{"id":165,"date":"2008-02-01T17:47:20","date_gmt":"2008-02-01T21:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.timcurran.com\/?p=165"},"modified":"2011-05-03T14:10:07","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T18:10:07","slug":"a-quick-summary-of-summary-judgment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/01\/a-quick-summary-of-summary-judgment\/","title":{"rendered":"A quick summary of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsummary judgment’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Okeechobee School District has asked federal courts for a summary judgment on whether a Gay-Straight Alliance should be allowed to meet on the Okeechobee High School campus.
\n  –Port St. Lucie News, 30 Jan 2008<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what the heck is a ‘summary judgment,’ anyway?<\/p>\n

‘Summary judgment’ is the term for a ruling in a civil lawsuit made by a judge, without a trial to establish facts. The premise is that there are no disputed material facts in the case, and that all the issues are legal ones. Obviously, the side that makes a motion for summary judgment wants the judgment to be in their favor.<\/p>\n

If both sides and the judge agree to summary judgment, it can be a huge time-saver in a case. These motions appear frequently in constitutional or civil rights suits.<\/p>\n

Oh, by the way, I think the newspaper lede* above is absolutely terrible, <\/em>and not just because it uses legal jargon (‘summary judgment’) without explanation. It also does what you should never do in a lede: instead of highlighting the conflict, it hides it. You would never know from this lede that the school district is adamantly, virulently opposed to having a Gay-Straight Alliance.<\/p>\n

*(that’s broadcast jargon for ‘lead’, spelled weirdly so as not to accidentally get pronounced as ‘led’)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Okeechobee School District has asked federal courts for a summary judgment on whether a Gay-Straight Alliance should be allowed to meet on the Okeechobee High School campus.   –Port St. Lucie News, 30 Jan 2008 So what the heck is a ‘summary judgment,’ anyway? ‘Summary judgment’ is the term for a ruling in a civil lawsuit made by a judge, without a trial to establish facts. The premise is that there are no disputed material facts in the case, and that all the issues are legal ones. Obviously, the side that makes a motion for summary judgment wants the judgment to be in their favor. If both sides and the judge agree to summary judgment, it can be a huge time-saver in a case. These motions appear frequently in constitutional or civil rights suits. Oh, by the way, I think the newspaper lede* above is absolutely terrible, and not just because it uses legal jargon (‘summary judgment’) without explanation. It also does what you should never do in a lede: instead of highlighting the conflict, it hides it. You would never know from this lede that the school district is adamantly, virulently opposed to having a Gay-Straight Alliance. *(that’s broadcast jargon for ‘lead’, spelled weirdly so as not to accidentally get pronounced as ‘led’)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-newswriting","tag-jargon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Tim Curran","author_link":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/author\/timcurran-admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The Okeechobee School District has asked federal courts for a summary judgment on whether a Gay-Straight Alliance should be allowed to meet on the Okeechobee High School campus.   –Port St. Lucie News, 30 Jan 2008 So what the heck is a ‘summary judgment,’ anyway? ‘Summary judgment’ is the term for a ruling in a civil…","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pNBEQ-2F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timcurran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}