Data released last month by the federal judiciary showed that several of Colorado’s federal trial judges successfully reduced or even eliminated the volume of motions pending for six months or longer on their dockets.

The Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 requires public reporting of motions awaiting action for more than six months in civil matters assigned to each district judge and magistrate judge. For the reporting period ending Sept. 30, 2023, the backlog encompassed 235 motions across Colorado’s U.S. District Court, with the vast majority of overdue decisions concentrated among a handful of judges.

However, as of March 31, 2024, the situation was vastly improved. Only 70 motions were outstanding. Two people with chronic delays, Senior Judges William J. Martínez and Raymond P. Moore, slashed their backlogs by 47% and 64%, respectively. Chief Judge Philip A. Brimmer eliminated his entirely.

In a major improvement, Judge Daniel D. Domenico, who once had nearly 200 motions on his six-month list at the end of September 2022, ended March with only six remaining.

Through the court’s clerk, the judges declined to comment about what they were doing differently. Since January, the court has had its full complement of seven active district judges. The most recent appointee, Judge S. Kato Crews, received a portion of existing cases from each of his peers, although Brimmer clarified at a legal event last month that new judges tend not to receive cases that have been pending for a long time.

When enacting the Civil Justice Reform Act, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., incorporated a provision requiring the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to release a public list of each trial judge’s pending motions as of March 31 and Sept. 30 each year. Under the reporting protocols, a motion becomes “pending” 30 days after its filing. Judges also have the opportunity to give a reason for the delay, such as “complexity of case,” “extensive discovery involved” or “voluminous” materials.

The motions on the six-month list range from dismissal and summary judgment requests, which can potentially end a case without a trial, to evidentiary and procedural matters.

Behind the raw numbers reported, there are nuances surrounding many of the motions.

For example, as of March 31, Senior Judge Christine M. Arguello had three evidentiary motions in an excessive force lawsuit out of Colorado Springs that were filed in December 2022. She issued a decision 1.5 years later, in May of this year. However, the plaintiffs’ lawyers were unbothered by the gap.

“A big reason for the substantial time between those motions being filed and the judge ruling on them was because Colorado Springs and its officers took an appeal to the 10th Circuit,” said attorney Reid Allison. “After getting the case back in January 2024, Judge Arguello ruled.”

Of the 17 motions on Moore’s list, one-third of them were awaiting a decision for roughly a year or more beyond the six-month window. All of those were motions for summary judgment or dismissal.

In one lawsuit filed in 2021, an injured motorist sued his insurer for benefits to cover his surgery. GEICO, the defendant, filed a motion for summary judgment in April 2022. The parties submitted nearly 300 pages of documents in arguing the motion.

As of March 31, Moore had yet to make a decision, citing the “complexity” of the case. He finally issued an order in June, more than two years after the motion was filed, allowing some of the claims to proceed to trial.

With 103 outstanding motions as of Sept. 30, Domenico successfully resolved 94% of them before the most recent reporting deadline. Attorney Mike Laszlo, who previously spoke to Colorado Politics about his client’s motion to dismiss sitting on Domenico’s desk for more than three years, finally received a decision two days before the deadline.

“We had no advance notice of it, and we’re pleased with the result,” said Laszlo. “I cannot say why it was decided when it was. It came with a few other orders, so perhaps it was just time for Judge Domenico to issue his orders in the case.”

Domenico also received assistance in addressing two lawsuits for which potentially case-ending motions were languishing for years beyond the six-month window.

In one case, the parties asked Domenico for a hearing 33 months after the summary judgment motion was filed, only for Domenico to wait almost a year to reject the request. In the other case, the plaintiff’s lawyer withdrew last summer, telling Domenico the parties had been waiting more than four years for a decision and he was retiring as an attorney.

On Dec. 13, citing the rule allowing cases to be reassigned for “good cause” or with the approval of the chief judge, the court transferred the two lawsuits from Domenico to Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich. Tymkovich sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit but occasionally volunteers to handle cases in the trial court. Domenico, a Donald Trump appointee who is Tymkovich’s former clerk, may be among the candidates to succeed him should Tymkovich retire during a Republican administration.

“Judge Tymkovich took a total of five older cases from the District of Colorado last year to assist when the District was down several judges due to retirements or senior status. He likes to take district court cases if he has the capacity to do so,” Tymkovich’s judicial assistant told Colorado Politics by email in response to a question about Tymkovich’s intervention.

As of March 31, the summary judgment motions in the two cases were 1,306 days and 1,550 days beyond the six-month window. Tymkovich issued his decisions within 60 days of the reporting deadline.

Attorney Bradley A. Levin, who represented one of the plaintiffs, declined to blame Domenico for the yearslong delay, instead citing a need to increase the number of judges on Colorado’s federal bench.

“Although we don’t know why the case was reassigned to Judge Tymkovich when it was, the delay in deciding the (motion) is symptomatic of a larger problem in Colorado’s federal district court,” he said.

“While undue delay in an individual case such as this will cause inherent prejudice to the client — ‘justice delayed is justice denied’,” Levin added, “jurists like Judge Domenico have to be mindful of the devastating consequences for litigants of making a rush to judgment without thoughtful onsideration of the parties’ respective legal arguments — consideration which requires adequate time, resources and thoroughness.”