Harris L. Hartz
How Judge Hartz rules, drawn from 54 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
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.”
A regulation that requires or forbids the plaintiff’s own conduct almost invariably supplies injury in fact, including when a student was disciplined for violating an expired school rule.
“When a government regulation ‘require[s] or forbid[s] some action by the plaintiff,’ she ‘almost invariably’ states an injury in fact.”
A state-court plaintiff whose action is removed by defendants does not have to pay a federal filing fee or satisfy the federal in-forma-pauperis statute’s three-strikes rule.
“State-court plaintiffs whose cases are removed to federal court have no obligation to pay a filing fee; nothing in the federal IFP statute is to the contrary.”
State-law claims targeting wholesale interstate natural-gas sales during Winter Storm Uri were displaced by the field reserved to exclusive federal regulation.
“We AFFIRM the district court. Plaintiffs’ claims are field-preempted.”
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.”
Equitable estoppel cannot expand an arbitration clause beyond the disputes and parties its contractual language covers, even when nonsignatories invoke state-law enforcement theories.
“equitable estoppel cannot be invoked to expand the scope of the arbitration clause in the PSAs.”
An agency could not reject an electronic notice of appeal for a separate proof-of-service signature when the governing form made that signature inapplicable to electronic service.
“We conclude that Petitioners are correct on the signature-requirement issue because the BIA’s holding was wrong as a matter of law.”
Treats state action as a merits element, not a federal-question jurisdictional prerequisite, when a civil-rights complaint invokes the general federal-question statute.
“Thus, when a § 1983 complaint asserts jurisdiction under § 1331, with or without § 1343(a)(3), the case ‘arises under’ federal law and proof of deprivation ‘under color of’ state law is not necessary for subject matter jurisdiction.”
Recognizes a trial court's pretrial authority to reconsider and set aside its own interlocutory suppression ruling before final judgment.
“we can limit our holding to recognizing the district court’s authority during pretrial proceedings to reconsider and set aside a prior ruling suppressing evidence.”
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.”
Treats questions about a widely publicized accusation as a reason to investigate rather than a basis for ignoring inquiry notice.
“But such reliability questions are not an excuse for ignoring the report, they are a call to action.”
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.”
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