A bank merger forced the Hunt judge out.

U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders removed himself from the $13.8-billion lawsuit by the Hunt brothers of Dallas against 23 big U.S. banks because one of the defendants, Los Angeles-based First Interstate, agreed last week to buy a Texas bank in which Sanders owns stock. The Hunts earlier tried unsuccessfully to get Sanders removed from the case, partly on grounds that his holdings in Allied Bancshares make him sympathetic to banks in general, but Allied itself wasn’t involved in the lawsuit. First Interstate has $54 million in loans to the Hunts’ Placid Oil, part of a $773-million loan package on which the Hunts have defaulted.