James Edward Gritzner
How Judge Gritzner rules, drawn from 6 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
How Judge Gritzner decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
In two prominent First Amendment challenges to Iowa speech restrictions, Gritzner separated claims by procedural stage and theory: he struck down the agricultural-production-facility-fraud statute on summary judgment in ALDF v. Reynolds, while allowing student viewpoint-discrimination claims in Gerlich v. Leath to survive dismissal and proceed in part through summary judgment.
“ORDER granting 49 Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment; denying 57 Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. The remaining due process claim in Count III is dismissed... Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/9/2019.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“ORDER granting 49 Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment; denying 57 Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. The remaining due process claim in Count III is dismissed... Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/9/2019.”
“ORDER granting 81 Motion for Permanent Injunction and Entry of Judgment. See order for particulars. Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 2/14/2019.”
“ORDER denying 9 Motion to Dismiss. See order for particulars. Signed by Chief Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/6/2015.”
“ORDER granting in part and denying in part 47 Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment; granting in part and denying in part 48 Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment. See order for all particulars. Signed by Senior Judge James E. Gritzner on 1/22/2016.”
“Lakeside appealed from the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of Producers on Lakeside's state-law claim for fraudulent misrepresentation”
“Accordingly, we make the following award of fees and direct the Clerk of Court to enter Judgment in favor of Plaintiffs and against Defendants for fees to the prevailing parties in the amount of $181,623.13.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 281 days (N = 8).
Median motion-to-ruling time: 158 days (N = 6).
The caseload description is based on about 21 civil, prisoner, habeas, and criminal cases filed from 2004 through 2022. Because some cases were reassigned or decided by another judge, it describes the general docket mix rather than a complete census of decisions personally signed by Judge Gritzner.
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