Gary M. Purcell
How Judge Purcell decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
Dismisses official-capacity 1983 claims on Eleventh Amendment/jurisdictional grounds while letting plausibly-pleaded individual-capacity retaliation and excessive-force claims survive; on screening, dismisses claims against states (not 'persons' under 1983) and against public defenders (not state actors).
“neither the State of Arkansas nor the State of Oklahoma is properly named as a Defendant by virtue of the Eleventh Amendment nor is either a 'person' for purposes of 1983 liability.”
Procedural preferences
Declines to convert a Rule 12(b)(6) motion into summary judgment to reach a failure-to-exhaust defense where the movant ignored the court's instruction to raise exhaustion through a limited summary-judgment motion -- keeping the more plaintiff-favorable pleading standard.
“the Report and Recommendation (Doc. No. 32) is ADOPTED as modified. Defendant's Motion to Dismiss (Doc. No. 27) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART.”
Cautions
CLOSED record (deceased 2023). Only 1 adversarial merits motion-unit captured (an MTD granted-in-part); the other three read orders are IFP/screening recommendations. NOT a grant rate. His ~30-year magistrate career produced a far deeper R&R trail (including 2004-2013 habeas/1983 merits R&Rs) that was not mined here because the record is refresh-exempt. His base-rate volume was 636(c)-consent Social Security appeals (see docket layer).
“the Report and Recommendation [Doc. No. 7] is ADOPTED as set forth herein.”
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.
| Motions to dismiss N = 1 |
Granted 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.
“the Report and Recommendation (Doc. No. 32) is ADOPTED as modified. Defendant's Motion to Dismiss (Doc. No. 27) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. ... Plaintiff's official-capacity claims are dismissed without prejudice pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) ... Plaintiff's individual-capacity claims remain pending for disposition.”
Sua sponte 1915A/preliminary-review screening of a pro se pretrial detainee's 1983 complaint. Purcell's R&R (Doc. 6) recommended dismissal without prejudice: the two state defendants (Arkansas, Oklahoma) are barred by the Eleventh Amendment and are not 'persons' under 1983, and the public-defender defendant did not act under color of state law. District Judge David L. Russell adopted over the pro se objection and dismissed without prejudice. EXCLUDED from motion stats (sua sponte screening, not an adversarial party motion); recorded for completeness with its substantive 1983 holding.
IFP screening. Purcell's R&R (Doc. 13) recommended DENYING the plaintiff's application to proceed in forma pauperis because he had sufficient funds to pay the $400 fee; the plaintiff paid the fee within the objection period, so District Judge Charles Goodwin adopted and denied the IFP application as moot. EXCLUDED from motion stats (administrative IFP screening). Recorded for completeness.
IFP/1915(b) screening. Purcell's R&R (Doc. 7) recommended dismissal without prejudice for the pro se prisoner's failure to pay a $2.32 initial partial filing fee. District Judge Timothy D. DeGiusti adopted AS MODIFIED -- crediting the prisoner's evidence of timely (but delayed) trust-account disbursement attempts and giving him 21 more days to pay before dismissal. EXCLUDED from motion stats (1915 fee screening). Recorded for completeness as an example of a screening recommendation modified by the district judge.