Randall Rader's sudden resignation from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last June is playing a cameo role in a petition now before the U.S. Supreme Court on the duty of mediators to disclose conflicts of interest.

The petitioner in the case claims that a court-appointed mediator in a patent dispute failed to disclose “a close, enduring, and personal relationship” he had with a partner at the Fish & Richardson law firm, which represented one side in the mediation. That failure should have resulted in the reversal of a later judgment in the case, the petitioner claims.

Rader was on a panel of Federal Circuit judges that ruled in the case, CEATS, Inc. v. Continental Airlines, last June, just days before he resigned from the court after his own communications with a lawyer who argued before his court were called into question.