of a regular old federal criminal appeal. But it's not. It's instead prelude to a civil lawsuit by Victim against Judge.
The Ninth Circuit's opinion (by Judge Paez) contains 32 single-spaced pages of exhaustive -- and exhausting -- detail about the intricacies of sovereign immunity. Made even more complex by the fact that the judge here isn't an Article III judge, but is instead a military judge. All of what went down here transpired overseas, at a military base in Japan.
It's nonetheless fairly accurate to summarize the opinion fairly succinctly. You can't sue a judge. They're generally immune. They surely make mistakes sometimes. But unless there's something truly extraordinary, if they make a wrong evidentiary call, that's the subject of an appeal. Not a separate civil lawsuit like the one here.
Judge Paez says basically the same thing, albeit with 32 single-spaced pages of additional detail.
