Colleen McMahon
How Judge McMahon decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
On a clear contractual record she enforces the bargained-for mechanics literally and will grant a plaintiff summary judgment: where a brokerage agreement deems a transaction authorized unless the client objects within one business day of written confirmation, the client's silence binds it and the commission is owed. A movant should anchor a contract claim in the specific deeming/notice provisions and the undisputed confirmations.
“Under the clear and unambiguous provisions of the contract it signed, Alpental authorized the challenged transaction (hereinafter the 'February 10 transaction') by failing to object to it within one day after receiving a written confirmation of the deal.”
Procedural preferences
She is openly hostile to sealing and secret litigation: a presumption of public access attaches to documents filed in judicial proceedings, and she will not let a party recharacterize an ordinary commercial contract as 'confidential' to avoid the courthouse -- she dismissed a counterclaim premised on the theory that merely filing suit breached a confidentiality clause. Litigants should not expect to file routine business agreements under seal in her courtroom.
“There is a presumption of public access to documents filed in connection with judicial proceedings, which means that no litigant in a court of law has a right to keep evidence secret and no filing may be made under seal without the permission of the court. This Court is particularly hostile to efforts to litigate in secret and under seal.”
Cautions
She prefers not to decide a significant unsettled legal question if a developed factual record might make it unnecessary: facing the open Second Circuit issue of whether equitable tolling reaches contractual (as opposed to statutory) limitations periods, she denied the cross-motions without prejudice and referred the matter to a magistrate judge for a tolling hearing before reaching the merits. Counsel should expect threshold fact development before she rules on a novel issue, and should build the equitable-tolling record first.
“This court is equally disinclined to deal with a significant issue of first impression if it does not have to, and unless the facts would warrant an equitable estoppel rendering this lawsuit timely, I, too, could avoid addressing the issue.”
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 = 4 |
Granted: 2Granted in part: 1Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motions to dismiss N = 2 |
Granted: 1Granted 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.
“Because neither Sec. 301(c) nor any other INA provision provides this Court with jurisdiction to review denials of applications subsequently vacated by CIS, this action must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”
“The crux of this case is whether there is any likelihood of consumer confusion. Because plaintiff has not raised a genuine issue of fact as to this issue, defendants' motion is GRANTED.”
“For the reasons set forth below, defendants' motion is granted in part and denied in part; Plaintiff's claims for disability discrimination will be tried, but the rest of her claims are dismissed.”
“Because plaintiff has sued the wrong party for the wrong relief, Guardian's motion to dismiss the Third and Fourth Causes of Action is granted and Viti's cross motion for summary judgment on on those counts is denied. ... Therefore, all parties' motions are denied to the extent they are addressed to the First and Second Causes of action. This denial is without prejudice.”
“Guardian's motion to dismiss the Third and Fourth Causes of Action is granted and Viti's cross motion for summary judgment on on those counts is denied.”
“Therefore, Evolution is entitled to summary judgment on its claim for $157,558.18, with interest from the date of the breach, which was June 23, 2015. Alpental's 'counterclaim' is dismissed with prejudice.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Sample from search_dockets(assigned_judge='Colleen McMahon'). The visible docket is current and 2026-heavy but more diverse than the typical nysd page: copyright, trademark, civil-rights (jobs and other), libel/slander, commercial contract, a criminal docket, immigration mandamus, and constitutional/state-statute matters. Reflects current assignments, not a tenure-wide caseload. (McMahon took senior status in 2021, so her historical caseload is far larger than this current-assignment page suggests.)