(You may want to read yesterday's post first.)
We have read three cases regarding summary judgment. Below is the analogy I've drawn to distinguish the different results. (Work in progress. May be edited subsequent to posting.)
In any trial, at least one party submits a sample of dough. The party with the burden of proof at trial needs to make sure that there are enough nuts and raisins in the dough somewhere to lead to a ruling in its favor.
When one party submits a motion for summary judgment, the dough of the non-moving party is rolled out. Under a simple reading of Rule 56, the moving party asserts the claim that the non-moving party could not possibly have enough nuts and raisins in its dough to justify a verdict in its favor. The court will look at the dough and maybe pat it a bit. It will not tear into the dough to look for the nuts and raisins, nor will it try to count them, but if the dough appears a bit lumpy the court may presume that a jury could find sufficient nuts and raisins. If the jury could find them, the jury could then count them and determine if there are enough to justify a verdict in favor of the non-moving party.
In Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co. [398 U.S. 144], the Adickes dough sample was thick and gooey, making it difficult to ascertain the population of nuts and raisins. While it was likely that there wouldn't be enough nuts and raisins, it was hard to be sure at that stage of trial. But because the moving party, the defense, couldn't foreclose the possibility that a jury would find enough nuts and raisins to decide in favor of the plaintiff, it was left to the jury to poke around the dough to find and count them.
With the Celotex Corp. v. Catrett case [477 U.S. 317], the Supreme Court applied a more complicated analysis to the nuts and raisins question. The Court first said that the moving party, the defendant Celotex, could try to point out that the dough clearly contained no nuts and raisins, leaving it to the plaintiff Catrett to note that there were in fact nut-like lumps in the dough. The Court then remanded to the Appeals Court to determine if the lumps were suggestive of sufficient nuts and raisins for a jury to find and evaluate, or if the plaintiff's claim was still essentially a nut-less doughy pleading only.
Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. [477 U.S. 242] posed a different problem. Whereas in most claims a mere preponderance of the evidence is required, in certain types of claims such as libel there needs to be a clear and convincing determination of proof. The plaintiff rolled out its dough, and indeed there were suggestive lumps throughout. But the Anderson Court took the language of the law providing the remedial right and superimposed a cookie cutter on the dough sample. While there may have been evidentiary lumps throughout the sample, the jury could only find and count the lumps that were contained within the boundary of the cookie cutter. After applying the cookie cutter the Court patted down the sample, ignoring the outlying lumps, and determined that there weren't enough lumps within the cutter's focus that could lead the jury to find in the plaintiff's favor.
Technically this was posted 11/18, so pretend this was posted 11/17 as intended.
Edit 12/3 - some tweaks throughout, and Celotex section rewritten.