Harris L. Hartz
How Judge Hartz decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
He is unmoved by labels and looks to what a party's own record concedes: a habeas remedy is not 'inadequate or ineffective' merely because a court ruled against the movant, when a further appeal of that ruling remained available.
“Mr. Sines's remedy under § 2255 was not inadequate or ineffective; he could have appealed the district court's dismissal of his motion.”
In excessive-force and seizure cases he traces the elements precisely to the moment of the challenged conduct, rejecting hindsight: officers who did not know a suspect would escape cannot rely on that later, unknown fact to justify continued force.
“Defendants did not know Ms. Torres would escape when they shot at her, and facts unknown to officers at the moment they use force are not relevant to the qualified-immunity analysis.”
Procedural preferences
He polices the line between pleading burdens and affirmative defenses closely: a plaintiff need not anticipate and negate a limitations defense in the complaint, and a heightened pleading standard cannot be smuggled in through Rule 9(b).
“A plaintiff need not anticipate in the complaint an affirmative defense that may be raised by the defendant; it is the defendant's burden to plead an affirmative defense.”
On allocution he insists the right be substantively real, not a formality: a sentencing court that definitively announces the sentence before hearing from the defendant, without signaling genuine reconsideration, violates Rule 32 even if the court later invites a statement.
“we prohibit ... a court [from] definitively announc[ing] the defendant's sentence before giving him an opportunity to speak, and fail[ing] to communicate to the defendant that it will genuinely reconsider the sentence in light of his remarks.”
He reads pro se pleadings with real liberality at the motion-to-dismiss stage, refusing to let a defendant's unproven factual assertion (in an answer) substitute for the complaint's own undated allegations.
“The court below improperly assumed (1) that an allegation in the answer to the complaint was true and (2) that undated incidents alleged in the complaint must have preceded the incident for which the complaint alleged a specific date.”
Cautions
He holds litigants and their counsel strictly to preservation and burden-of-proof rules: an undeveloped, citation-free argument in the trial court forfeits appellate review, no matter how sympathetic the underlying claim.
“We ordinarily do not address issues not raised in the briefs ... and we see no reason to do so here. Accordingly, we affirm the denial of Abbasid's motion for a new trial on the unchallenged ground relied on by the district court.”
In sentencing and supervised-release appeals he applies deferential standards rigorously against a defendant who withholds information: silence at the presentence stage cannot later be turned into an appellate advantage.
“the absence of evidence -- particularly a defendant's failure to provide financial information to the probation office -- can make it hard for a defendant to carry the burden of persuasion on the issue of financial ability.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.”
“Accordingly, we conclude that Mr. Springfield has failed to make “a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right,” 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c)(2), and therefore DENY his request for a COA. We also DENY his request to proceed IFP.”
“Because the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the claim... dismissal of Mr. Davis's § 2241 claim was clearly correct and we deny a COA on that claim.”
“Accordingly, we REVERSE the district court's revocation of Mr. Crisler's probation and remand with instructions to end his supervised release forthwith.”
“there is no basis to reverse the district court's denial of his motion to set aside his voluntary dismissal... We AFFIRM the order of the district court.”
“We conclude that MCC is entitled to intervene as of right, and accordingly we REVERSE the district court's decision and REMAND with instructions to grant MCC's motion to intervene.”
“We hold that the plan's limitations period is enforceable and therefore affirm the summary judgment in favor of Hartford Life and Accident Insurance Company.”
“We reverse and remand. The court below improperly assumed (1) that an allegation in the answer to the complaint was true and (2) that undated incidents alleged in the complaint must have preceded the incident for which the complaint alleged a specific date.”
“Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm the dismissal by the district court. Mr. Sines's remedy under § 2255 was not inadequate or ineffective; he could have appealed the district court's dismissal of his motion.”
“Those two holdings are not at issue on appeal. What Plaintiffs are challenging is the district court's failure to give them the relief to which they claim entitlement based on those holdings... The district court disagreed with those contentions, and so do we.”
“The dispositive legal issue in this appeal has been resolved by this court's opinion in United States v. Dawes... We REVERSE the judgment of the bankruptcy court and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with that opinion.”
Put Judge Hartz's record to work
Ezel drafts and answers grounded in this exact profile: how Judge Hartz actually rules, not a generic AI guess.
Opens in Ezel Pro. Every answer is grounded in Judge Hartz's own signed orders and cites them.