George Michael Marovich
How Judge Marovich decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
He guards federal jurisdiction: Colorado River abstention is the rare exception, not the rule, and the mere desirability of avoiding piecemeal litigation (or being the second-filed of two concurrent suits) is not the 'clearest of justifications' required to decline jurisdiction. He also confines common-law forum non conveniens to cases whose alternative forum is abroad, and holds that Illinois procedural dismissal statutes (e.g. 735 ILCS 5/2-619(a)(3)) do not apply in federal court.
“the Court does not see in this case the “clearest of justifications” to overcome its “virtually unflagging” obligation to exercise its jurisdiction.”
On a Rule 12(b)(6) motion he reads the statute carefully and will not dismiss on a misread of it: he rejected a Carmack Amendment 'notice' defense because 49 U.S.C. 14706(e) limits a carrier's ability to contractually shorten the claim period rather than imposing its own deadline, and absent a bill of lading no such contractual deadline bound the shipper — and a plaintiff need not plead around affirmative defenses.
“The movants misunderstand the Carmack Amendment.”
Procedural preferences
He construes pro se complaints liberally and treats a mislabeled pro se filing for what it is — e.g., a pro se plaintiff's 'motion in opposition' was treated as a response brief and the arguments considered on the merits — and he grants leave to amend curable defects rather than dismissing outright with prejudice.
“the Court notes that it is considering the arguments plaintiff made in his motion as though it were a brief in opposition to defendants’ motion.”
Cautions
Federal preemption is enforced decisively: where a federal statute supplies a uniform liability scheme (the Carmack Amendment for interstate carrier loss), parallel state-law breach-of-contract and negligence claims seeking the same damages for the same loss are preempted and dismissed WITH PREJUDICE. And a 1983 damages claim that would necessarily imply the invalidity of a still-standing conviction is Heck-barred.
“it is clear that intervener’s claims for breach of contract and negligence are preempted by the Carmack Amendment.”
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 = 4 |
Granted: 1Granted in part: 2Denied: 1 | 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.
“the Court grants in part and denies in part plaintiff’s motion to dismiss. ... Counts II, III and IV are dismissed with prejudice.”
“The Court grants in part and denies in part defendants’ motion to dismiss. Counts II, III and IV are dismissed with prejudice.”
“The Court grants defendants’ motion to dismiss. Counts I and II are dismissed without prejudice.”
“For the reasons set forth above, the Court denies defendants’ motion to dismiss.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 119.0 days (N = 4).
Sampled across 2009-2014 filings. In late senior status Marovich's docket docket is light and heavily administrative: many same-day terminations are registrations of judgments from other courts and miscellaneous filings (United States v. Stanford International Bank, US v. Novus Ventures, 'In the Matter of', foreign judgment registrations). The handful of genuinely litigated civil cases span cable/satellite piracy (J&J Sports), immigration mandamus (Al Raifaee v. Napolitano), insurance, ERISA/union benefit-fund collection, and prisoner civil rights (Patterson v. Dart).