Kevin Thomas Duffy
How Judge Duffy decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
He decides insurance duty-to-defend disputes as a question of law on summary judgment by comparing the underlying complaint's allegations to the policy's coverage grants and exclusions, and will deny a policyholder's motion where the underlying securities-fraud claims fall outside the bodily-injury/property-damage coverage and the financial-institution exclusions apply. A policyholder seeking defense costs for business-conduct claims under a general-liability policy should expect close scrutiny of the coverage clauses, not a presumption of coverage.
“First Investors' partial summary judgment motion regarding Liberty Mutual's duty to defend is denied, rendering any review of the other two motions moot.”
In a Section 1983 procedural-due-process challenge he holds that a written-submission process satisfies due process and that an established practice (here, defaulting a deadlocked pension board to the lower benefit) is constitutionally adequate, declining to require a trial-type oral hearing. A plaintiff arguing that the absence of live testimony alone violated due process should expect that argument to fail where a meaningful paper record was allowed.
“The parties have cross-moved for summary judgment pursuant to Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. For the following reasons, Defendants' motion is granted and Plaintiffs motion is denied.”
Procedural preferences
He declines to deem a movant's Local Rule 3(g)/56.1 statement automatically admitted on the basis of an opponent's deficient response where doing so would unfairly prejudice a party because of its counsel's shortcomings, weighing the submissions as a whole instead. Counsel should comply with the local statement-of-facts rules, but he will not mechanically convert an adversary's drafting lapse into conceded facts.
“Due to the volume and sufficiency of the submissions as a whole and the unfair prejudice that would be inflicted upon Liberty Mutual due to its counsel's deficiencies, the material facts set forth in First Investors' Local Rule 3(g) statement are not deemed admitted.”
Cautions
He enforces Title VII's 300-day EEOC charge-filing deadline strictly, barring discrete failure-to-promote acts that fall outside the window and resisting a 'continuing violation' theory used to revive them. A discrimination plaintiff relying on older promotion denials should expect those discrete acts to be time-barred unless a genuine continuing violation is shown.
“Therefore any acts of discrimination which Defendants allegedly committed in violation of Plaintiffs rights prior to December 27, 1991 are untimely and may no longer be pursued under Title VII.”
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 = 8 |
Granted: 3Granted in part: 1Denied: 3Moot / procedural: 1 | counts only |
| Motions to dismiss N = 1 |
Granted: 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 following reasons, Defendants' motion for summary judgment is granted. Defendants' motion to dismiss on the grounds of forum non conveniens is also granted. Plaintiffs cross-motion is granted as to the first claim and denied as to the second claim.”
“Defendants' motion to dismiss on the grounds of forum non conveniens is also granted.”
“Plaintiffs cross-motion is granted as to the first claim and denied as to the second claim.”
“On January 18, 1994, Defendants brought the present motion for summary judgment in favor of Defendants and for the dismissal of Plaintiffs Title VII claims. For the following reasons, Defendants' motion is granted.”
“Before the court is Plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment. For the following reasons, the motion is DENIED.”
“Pending before this Court are three motions -- First Investors' partial summary judgment motion on Liberty Mutual's duty to defend; ... For the following reasons, First Investors' partial summary judgment motion regarding Liberty Mutual's duty to defend is denied, rendering any review of the other two motions moot.”
“First Investors' partial summary judgment motion regarding Liberty Mutual's duty to defend is denied, rendering any review of the other two motions moot.”
“The parties have cross-moved for summary judgment pursuant to Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. For the following reasons, Defendants' motion is granted and Plaintiffs motion is denied.”
“For the following reasons, Defendants' motion is granted and Plaintiffs motion is denied.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 1075.5 days (N = 10).
Sample from search_dockets(assigned_judge='Kevin Thomas Duffy'). Nature-of-suit mix skews to civil-rights and securities. Durations below are raw filed-to-terminated spans from docket and are presented as caseload context ONLY -- see the REASSIGNMENT CAVEAT in coverage.note: at least one (Byrnes) and likely several of the 2008-2009 civil-rights cases were Judge Stephen C. Robinson's docket reassigned to Duffy near the end, so these are NOT a measure of how long Duffy himself took to resolve cases.