Lyle Elmer Strom
How Judge Strom decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
On the contested question of individual liability under the FDCPA, Strom sided with the view that owners, officers, and signing attorneys can be personally liable without piercing the corporate veil if they meet the statutory 'debt collector' definition, relying on the Eighth Circuit's Powers dicta, an in-district decision by Judge Bataillon, and the plain statutory text.
“Based on: (1) the Eighth Circuit's language in Powers; (2) Judge Bataillon's holding in Henggeler; and (3) the Court's reading of Congress's statutory language, the Court finds that individuals can be held personally liable under the FDCPA without piercing the corporate veil if they fit within the statute's definition of 'debt collector.'”
Procedural preferences
On a Rule 12(b) motion to dismiss for personal jurisdiction or venue decided on affidavits, he requires only a prima facie showing from the plaintiff and resolves all factual conflicts in the plaintiff's favor -- including a dispute over whether a guaranty containing the forum-selection clause was even signed.
“If the district court does not hold a hearing and instead relies on pleadings and affidavits, then the Court must look at the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and resolve all factual conflicts in favor of that party.”
On class certification he conducts the Eighth Circuit's 'rigorous analysis' and will deny a Rule 23(b)(3) class where liability turns on individualized facts: here, head-of-family status, which CMS attorney signed each affidavit, and what process each followed would require 'many distinct factual inquiries,' defeating predominance.
“plaintiff's proposed class would require many distinct factual inquiries. ... enough for the Court to determine that Rule 23(b)(3)'s predominance requirement has not been sufficiently established by the plaintiff.”
Cautions
A defense summary-judgment motion can succeed before him on a pro se constitutional claim where the undisputed record shows process was provided: in Andrews he granted the officers' MSJ because the plaintiff received notice and a Ban-and-Bar Review Board appeal, so even assuming a protected interest there was no deprivation 'without due process of law.'
“even if plaintiff suffered a deprivation of a recognized constitutional right, and that deprivation was suffered at the hands of the officers, the deprivation did not occur without due process of law.”
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.
| Summary judgment N = 3 |
Granted: 1Denied: 2 | counts only |
| Class certification N = 1 |
Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motions to dismiss N = 1 |
Denied: 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.
“For the foregoing reasons, the Court finds that defendants' motion for summary judgment should be granted.”
“Defendants' motion for summary judgment will be denied in its entirety as to both CMS and each of the individually named defendants.”
“the Court finds that genuine issues of material fact do in fact exist prohibiting summary judgment. ... the Court finds that plaintiff's motion for summary judgment should be denied.”
“Because the Court denies class certification under both Rule 23(b)(2) and 23(b)(3) the Court will deny plaintiff's hybrid class for the reasons already stated herein.”
“IT IS ORDERED that defendants' motion to dismiss (Filing No. 13) is denied.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 598 days (N = 5).
Median motion-to-ruling time: 160 days (N = 3).
From the 21-docket search SAMPLE, the cases assigned to Strom span a broad general civil docket: contract (Amlin v. Union Pacific), product/property-damage liability (Union Pacific v. Timken), trademark (Pennfield Oil v. Alpharma), patent (Hawkins Mfg v. Gengenbach), copyright (Plan Pros v. Zych), FELA (Bell v. Union Pacific), employment / Civil Rights: Jobs (Tallant, Garza, Doe v. Blackshirt), motor vehicle (Powell, Williams), environmental (US v. American Laboratories), habeas (Rivera-Torres), and FDCPA/consumer (Reynolds). NOT a complete enumeration; a deepening pass should page search_dockets across his 1985-2017 tenure.