Summary judgment is where most federal civil cases actually get decided, and yet practitioners consistently make the same structural mistakes in their briefs that give courts reasons to deny motions that should win. This post breaks down how Rule 56 works in practice, what the Celotex trilogy actually tells us, and how to write a brief that gives you a real chance of winning.
What the Rule Actually Says
(a) Motion for Summary Judgment or Partial Summary Judgment. A party may move for summary judgment, identifying each claim or defense, or the part of each claim or defense, on which summary judgment is sought. The court shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The court should state on the record the reasons for granting or denying the motion.
That word “shall” is doing a lot of work. This is a mandatory standard, not a discretionary one. If you show there’s no genuine dispute of material fact and you’re entitled to judgment as a matter of law, the court has to grant it. The problem is getting there.
The Celotex Trilogy and What It Actually Means for Your Brief
The three cases that define modern summary judgment practice are Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317 (1986), Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986), and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574 (1986). If you haven’t read all three recently, read them again.
Celotex settled a circuit split over the movant’s initial burden. The Court held that the movant does not have to produce affirmative evidence negating the nonmovant’s case. Instead, you can meet your initial burden by showing that the nonmovant lacks sufficient evidence to establish an essential element of its claim. That shifts the burden to the nonmovant to come forward with specific facts showing a genuine dispute.
Anderson gives you the “genuine” and “material” definitions. A fact is material only if it could affect the outcome under the governing substantive law. A dispute is genuine only if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmovant. The standard tracks the directed verdict standard, which means you should be thinking about what a rational juror could do with the evidence, not what any conceivable juror might do.
Matsushita is the one practitioners underuse. The Court said that when the nonmovant’s theory is economically implausible or facially unreasonable, the court may demand more than a scintilla of evidence before finding a genuine dispute. In an antitrust context, that meant the nonmovant had to produce evidence that “tend[ed] to exclude the possibility” of independent conduct. The principle travels beyond antitrust: if the opposing story doesn’t make economic or logical sense, courts can weigh that in deciding whether the dispute is truly “genuine.”
How Courts Handle Competing Inferences
Courts draw reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmovant. This is the piece movants forget until they’re reading a denial order. The question isn’t whether your evidence supports your position; it’s whether a reasonable jury, drawing all reasonable inferences for the other side, could find differently.
The word “reasonable” is doing the limiting work here. Courts are not required to draw every conceivable inference for the nonmovant, only reasonable ones. Speculative inferences, inferences that contradict the record, and inferences that depend on the nonmovant’s own uncorroborated assertions don’t count.
One practical consequence: when you’re the movant and you see an argument in the opposition that relies on an inference from ambiguous conduct, the right response is not to say the inference is wrong. The right response is to show why the inference is unreasonable given everything else in the record. That’s a much harder case for the court to dismiss.
Structuring a Brief That Actually Works
The biggest mistake I see in summary judgment briefs is treating the Statement of Facts as a formality. It isn’t. The Statement of Facts is where you win. Courts read it before they read your legal argument, and if your facts tell a coherent story that points in one direction, you’ve already done half the work.
A few specific things that make the difference:
- Cite to the record on every factual assertion, every time. Rule 56(c)(1) requires a party asserting that a fact cannot be or is genuinely disputed to support the assertion by citing to particular parts of materials in the record. Vague citations like “See Exhibit A” don’t cut it. Cite to page and line numbers in depositions, specific paragraphs in declarations, and specific document pages.
- Don’t paper the record with irrelevant facts. Every undisputed fact in your statement should be doing work for one of the elements you need to establish or defeat.
- Address each element of each claim separately. Organize your argument section by element, not by theme. Courts working through a multi-claim motion need to be able to follow your analysis element by element.
- File a partial summary judgment motion if you can’t win on everything. Rule 56(a) explicitly allows it, and getting an element or a claim knocked out before trial changes settlement dynamics significantly.
On the opposition side, your job under Rule 56(c)(1)(B) is to show that the materials cited by the movant do not establish the absence or presence of a genuine dispute, or that you cannot produce admissible evidence to support the fact. Saying “this is disputed” without a record citation gets you nothing, and under Rule 56(e)(2), the court can deem the fact undisputed if you fail to properly address it.
The Rule 56(d) Escape Hatch and When It Helps
If you’re opposing summary judgment before discovery is complete, Rule 56(d) lets you ask the court to defer or deny the motion, or allow additional discovery, by showing through affidavit or declaration that you can’t present facts essential to your opposition. Courts grant these when they’re properly supported. The mistake is filing a conclusory 56(d) declaration that just says discovery isn’t done. You need to identify specifically what facts you expect to uncover and why the pending discovery is likely to produce them. Without that specificity, most courts treat the request as a delay tactic.
One Trap That Catches Experienced Litigators
Rule 56(f) allows courts to grant summary judgment for a nonmovant, grant a motion on grounds not raised by a party, or consider summary judgment on their own after identifying for the parties material facts that may not be genuinely in dispute, after giving notice and a reasonable time to respond. Practitioners get surprised by this. If you file a motion and the court’s tentative order grants judgment against you on an issue you thought was safe, that’s Rule 56(f) at work. Read your local rules carefully: some districts have specific procedures for sua sponte summary judgment that affect your response obligations and deadlines. Treating your own motion as the only thing that could go wrong is a mistake you only make once.