John Robert Blakey
How Judge Blakey decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
On FCA anti-retaliation he applies the Seventh Circuit's Uhlig two-prong protected-activity test rigorously and refuses to borrow Title VII retaliation standards: the employee must have both a subjective good-faith belief AND an objectively reasonable basis (from what they knew at the time) that the employer defrauded the GOVERNMENT -- a belief in mere regulatory/contract violations is not enough. 'Possible regulatory violations? Yes. Defrauding the government? No.'
“No court has ever applied Title VII’s retaliation standards to FCA retaliation claims ... This Court likewise declines to apply Title VII’s standards to FCA retaliation claims. Uhlig controls, and under that standard Plaintiffs fail to plead that they engaged in protected activity.”
On Illinois breach-of-contract he holds the line that ACTUAL damages are an element: a plaintiff who proves breach but no actual harm cannot fall back on nominal damages (distinguishing Wisconsin and other jurisdictions), and a contractual 'injunctive relief without proof of damages' clause will not manufacture a remedy. Plead and prove a sensible damages basis.
“Merely showing that a contract has been breached without demonstrating actual damage does not suffice, under Illinois law, to state a claim for breach of contract. ... Here, Plaintiff cannot show that it has been harmed by Defendant’s alleged breach. Thus, it cannot show an entitlement to nominal damages and its action for breach of contract fails.”
Procedural preferences
On a Rule 12(b)(6) motion he refuses to look beyond the complaint at extrinsic evidence (e.g. body-worn-camera footage) unless it is attached to or central to the complaint or judicially noticeable, and will not convert to summary judgment to do so; he also declines to import the criminal-law inevitable-discovery doctrine into civil-rights cases. Save the video for summary judgment.
“But this footage is neither attached to the complaint or referred to in it, nor is it otherwise subject to judicial notice. As such, the material remains better suited to a motion for summary judgment.”
He treats arguments raised for the first time in a summary-judgment response brief (rather than pleaded) as improper attempts to amend the complaint, and will not consider them -- e.g. an implied-covenant 'opportunistic discharge' theory not in the complaint.
“Plaintiff may not amend his complaint through his response brief at summary judgment.”
Cautions
He construes 'condition precedent' compensation language literally: where a plan makes continued employment a condition precedent to earning a commission, an at-will employee fired (for documented poor performance) before the deal closes does not earn the commission, and neither the procuring-cause doctrine (foreclosed by an express contract term) nor the implied covenant of good faith (absent pleaded-and-proven bad-faith opportunistic discharge) saves the claim.
“When the Ensono transaction finally closed at the end of June, Plaintiff no longer worked for Defendant and could not earn a commission on the transaction ... Thus, this Court grants summary judgment to Defendant on Count I.”
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 = 6 |
Granted: 2Granted in part: 2Denied: 2 | counts only |
| Summary judgment N = 5 |
Granted: 4Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motion for judgment on pleadings N = 1 |
Granted in part: 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.
“This Court grants Defendant’s motion to dismiss each Plaintiff’s complaint. ... For the reasons explained below, this Court grants Defendant’s motion in its entirety.”
“this Court grants in part and denies in part Defendants’ motion to dismiss [24]. The motion to dismiss is granted as to the Fourteenth Amendment claims in Count I, II, and III of the amended complaint [20], and denied as to the Fourth Amendment claim in Count II.”
“the Court grants Defendant’s motion [188] and denies Plaintiff’s motion [192]. ... Based upon the undisputed portions of the record, this Court grants summary judgment in Defendant’s favor as to Count III.”
“the Court grants Defendant’s motion [188] and denies Plaintiff’s motion [192].”
“This Court grants Defendant’s motion for summary judgment [37] and enters judgment for Defendant and against Plaintiff. ... Civil case terminated.”
“This Court grants in part and denies in part Defendants' motion to dismiss [27]. This Court dismisses without prejudice Counts II, IV, and VI, but denies the motion to dismiss Counts I, III, and V.”
“Defendants' motion to dismiss Plaintiff's amended complaint [36] is denied.”
“Defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings is granted with regard to Count I and denied with regard to Count II. Because Plaintiff already had an opportunity to amend Count I to resolve the same deficiencies addressed today, judgment on that Count is with prejudice as to any amendment.”
“Defendants' motion for summary judgment [87] is granted.”
“Defendants' motion for summary judgment [70] is granted.”
“Defendants' motion to dismiss [98] is denied.”
“Defendant's motion to dismiss [11] is granted. Civil case terminated.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 472 days (N = 1).
Active, large, varied caseload. A bare assigned_judge enumeration in mid-2026 surfaced almost entirely NEW 2026 filings: civil rights / police (Roman v. City of Chicago, Bendl v. Rinehart), prisoner habeas/2255 (US v. Herrera, Martin v. Residential Reentry Manager), Schedule-A trademark (ALO LLC), product liability (Wodarczyk v. Stryker), and federal criminal (US v. Reyes). The 4 GovInfo merits cases span FCA whistleblower-retaliation (Babjak/AbbVie), 1983 Fourth Amendment (Smith v. Toledo), trade-secret/contract (CaramelCrisp), and employment-commission/IWPCA (Hinkens). Nature-of-suit is only partially reported in docket case-level metadata. Note: CaramelCrisp's currently-assigned-judge field was blank in docket and the related Putnam v. CaramelCrisp retaliation case (1:20-cv-02074) is assigned to LaShonda A. Hunt -- a reminder that assigned_judge fields can be stale/empty.