Roderick Charles Young
How Judge Young decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
Procedural preferences
Relies on magistrate judges for Social Security appeals and adopts their Reports & Recommendations -- here accepting Magistrate Judge Speight's R&R in full (and overruling the plaintiff's partial objection) while still entering the recommended claimant-favorable remand. Direct your substantive SSA briefing to the magistrate's R&R stage.
“The 14 Report and Recommendation of the Magistrate Judge is ACCEPTED and ADOPTED. Plaintiff's 9 Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED. Defendant's 11 Motion for Summary Judgment is DENIED.”
On an ancillary Rule 45 subpoena-enforcement motion he declines to reach the merits and instead transfers the dispute to the district overseeing the underlying litigation -- treating subpoena fights as matters for the home court. Expect a transfer, not a merits ruling, on a miscellaneous subpoena action tied to out-of-district litigation.
“The Court hereby ORDERS that the Clerk TRANSFER this matter to the District Court for the Northern District of Florida.”
Manages his docket actively against stalled plaintiffs: when a case sits with no answer and no plaintiff activity he issues a show-cause order and then dismisses without prejudice for failure to prosecute. Keep cases moving or expect a sua sponte dismissal.
“ORDER that this action is DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE for failure to prosecute.”
Cautions
THIN slice (4 classified motions across 4 matters) and docket-bound: GovInfo USCOURTS and docket records case law contain NO opinions bylined by Judge Young, and docket entry coverage for most of his dockets is thin (many sampled terminated Richmond cases returned zero entries; the Penn National insurance declaratory-judgment case, for example, was metadata-only). Do NOT read the counts as a grant rate. Posture here is mixed/balanced (a plaintiff SSA win, a bankruptcy affirmance, a procedural transfer), but the sample is too small to generalize. He served as the E.D. Va. U.S. Magistrate Judge 2014-2020; pre-2020 magistrate work is excluded. A step-5 deepen is recommended.
“Plaintiff's 9 Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED.”
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 = 2 |
Granted: 1Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Bankruptcy appeal N = 1 |
Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motions to compel 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.
“Plaintiff's 9 Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED. Defendant's 11 Motion for Summary Judgment is DENIED. The final decision of the Commissioner is REVERSED. This matter be REMANDED pursuant to sentence four of 42 U.S.C. 405(g) for further administrative proceedings ...”
“Plaintiff's 9 Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED. Defendant's 11 Motion for Summary Judgment is DENIED. The final decision of the Commissioner is REVERSED.”
“For the reasons stated in the accompanying Memorandum Opinion, the Court AFFIRMS the decisions of the Bankruptcy Court, in full. It is so ORDERED.”
“The Court hereby ORDERS that the Clerk TRANSFER this matter to the District Court for the Northern District of Florida.”
Title VII employment-discrimination action dismissed without prejudice sua sponte for failure to prosecute, after a show-cause order (defendants never answered and the plaintiff took no action to advance the case). Non-motion disposition -- counts as an order read, excluded from motion stats. Grounded in the verbatim docket-entry order text (entry 8; show-cause is entry 7). Illustrates active docket management.
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Median case duration in the sampled dockets: 181.5 days (N = 14).
assigned_judge canonical string = 'Roderick C. Young'. docket suffix (RCY). Confirm the signer on each order: assigned_judge is the currently-assigned judge, which can differ from the signer after reassignment.