Ruling on the Motion

Ruling on the Motion

Rule 56(a) gives the court two instructions about its ruling. The court shall grant the motion if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, and the court should state on the record the reasons for granting or denying the motion.¹ The first verb is mandatory and the second is not. A movant who makes the showing is entitled to the grant, while the statement of reasons is an expected practice that leaves the test for granting untouched.

Stated reasons matter because very different conclusions can hide behind the same order. A grant may rest on the absence of any genuine dispute about the facts, on the law favoring the movant once the facts are settled, or, improperly, on the judge's belief that one side's witnesses are more believable. A bare grant leaves the losing party, and any court reviewing the order, to guess which. Reasons let them check whether the judge asked if a genuine dispute exists instead of asking which side's evidence is stronger. A denial benefits in the same way: reasons that identify the genuine dispute, or the gap in the movant's showing, tell the parties what the trial will be about.

Nothing in Rule 56(a) makes a hearing a precondition of the ruling; the Rule speaks only of the movant's showing and the court's reasons. The timing of any hearing also rests with the judge, who can always delay a hearing on the motion until the respondent has had time to prepare.²

A motion may also reach the ruling stage by conversion. When a party attaches affidavits or other materials to a pleading challenge in order to refute the existence of a genuine factual dispute, the judge has discretion to treat the challenge as a motion for summary judgment. That discretion is typically exercised in favor of converting unless the responding party was so surprised as to be prejudiced.³ A motion converted in this way is ruled on as one for summary judgment.

That order does what the Rule contemplates. It rests on the papers, and its stated reason, that the customer offered no evidence on payment, is one a reviewing court can test against the same record.

Stated reasons also make one kind of error easy to see.

Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. states the instruction the second judge ignored. Credibility determinations, the weighing of evidence, and the drawing of legitimate inferences from the facts are jury functions, whether the judge is ruling on summary judgment or on a directed verdict, and the nonmovant's evidence is to be believed, with all justifiable inferences drawn in its favor.⁴ A judge who cannot write a reason for granting the motion without comparing the witnesses has usually found a dispute and should deny the motion.

The court's role is correspondingly limited when credibility is in play. It does not assess any witness's credibility; it decides only whether there is reason to believe that credibility may be determinative, and if so, it denies the motion. A party who wants the court to reach that conclusion must introduce facts showing why a witness's credibility is in question, typically evidence that the witness is a party or that the issue turns on the actor's state of mind or motive.⁵

The Rule says the court shall grant the motion when its conditions are met, yet a trial judge keeps a limited discretion in the other direction. Anderson tells trial courts to act with caution in granting summary judgment and adds that a trial court may deny the motion where there is reason to believe the better course is to proceed to a full trial, citing Kennedy v. Silas Mason Co.⁶

The discretion does not reach hard legal questions. The difficulty of a legal issue is not ordinarily a reason to insist on trial; when the record is adequate and the material facts are undisputed, the judge must decide the hard question of law.⁷ The discretion therefore belongs to cases in which a trial would add something to the record, and it does not extend to cases in which the law is merely difficult. A judge who used it whenever a motion looked close would restore the trial the motion exists to avoid, and the duty to state reasons disciplines the choice by requiring the judge to say why this record calls for one.