Melinda Harmon
How Judge Harmon decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
Immunity defenses that appear on the face of the pleadings are decisive for her at the threshold: a Title VII suit against employees in their individual capacities (or against employer and agent both) is dismissed as a matter of settled Fifth Circuit law, and a foreign-state defendant gets FSIA immunity unless the plaintiff pleads specific facts fitting a Section 1605 exception -- she will not allow jurisdictional discovery to go fishing for one.
“Plaintiff has failed to come forward with sufficiently specific allegations -- or, consequently, with any evidence -- to establish that any exception to Defendants' claims of sovereign immunity under the FSIA are applicable in this action. Accordingly, the Court ORDERS that Defendants' motion to dismiss is GRANTED.”
In commercial/maritime contract disputes she enforces written terms strictly: a signed acknowledgment of terms and conditions, reinforced by a long course of dealing (dozens of invoices paid without objection), makes a limitation-of-liability clause enforceable, and the Texas economic-loss rule confines a packing/forwarding dispute to contract rather than tort.
“Under Texas law, a party is bound by the terms of the contract it signs. ... Alternatively, through their prior course of dealings, Zust and Atwood incorporated the Terms and Conditions into the contract for the shipment of the DCM.”
Procedural preferences
She will not let a movant win summary judgment on a record the movant itself kept incomplete: where defendants moved for summary judgment while withholding the plaintiff's full medical records, she denied the motion without prejudice and ordered production before she would reconsider.
“Defendants' motion for summary judgment (Docket Entries No.15, No.16) is DENIED, without prejudice, subject to reconsideration by the Court upon production of all of plaintiff's medical records.”
On collateral review she enforces AEDPA's gatekeeping strictly: a second-or-successive 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion filed without Fifth Circuit panel authorization leaves the district court without jurisdiction, and she will adopt a magistrate judge's M&R to that effect after de novo review.
“Movant must obtain authorization for the Fifth Circuit before this Court would have jurisdiction to entertain Movant Garcia-Lozano's successive sec 2255 motion. ... the Court ADOPTS her memorandum and order as its own and ORDERS that the government's motion to dismiss is GRANTED”
Cautions
Pin the right claim to the right charge and the right defendant: a Title VII plaintiff must plead within the timely EEOC charge's scope (a retaliation theory must actually be pleaded, not just asserted later) and must sue a suable entity -- claims against a sheriff's department (non sui juris) or against individual employees go nowhere even when the underlying conduct is serious.
“As it now stands, Hamilton's complaint does not state a claim for retaliation, and she has made no effort to amend her complaint to state such a claim. ... Defendant HISD's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 12) is GRANTED.”
On a genuinely fact-bound discrimination claim she will refuse summary judgment and send it to a jury: a hostile-work-environment claim does NOT require an adverse employment action, and credibility-laden disputes are 'not suited to the dry analysis of a summary judgment record.'
“This case turns on a myriad of factors that are not suited to the dry analysis of a summary judgment record. To determine whether the Plaintiffs were the victims of unlawful discrimination, a jury will have to listen to the testimony and weigh the credibility of the witness on both sides.”
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 = 5 |
Granted: 2Granted in part: 2Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motions to dismiss N = 3 |
Granted: 3 | 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 therefore orders that the claims against the Individual Defendants are dismissed. ... Defendants Abelardo Saavedra, Linda Llorente, Eva Silva, Arthur Petteway, Veronica Barrera and Laura Alaniz's Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 9) is GRANTED.”
“Defendant HISD's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 12) is GRANTED.”
“Defendant's motion (Instrument No. 29) is GRANTED-IN-PART AND DENIED-IN-PART, specifically, (1) Defendants' motion to dismiss all claims against The Harris County Sheriff's Department is GRANTED, (2) Defendants' motion to dismiss Plaintiffs' intentional infliction of emotional distress claims is MOOT; and (3) Defendants' motion to dismiss Plaintiffs' hostile work environment claims is DENIED.”
“(1) Zust's motion for summary judgment on Atwood's negligence claim is GRANTED; (2) Zust's motion for summary judgment on limitation of liability is GRANTED”
“(3) Cargo Shipping's motion for summary judgement on Zust's negligence claim is GRANTED; and (4) Cargo Shipping's motion for summary judgement on Zust's contract claim is DENIED.”
“the Court ORDERS that Defendants' motion to dismiss is GRANTED. All other pending motions are DENIED as moot.”
“the Court ADOPTS her memorandum and order as its own and ORDERS that the government's motion to dismiss is GRANTED and Movant Garcia-Lozano's motion pursuant to 28 U.S.C. sec. 2255(f)(3) is DISMISSED without prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”
“Defendants' motion for summary judgment (Docket Entries No.15, No.16) is DENIED, without prejudice, subject to reconsideration by the Court upon production of all of plaintiff's medical records.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 486 days (N = 7).
Inactive senior judge (senior since 2018); historical Houston-division civil docket. Her terminated dockets located via search_dockets(assigned_judge='Melinda Harmon') skew to securities/commodities class actions (her hallmark -- consolidated energy-company securities cases such as Jacobs/Manzoor v. Houston American Energy Corp. and Davidson v. Key Energy Services, alongside the famous Enron civil MDL noted in bio), EEOC employment/civil-rights actions (EEOC v. Houston Fast Foods, Mundy Support Services, Kenexa Technology), maritime/energy contract disputes (Atwood Oceanics, Fry v. Northstar Marine Services), FSIA foreign-sovereign cases (Evans v. PEMEX), immigration (Glavee v. Holder), and habeas/prisoner matters (Woodard v. Quarterman). Historically also the criminal trial judge in United States v. Arthur Andersen LLP.