John F. Anderson
How Judge Anderson decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
On a defaulting-defendant FLSA case he does not rubber-stamp the plaintiff's damages demand: he independently recomputes the unpaid-wage and liquidated-damages figures from the hours/rates in the record (correcting the plaintiff's spreadsheet errors) and grounds the FLSA elements before recommending the award.
“the undersigned recommends that a default judgment be entered in favor of plaintiff on Counts I and II in the amount of $6,001.29 in unpaid regular and overtime wages under the FLSA.”
Procedural preferences
He guards against double recovery across overlapping legal theories -- recommending denial of a parallel state Virginia-Minimum-Wage-Act count as duplicative of the FLSA recovery, and capping the breach-of-wages-contract award at the amount exceeding the FLSA wages already awarded.
“the undersigned magistrate judge recommends that plaintiffs motion for default judgment as to Count III be denied.”
Cautions
THIN STARTER (N=1). Do not read anything into the single granted_in_part default-judgment R&R as a tendency. Anderson is a long-serving Alexandria referral magistrate (2008-2024, now recall status) whose R&Rs are largely unpublished and not enumerable via assigned_judge; this page is a verified exemplar plus bio and caseload, flagged for deepening with more combined R&R/adoption opinions.
“the undersigned magistrate judge recommends that a default judgment be entered in favor of plaintiff Wilson Dutan and against defendant Sheet Metal Remodeling, LLC”
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.
| Default judgment 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 undersigned magistrate judge recommends that a default judgment be entered in favor of plaintiff Wilson Dutan and against defendant Sheet Metal Remodeling, LLC in the amount of $24,365.54 ... [and] that plaintiffs motion for default judgment as to Count III be denied.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
No case-duration cohort computed: the duty-docket matters are mostly pending, and his historical referral merits cases are not surfaced by assigned_judge. Dutan (the one classified R&R) ran 174 days filed->terminated (2014-04-01 to 2014-09-22).