Thomas S. Zilly
How Judge Zilly decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
On FOIA Exemption 5 reads the deliberative-process privilege narrowly: a 'Final' biological evaluation adopted as the agency's position is neither agency-authored (if a private consultant prepared it for the applicant) nor pre-decisional, and sharing it with the permit applicant WAIVES the privilege ('selective disclosure ... is offensive to the purposes underlying the FOIA').
“the March 2017 BE is therefore not an agency document for purposes of the FOIA.”
Procedural preferences
Standard Zilly order opener: rules on the papers; opinions are captioned generically ('ORDER' / 'THIS MATTER comes before the Court'), with the disposition stated only in the Conclusion.
“THIS MATTER comes before the Court on Defendant's motion for summary judgment ... Having considered the motion, all materials filed in support of and opposition thereto, and the arguments of counsel, the Court enters the following Order.”
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 = 4 |
Granted: 1Granted in part: 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.
“State Farm's motion for summary judgment, docket no. 15, is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. Plaintiffs CPA claim is DISMISSED with prejudice.”
“Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment, docket no. 18, is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part ... the Court GRANTS Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment and Defendant is ORDERED to provide the March 2017 BE to Plaintiff within twenty (20) days”
“Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment, docket no. 13, is GRANTED in part. Claim 4 of the Complaint, docket no. 1, is DISMISSED. Defendant's motion is otherwise DENIED.”
“For the reasons explained below, the Court GRANTS Defendant's motion for summary judgment.”