Charles Joseph Williams
How Judge Williams decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
In a Rule 12(b)(6) defamation ruling Williams parses the complaint statement-by-statement rather than wholesale: he dismissed every alleged defamatory statement except a single one he found actionable (the claim plaintiffs knowingly employed undocumented workers), letting the case proceed on that narrow basis. Counsel pleading defamation before him should expect each challenged statement to be tested individually, and a surviving claim may be a single sentence, not the whole article.
“This case will proceed forward based only on a claim that defendants defamed plaintiffs by falsely alleging that they knowingly employed undocumented workers.”
Williams polices the pleading itself: in Nunes he invoked Rule 12(f) on his own to strike 'immaterial, impertinent, and scandalous' personal allegations against the defendant journalist and ordered a re-pleading, warning that further such allegations require leave of court and a showing of good-faith factual basis and relevance. A caution to plaintiffs: irrelevant or inflammatory matter in a complaint can draw a strike order and a re-pleading requirement.
“Thus, the Court will, as part of this order, require plaintiffs to file a second amended complaint. That amended complaint should be stripped of all such spurious allegations ...”
Motion outcomes
Counted from classified signed orders only. Percentages are shown only where the sample is large enough to be meaningful; smaller samples are reported as raw counts.
| Motions to dismiss N = 3 |
Granted: 1Granted in part: 2 | counts only |
A "1 of 1" is one ruling, not a tendency. Treat small samples as illustrative, not predictive.
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“For these reasons, defendants' motion to dismiss (Doc. 33) is granted in part and denied in part. The Court grants the motion to the extent it seeks dismissal of all claims of defamation except for the one statement identified above in Section III(A)(11).”
“For the following reasons, the Court grants-in-part and denies-in-part defendants' motion.”
“For the reasons stated, the Court grants defendants' motion to dismiss. (Doc. 5). Plaintiff's Petition for Writ of Mandamus, (Doc. 1), is dismissed.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 1204 days (N = 1).
Median motion-to-ruling time: 81 days (N = 1).
Confirmed Williams-assigned civil dockets seen this session (not exhaustive): Nunes v. Lizza 5:20-cv-04003 and the companion 5:19-cv-04064 (libel/slander); Hotchkiss 1:23-cv-00033 and Roberts v. Thompson 6:24-cv-02024 (civil rights); Ledesma 1:25-cv-00129 (mandamus/immigration); Cheatham v. CRST 1:24-cv-00109 (FLSA labor); Anderson 1:24-cv-00111. Mix spans defamation, civil rights, labor, and immigration/mandamus. A deepening pass should enumerate his full docket (query by case, not the surname 'Williams').