Warren Keith Urbom
How Judge Urbom decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
He applies the settled Eighth Circuit rule that individual supervisors cannot be held personally liable under Title VII -- granting an individual-capacity defendant summary judgment on that count even while the rest of the employment case proceeds.
“the defendants argue that Rolenc is entitled to a partial summary judgment because he cannot be held individually liable under Title VII. ... The defendants are quite correct. ... to the extent that Count IV is directed toward Rolenc in his individual capacity, the defendants are entitled to summary judgment.”
Procedural preferences
He strictly enforces Nebraska's local summary-judgment and evidence rules (NECivR 56.1(a), 7.1(a)(2)): a movant who fails to file a separate statement of material facts or who submits unindexed, unauthenticated evidence will have that evidence disregarded -- here costing the defendants their qualified-immunity argument, which he refused to reach.
“Due to the defendants' failure to present their evidence in accordance with this court's local rules, however, I shall not consider this affidavit. ... Under the circumstances, I must deny the defendants' motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity.”
Cautions
A party's own motion for summary judgment will be denied where the opposing affidavits create genuine credibility disputes: he views the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-movant and will not weigh competing accounts on the papers.
“The evidence in the record must be taken in the light favorable to Oliver, and I cannot say that no reasonable jury could credit Oliver's version of the facts or return a verdict in her favor.”
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 = 2 |
Granted in part: 1Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motions to strike N = 1 |
Moot / procedural: 1 | counts only |
| Motion for extension of time 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.
“IT IS ORDERED that the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, filing 28, is denied.”
“IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Defendant Oliver's motion to strike exhibits submitted by the plaintiff in support of his motion for summary judgment, filing 33, is denied as moot.”
“Defendant Rolenc is granted a summary judgment on Count IV of the complaint to the extent that he is sued in his individual capacity; ... The defendants' motion for summary judgment, filing 34, is otherwise denied;”
“The plaintiff's motion for an extension of time to respond to the defendants' summary judgment motion, filing 43, is denied;”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 455 days (N = 6).
From the 21-docket search SAMPLE, the cases assigned to Urbom span a broad late-career senior-judge civil docket: employment / Civil Rights: Jobs (Flug v. Cabela's, Garrett v. Bugeater), Social Security (Arriaga v. Colvin), personal injury (Resler v. Telex, Hruby v. Albertson's), contract (Brecek and Young Advisors v. Syndicate 2003/Lloyd's, Koning v. Baisden, Archer Daniels Midland v. Soucie), property/insurance (Liberty Mutual v. BNSF), products liability (Brandstetter v. Menu Foods), and FLSA labor (Harris v. Exterior Plus), plus prisoner/habeas. NOT a complete enumeration; a deepening pass should page search_dockets across his 1970-2014 tenure.