Now that there are so many judicial rulings, we have discontinued the practice of treating a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation as an order. That practice made sense in the early days of the Tracker, when there were not many rulings. The case that brought this issue to a head is Tappo of Buffalo, LLC v. Erie Insurance Company, which was transferred to the WDPA Erie MDL court after the magistrate judge assigned to the case in WDNY issued a report and recommendation. Now that Tappo has been transferred to the MDL court’s docket, it is definitely not accurate (if it ever was) to list that case as having been dismissed without prejudice. The only other case that this change in our practice affects is South Florida ENT Associates v. Hartford Fire Insurance Company, in which an early November report and recommendation by Magistrate Judge Torres has not yet been acted upon by Judge Williams.
