Summary Judgment Grant Rates by Federal District Judge

Informational only — not legal advice. This guide is general information about litigation analytics, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney–client relationship. GavelSight is not a law firm. Judicial analytics describe historical patterns in the public record; they do not predict the outcome of any specific case. Always exercise independent professional judgment.

What Summary Judgment Grant Rates Tell You (and What They Don't)

Summary judgment is the most resource-intensive motion in federal litigation. A well-briefed SJ motion can consume 40-100 attorney hours by the time you account for the statement of undisputed facts, the opposition, the reply, and the sur-reply (if permitted). Before investing that kind of time, knowing whether your judge grants summary judgment at 20% or 70% in your case type is essential strategic intelligence.

A judge's SJ grant rate measures how often they find that there is no genuine dispute of material fact warranting trial. A high grant rate suggests a judge who is willing to resolve cases on the papers. A low grant rate suggests a judge who prefers to send factual disputes to a jury. Both are legitimate judicial philosophies — but they produce radically different litigation dynamics.

What SJ grant rates don't tell you: whether the motion was well-briefed, whether the factual record was genuinely undisputed, or whether the opposing party effectively contested the motion. A denied SJ motion might reflect a strong opposition, not a judge with anti-SJ tendencies. Context matters more for SJ than almost any other motion type.

Full vs. Partial Summary Judgment

The distinction between full and partial summary judgment is strategically significant and often obscured in aggregate statistics. A full grant ends the case (or the relevant claims). A partial grant narrows the issues for trial — which changes trial preparation, settlement leverage, and the overall litigation trajectory.

A judge might deny full summary judgment frequently but grant partial summary judgment on individual claims or defenses at a high rate. If you're tracking only the "grant rate" as a binary number, you'll miss this pattern. A judge who consistently narrows cases through partial SJ grants is actually quite favorable for defendants, even if the headline grant rate looks moderate.

GavelSight separates full and partial summary judgment outcomes because the strategic implications are different. A partial grant that eliminates your opponent's strongest claim is worth knowing about even if it doesn't count as a "full grant" in the statistics.

How SJ Rates Differ Across Case Types

Summary judgment behaves very differently depending on the substantive area of law:

Employment Discrimination

Employment cases have historically high SJ grant rates for defendants because the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework creates a structured path for defendants to obtain summary judgment. But this varies enormously by judge. Some judges apply the pretext inquiry strictly, granting SJ when the plaintiff can't produce direct evidence of discriminatory intent. Others find that questions of intent are inherently jury questions, making SJ inappropriate in most cases.

Patent Litigation

Patent SJ motions are often narrowly targeted — addressing specific claims, specific prior art references, or specific claim constructions. The grant rate for "partial SJ on at least one patent claim" is very different from "full SJ on all asserted claims." Patent analytics need this granularity to be useful.

Contract Disputes

Contract cases with unambiguous written agreements tend to have higher SJ rates because contract interpretation is a question of law when the terms are clear. Judges in commercial litigation districts (S.D.N.Y., D. Del.) develop track records on contract SJ that are highly predictive.

Civil Rights (Section 1983)

Section 1983 cases have qualified immunity as a threshold defense that is often resolved on summary judgment. A judge's SJ grant rate in civil rights cases may primarily reflect their approach to qualified immunity rather than any general tendency toward or against summary judgment.

The takeaway: an aggregate SJ grant rate across all case types is misleading. You need the rate for your specific type of case. Browse our judge directory to see case-type breakdowns for profiled judges.

The Sample-Size Problem

Summary judgment is less common than motions to dismiss, which means sample sizes are smaller. A judge who has ruled on 200 motions to dismiss might have only 30-40 summary judgment decisions on the books. In a specific case type, that number might drop to single digits.

GavelSight enforces minimum sample thresholds before surfacing SJ tendency data. When the data is too thin, we tell you — because an honest "insufficient data" label is more useful than a precise-looking number built on three rulings. Read about our thresholds on the methodology page.

Cross-Motion Dynamics

Cross-motions for summary judgment — where both parties move for SJ — create a unique analytical challenge. When both sides agree that no genuine factual dispute exists (they just disagree about who wins as a matter of law), the dynamics are fundamentally different from a one-sided SJ motion.

Some judges grant cross-motions at a higher rate than unilateral motions because the parties' agreement that facts are undisputed lowers the threshold. Others are more cautious, finding that the disagreement between the parties itself suggests factual disputes lurking beneath the surface.

When evaluating SJ analytics, check whether cross-motions are reported separately from unilateral motions. A judge with a 60% SJ grant rate including cross-motions might have a much lower rate on defendant-only or plaintiff-only motions.

Where to Find SJ Data

The landscape for finding summary judgment data mirrors the motion-to-dismiss landscape described in our MTD guide, with one important difference: SJ data is harder to compile manually because the opinions are longer and the outcomes are more nuanced.

Manual PACER Research

Pulling SJ opinions from PACER, reading each one, and categorizing the outcome (full grant, partial grant, denial, cross-motion resolution) takes 15-25 hours per judge for a thorough analysis. This is viable for a single judge in a high-stakes case but doesn't scale.

Structured Analytics Platforms

Westlaw Edge Litigation Analytics provides SJ-level motion data for judges with comprehensive federal coverage. Lexis+ Context offers similar capabilities. GavelSight provides SJ analytics with transparent methodology, case-type filtering, and honest confidence intervals at $79/seat/month.

CourtListener

CourtListener's full-text search lets you find a judge's SJ opinions, but extracting structured analytics from unstructured opinion text requires significant manual effort. It's the best free starting point for reading the opinions themselves — which you should do even after reviewing analytics. Numbers tell you the pattern; opinions tell you the reasoning.

Using SJ Analytics for Strategic Decisions

The 40-Hour Question

The core strategic question SJ analytics answers: is it worth investing 40-100 hours in this motion? If your judge grants SJ in your case type 15% of the time, that's a low-percentage bet. You're spending weeks of work on a motion that fails 85% of the time. That doesn't mean you should never file it — sometimes a denied SJ motion still narrows the issues or creates a favorable appellate record. But it changes the cost-benefit calculus.

Conversely, if your judge grants SJ in your case type 65% of the time, that's a motion worth investing in heavily. Allocate your best writers. Build a meticulous factual record. The odds are in your favor.

Settlement Leverage

SJ analytics influence settlement negotiations even before you file. If opposing counsel knows their judge has a high SJ grant rate in your case type, the threat of a well-briefed SJ motion carries more weight. This is one of the less obvious but most valuable uses of judge analytics — it shapes negotiations by changing both parties' assessment of litigation risk.

Redirect to Settlement

If the analytics show your judge is unlikely to grant SJ, redirecting resources from motion practice to settlement or trial preparation may be the better strategic move. A denied SJ motion doesn't just cost the hours you spent writing it — it also costs the months of delay while the motion was pending.

How GavelSight's Prediction Model Helps

GavelSight's SJ analytics go beyond historical grant rates to provide predictive scoring with transparent methodology:

• Case-type filtering: SJ rates broken down by employment, patent, contract, civil rights, and other categories
• Full vs. partial grant separation: Distinct tracking of outcomes that aggregate statistics obscure
• Confidence intervals: Every prediction shows its confidence range, widening with smaller samples
• Source attribution: Direct links to the opinions behind the numbers so you can read the judge's reasoning
• Temporal trends: Whether the judge's SJ tendencies have shifted in recent years

The goal is to give you the information to make better strategic decisions, with full visibility into what the data says and doesn't say. See our methodology for the technical details.

Related guides: How to Research Judge History · MTD Grant Rates by Judge · Time to Ruling Data