Six Summary Judgment Safeguards

This article sets forth a more optimistic assessment of the current status of summary judgment. Numerous potential safeguards deter improper grants of summary judgment motions and serve to temper trial judges who are prone to rule favorably on summary judgment requests. While some of the safeguards act more as ineffectual clichés or slogans, others provide a set of significant deterrents to overly adventuresome treatment of Rule 56 motions. The goal of this article is to critique six possible summary judgment safeguards and, in so doing, to determine whether the state of contemporary summary judgment is as bleak as leading critics describe.