Edwin Ford Hunter, Jr.
Judge Hunter no longer hears cases. This profile is preserved as a historical record of how they ruled.
How Judge Hunter decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
In maritime personal-injury cases he reads the Supreme Court's limit on damages strictly: after Miles v. Apex Marine held non-pecuniary damages unavailable, he treated punitive damages as non-pecuniary and barred them for unseaworthiness, aligning with the majority of courts rather than the older circuit precedent that had allowed them.
“We conclude that the former line of cases holding that punitive damages are not recoverable under the Jones Act or Maritime Law is the most consistent approach under Miles and its progeny.”
Procedural preferences
On removal he applies the 28 U.S.C. 1447(e) joinder rule mechanically: once the court permits a plaintiff to add a non-diverse defendant, subject-matter jurisdiction is destroyed and remand becomes mandatory, and he is unwilling to resolve ambiguous state-law liability questions to defeat that result on a fraudulent-joinder theory.
“When the court granted the joinder, it was mandatory, under 1447 that the case be remanded.”
In disability-discrimination cases he treats regular attendance as an essential job function and declines to require employers to wait indefinitely for recovery or to transfer essential duties to others, resolving such claims for the employer where the absence was lengthy.
“A consecutive five week absence does not constitute regular attendance.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that summary judgment be entered in favor of defendant, GREENTREE ADMINISTRATORS, INC. and against plaintiffs ... The case is dismissed.”
“defendant's motion for partial summary judgment, dismissing plaintiffs punitive damage claim for unseaworthiness under the General Maritime Law is GRANTED.”
“Defendant's motion for partial summary judgment seeking dismissal of plaintiffs punitive damages claims for inadequate maintenance and cure is DENIED.”
“In accordance with the foregoing discussion, Boise's motion for summary judgment is GRANTED.”
ADA and ADEA discharge suit decided after a one-day bench trial. Hunter entered judgment for the employer because the plaintiff's consecutive five-week, diabetes-related absence meant she could not perform the essential function of regular attendance with or without reasonable accommodation. He held that the ADA does not require an employer to wait indefinitely or shift essential duties to others, and found no age-discrimination evidence. This was a bench-trial judgment rather than a ruling on a party motion.
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 600 days (N = 10).
As a long-serving and then senior district judge sitting in Lake Charles and Lafayette (1954-2002), Hunter carried a general civil and criminal docket. The case-level enumeration retained here is a slice of mid-1980s Lafayette-Division civil cases -- by their captions a mix of maritime and oilfield personal-injury, energy-industry and products matters typical of south Louisiana of that era (e.g. Fontenot v. Huthnance Drilling, Pitre v. Atlantic Richfield, Eagle Fleet v. Bengal Marine, White v. Missouri Pacific Railroad). Nature-of-suit codes are not retained in the enumeration, so the mix is described from the captions, not coded.
A historical record
Judge Hunter no longer hears cases. This profile stays available as a record of how they ruled. If you're preparing for a matter, start from the court's current bench.