Northern District of Alabama Magistrate Judges, a Critical Article L Extension of an Article Iii Court
| Publication year | 2020 |
| Pages | 0072 |
Justice Sotomayor wrote in a 2015 opinion that, "without the distinguished service of" federal magistrate judges, "the work of the federal court system would grind nearly to a halt." That holds true in the Northern District of Alabama.
The Federal Judicial Center says there are 541 full-time magistrate judges authorized for fiscal year 2019, five of whom are on the Northern District bench. This is a sharp increase since 1971, when there were only 61 full-time magistrate judges. Nationally, magistrate judges disposed of 1,182,422 matters during the 2018 fiscal year.
Magistrate judges in the Northern District of Alabama are in the center of both civil and criminal cases. In 2015, magistrate judges in the Northern District became a regular fixture in the random "wheel" assignment of civil cases in equal proportion to the district judges. If the parties consent to the magistrate judge assigned to the case, the magistrate judge handles the case through judgment. The rate of consent for magistrate judges is about 60 percent in the Northern District. In criminal cases, magistrate judges actively manage grand jury months and deal with significant pretrial and evidentiary matters.
Northern District magistrate judges resolved 6,649 cases during the 2017 fiscal year, so there is a good chance one of these folks will touch your case in some way if you litigate here. This article pulls back the curtain a little bit on our local magistrate judges.
Judge T. Michael Putnam
"I have had ajob, of one kind or another, since I was 16 years old," said Magistrate Judge T. Michael Putnam from his chambers. "My first job, when I was 16, was at a Jack's hamburgers in Phenix City." Judge Putnam, then a student at Central High School, said "my principal qualification was that I was capable of physically making change."
In a work life that started at Jack's and on ladders as a housepainter in southeast Alabama, then transitioned into a robust federal court civil trial practice in Florence, Judge Putnam has set the benchmark for longevity as a federal magistrate judge. He entered active service on February 9, 1987 and officially retired during the summer of 2019, before this article was published.
During those three decades as a judge, Judge Putnam handled many high-profile cases in the Northern District of Alabama. Of the thousands of cases on which he has worked-including the securities fraud trial of Richard Scrushy, the Blue Cross Antitrust MDL, the Eric Rudolph pretrial criminal matters-"the ones that I always remember are the ones that I recommended granting habeas corpus relief to a prisoner. There have only been three or four of them over the 32 years that I've been doing this, but those are the ones I remember."
"It may be many years after the fact," but "our constitutional system has ways of correcting its errors."
The most troubling cases also provide valuable instruction to lawyers. "Being a lawyer, you owe to the client and to the profession your full judgment and experience and effort" because the lawyer is the only thing standing between that client and real harm. "As a lawyer, you have to give your best effort."
A belief in the fundamental dignity of litigants and the high honor of an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States is the cornerstone of Judge Putnam's approach to his work. "The Federal judicial system is the crown jewel of what dispute resolution can be. And I hate to reduce it to just dispute resolution, but it has a degree of formality, and fairness, and gravity to bring to the resolution of a dispute between people."
"I grew up reading about Brown v. Board of Education and various other fundamental cases about human dignity, and human freedom, and human rights. That seemed to me to be a very important part and mission of the Federal court system."
"I have tried every day to remember that person is a human being," rather than becoming jaded to plaintiffs in Section 1983 prisoner litigation or habeas cases. He urges his clerks and staff "to look for those needles in the haystack"-cases where a prisoner in a Section 1983 case or who filed a habeas petition can articulate a meritorious claim-simply because the volume of those cases is overwhelmed by those with little substantive merit. "If a habeas case comes in, I will read every word that the plaintiff submits to the court. I don't take shortcuts, even though I know that takes longer to resolve a case." Judge Putnam says this dedication is "the only way I know to ensure that the volume simply doesn't overwhelm the oath I took to defend the Constitution."
Judge Putnam brings the same dedication to garden-variety civil litigation, as well. "I tell people in civil cases at scheduling conferences that, if you file a summary judgment motion and attach a deposition transcript, I'm going to read the deposition."
Judge Putnam is the longest-serving magistrate judge in the history of the Northern District of Alabama, and among the longest-serving in the Eleventh Circuit. "I'm going to leave with 32 years of experience here. A year later, Judge Ott will leave with more than 20 years' experience here. What that does is it takes some of the firsthand history away. But it doesn't take away from the skill...
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