Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said he will not participate in a patent infringement case because he owns stock in the parent company of one of the parties.
Roberts was a vocal participant in oral arguments for Life Technologies Corp. v. Promega Corp. in December before realizing that he owned stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, which owns Life Technologies.
Roberts owns 1,212 shares of Thermo Fisher Scientific, and the “ordinary conflict check conducted in the chief justice’s chambers inadvertently failed to find this potential conflict,” according to a letter from the court clerk on Wednesday to the attorneys in the case. Roberts’ stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific is reportedly valued at about $175,000.
Federal law dictates that the justices must disqualify themselves in cases where they, a spouse or close relative has a financial interest related to the case.
Roberts’ recusal isn’t the first time that a justice discovered a conflict of interest involving stock ownership after hearing oral arguments, as SCOTUSblog noted. Justice Stephen Breyer sat for oral arguments last year in a case involving a company that his wife, Joanna, owned stock in. After an inquiry from a Bloomberg reporter about her stock holdings, she sold the stock, allowing her husband to continue hearing the case.
