Sara E. Hill
How Judge Hill rules, drawn from 3 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
How Judge Hill decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
For claims against public utilities under consumer-protection statutes, the judge looks first at whether the entity is a rate-regulated public utility exempt from the statute's reach, taking judicial notice of the entity's regulated status rather than requiring the plaintiff to plead around the exemption.
“The Court takes judicial notice that PSO, the City of Tulsa, and ONG provide services through pipe, wire, or other connected facilities.”
Procedural preferences
Facing a pro se litigant's scattered, hard-to-parse filings, the judge takes the extra step of identifying which document actually constitutes the operative complaint before ruling on a motion to dismiss, rather than dismissing for unintelligibility alone.
“Given Plaintiff's myriad unclear filings, I must first determine which filing or filings constitute the complaint that the Judicial Defendants' motion to dismiss applies to.”
On a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the judge excluded service agreements attached to the briefs when the complaint did not specifically reference them, declining to convert the motion into one for summary judgment.
“The Court will exclude the agreements in its consideration of the motion to dismiss.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“For the reasons stated herein, the Judicial Defendants' motion to dismiss [ECF No. 16] is GRANTED. Plaintiff's complaint [ECF No. 1] is hereby DISMISSED without prejudice.”
“Defendants' motions to dismiss [ECF Nos. 14, 18, 39] are granted. Plaintiff's claims are dismissed with prejudice.”
“IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Defendant Apple's Motion to Dismiss [ECF No. 23] is GRANTED and the Complaint is dismissed without prejudice.”
“As a result of this Order, Plaintiff's Motion for a Preliminary Injunction and/or Temporary Restraining Order [ECF No. 2] and Motion for Expedited Hearing on the Preliminary Injunction and/or Temporary Restraining Order [ECF No. 13] are DENIED as moot.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
- Her caseload includes cases she has carried since taking the bench in January 2024 as well as older dockets reassigned to her from a predecessor judge, spanning Section 1983 civil-rights suits, prisoner petitions and state-habeas challenges, employment and consumer-protection claims, insurance and contract disputes, and Social Security appeals.
- Many of her assigned civil cases are pro se filings that end at the pleading stage (screening dismissals, motions to dismiss, or dismissal for failure to prosecute) rather than reaching trial.
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