Mark Raymond Hornak
How Judge Hornak decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
At the pleading stage he applies Twombly without over-reading it: an employment-discrimination plaintiff need not plead granular details (e.g. a replacement's exact age) where named facts and an employer's shifting explanations plausibly support an inference of pretext.
“Plaintiff is not required to plead the exact age of his already-named replacement in order to survive a motion to dismiss.”
When he dismisses for a pleading deficiency he generally grants leave to amend consistent with Third Circuit practice, rather than dismissing outright -- a futility finding is required before a with-prejudice dismissal. Even in a complex PSLRA securities case he allows one structured 30-day window to file a redlined amended complaint.
“Defendants' Motion to Dismiss will be granted without prejudice. Should Plaintiffs not file a SAC in compliance with this Opinion and Order by the specified date, the dismissal shall convert to a dismissal with prejudice without further notice or Order.”
He will deny a defense motion that rests on a conclusory or poorly-supported argument and will parse a multi-claim complaint claim-by-claim and defendant-by-defendant rather than dismissing wholesale (some claims dismissed with prejudice, others allowed to proceed in the same order).
“Defendants' Motion is granted in part and denied in part.”
Procedural preferences
On supplemental jurisdiction he will dispose of the federal claims and then decline to retain related state-law claims, dismissing them without prejudice to refiling in state court -- especially where discovery is complete and judicial-economy concerns are minimal.
“dismiss Plaintiff Townsend's state law claims without prejudice.”
On summary judgment he demands record evidence of pretext, not argument: generalized attacks on a movant's witness credibility, speculation, and 'totality of the circumstances' theories without supporting facts do not create a triable issue. The inquiry is discriminatory animus, not whether the employer's decision was wise.
“challenging generally the credibility of a movant's witnesses, without any supporting evidence of unlawful motive, does not itself create a question of material fact barring summary judgment.”
In federal criminal practice he enforces the compassionate-release exhaustion requirement strictly: a 3582(c)(1)(A) motion is dismissed (without prejudice, subject to reassertion) unless the defendant first shows he submitted a request to the BOP warden and exhausted or waited 30 days.
“DISMISSED without prejudice, subject to reassertion should the Defendant make a showing on the record that he has submitted an appropriate request to the Warden of the Bureau of Prisons facility”
Cautions
He resists premature attempts to narrow a case: a defendant's bid to strike an ADEA 'willfulness' theory on a 12(b)(6) motion 'comes too early in the game' and is better addressed at summary judgment or trial. Save merits-narrowing arguments for a developed record.
“Defendant's attempt to strike Plaintiff's 'claim' of willfulness simply comes too early in the game.”
Reconsideration is a heavy lift but not futile: he denies motions that merely repackage or add new arguments (and will deny even after conceding a legal error if the result is unchanged), yet he WILL grant reconsideration and reverse himself to correct a genuine clear error of law -- here vacating his own qualified-immunity dismissal once shown that, under Third Circuit precedent, a sufficiently-pled deliberate-indifference claim cannot be defeated by qualified immunity at the 12(b)(6) stage.
“The Motion for Reconsideration (ECF No. 35) is GRANTED as to the argument that the Court's decision to grant the Motion to Dismiss (ECF No. 24) as to Defendant Roberson on qualified immunity grounds was a clear error of law.”
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: 4Granted in part: 2Denied: 2 | counts only |
| Motions to dismiss N = 5 |
Granted: 3Granted in part: 1Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motion for reconsideration N = 2 |
Denied: 2 | counts only |
| Motions to remand N = 1 |
Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Daubert N = 1 |
Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Compassionate release N = 1 |
Moot / procedural: 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 Court will GRANT in full the Motion for Summary Judgment as to Plaintiff DeForte”
“GRANT the Motion for Summary Judgment as to Plaintiff Townsend in part, specifically as to Plaintiff Townsend's federal claim, and dismiss Plaintiff Townsend's state law claims without prejudice.”
“For these reasons, Defendant's Motion to Dismiss is denied.”
“Therefore, the Petition to Remand is denied.”
“Defendants' Motion to Dismiss (ECF No. 10) is GRANTED, but without prejudice. Consistent with Third Circuit precedent, the Court GRANTS Plaintiff leave to amend the Complaint.”
“IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 14) is DENIED”
“that Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 16) is GRANTED”
“Therefore, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 10) is DENIED and that Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 13) is GRANTED.”
“Therefore, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 10) is DENIED and that Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 13) is GRANTED.”
“Because the Court finds that a reasonable jury could not so find in Plaintiff's favor, there is no genuine issue of material fact and the CTC's Motion for Summary Judgment is granted.”
“LabMD's Motion for Reconsideration is DENIED.”
“IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Motion to Dismiss (ECF No. 26) filed by Defendants Lisa V. Caulfield, Rich Fitzgerald, The Allegheny County, the Public Defender's Office, and Elliott C. Howsie is GRANTED, and this action is DISMISSED.”
“to the extent the filings of the Plaintiff arriving after this Court entered its Order adopting the Report and Recommendation are treated as being a Motion for Reconsideration, such Motion is denied.”
“Defendants' Motion to Dismiss will be granted without prejudice. Should Plaintiffs not file a SAC in compliance with this Opinion and Order by the specified date, the dismissal shall convert to a dismissal with prejudice without further notice or Order.”
“Defendants have moved to dismiss the Complaint in full. (ECF No. 41). For the reasons set forth below, Defendants' Motion is granted in part and denied in part.”
“The Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. Plaintiffs' defective design claims based on defective design will proceed to trial. As to their claims based on alleged failure to provide adequate warnings, or to provide a post-sale warning, summary judgment will be granted, and those claims arising in the Complaint are dismissed with prejudice.”
“For the foregoing reasons, the Defendants' Motion to Preclude the Testimony of Kristopher Seluga, M.S., P.E., Pursuant to Rule 702 is DENIED.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Enumerated via assigned_judge='Mark Raymond Hornak', cases filed 2018-2022. NOS mix: ADA/Title VII employment (Jahoda, Nelson, Price, Mergl, Beta, Murphy), 1983 civil rights (Titchenell, Harper), FCA qui tam (US v. Jefferson Cardiology), FLSA (Fulton), TCPA (Abramson), US foreclosure (Just Inn Transition), and federal criminal (Black, Bell). As Chief Judge (2018-2025) he also carried administrative duties. STRONG ADR-settlement pattern: many civil dockets resolve at court-ordered mediation/ADR before any dispositive ruling (e.g. Jahoda v. Zara settled at mediation after a Hornak ADR-referral order, no merits motion). Not tallied to a fixed N.