Robert J. Luck
How Judge Luck rules, drawn from 22 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
How Judge Luck decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
For removal jurisdiction, he permits common-sense inferences from the pleaded facts but rejects assumptions about the amount in controversy that lack record support.
“The district court can make common-sense inferences about the jurisdictional amount from the face of the complaint, but it cannot speculate or hypothesize about facts that are not in the record.”
For the Federal Arbitration Act’s transportation-worker exemption, he focuses on what the worker class actually does, not merely the interstate path previously traveled by the goods it carries.
“Section one is directed at what the class of workers is engaged in, and not what it is carrying.”
He treats a prior panel holding as binding when one independently sufficient rationale survives a later Supreme Court decision.
“And it takes only one valid basis or rationale for a prior holding to make it binding precedent.”
Procedural preferences
On a prosecutor’s Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss, he begins with a presumption of governmental good faith and describes the district court’s discretion as limited.
“The district court must presume that the government moved to dismiss the information in good faith.”
He treats Title VII’s employee-headcount damages cap as waivable when the defendant omits it from the answer, pretrial issues, and proposed jury instructions.
“Because the dealership waived the benefit of Title VII’s $50,000 damages cap, it was error for the district court to apply that cap to reduce Khatabi’s sex-discrimination damages to $181,028.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED for further proceedings.”
“We affirm the district court’s summary judgment for the town in all respects. AFFIRMED.”
“REVERSED AND REMANDED IN PART WITH INSTRUCTIONS and DISMISSED IN PART.”
“AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED.”
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