In Nambiar v. The Central Orthopedic Group, LLP, No. 24-1103 (2d Cir. Oct. 28, 2025), the Second Circuit disaffirmed the clear-error standard of review applied by some district courts in the circuit to review Report and Recommendations (“R&R”) issued by federal magistrate judges. The panel holds that any portion of an R&R to which a plaintiff filed timely and specific written objections triggers de novo, not clear error, review under Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(2) and 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C).
Plaintiff Nambiar filed an action claiming that she was terminated by her employer, defendant, Central Orthopedic Group because of age, sex, and retaliation in violation of state and federal law, plus tort and contract claims under state law.
“On October 26, 2023, Judge Seybert referred the pending motions to Magistrate Judge Arlene R. Lindsay. Magistrate Judge Lindsay issued an R&R on February 1, 2024, recommending that defendants’ motion for summary judgment be granted and Nambiar’s motion to reconsider and to strike be denied. On March 26, 2024, finding no clear error in the R&R and adopting the R&R in its entirety, District Judge Seybert granted summary judgment in favor of defendants and denied Nambiar’s motion to reconsider and to strike.”
While the Second Circuit affirms summary judgment on the merits, it uses this opinion to address recurring issues in the lower courts concerning review of magistrate judge R&Rs.
The panel addresses what it takes for a party to “properly object” to an R&R. “A proper objection must be timely” under Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(2) and 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C), which provides 14 days after being served with the R&R to serve and file written objections. Also, a proper objection must be made “with sufficient specificity so as reasonably to alert the district court of the true ground for the objection.” Finally, “[a] proper objection generally may not raise new arguments not previously made before the magistrate judge.”
Citing these standards, the panel holds that the plaintiff properly objected to at least some parts of the R&R.
The district court erred, that panel holds, by “appl[ying] an additional qualification to the definition of a ‘proper objection,’ requiring that an objection may not reiterate to the district judge arguments already raised before the magistrate judge.”
“A number of district court decisions in this Circuit . . . have limited their consideration of objections, as the District Judge did in this case, by refusing to review an R&R de novo where the objecting party relied on an argument already raised and rejected by the magistrate judge . . . . This rule places a litigant in an impossible position. She may not raise an argument for the first time in her objections to the magistrate judge’s R&R. But she also may not raise an argument she has already argued. That cannot be. A litigant who has fully and forcefully argued her point in front of the magistrate judge and lost must be able to make that argument again to the district judge. Otherwise, what value would there be in objecting?”
“In sum, a litigant objecting to an R&R may not simply rest on the briefs considered by the magistrate judge; she must lodge a specific objection to some specific aspect of the R&R. But the objection not only may, but often must, repeat arguments that were previously raised. When a timely filed objection raises and properly briefs arguments previously rejected by the magistrate judge, the district judge must review those arguments de novo.”
The panel concludes: “The District Judge here, understandably following an approach that has gone unchecked for some years, rejected Nambiar’s proper objections to certain portions of the R&R on the ground that the same arguments raised in the objection were also made to the Magistrate Judge. That was error. Because Nambiar properly objected to the R&R’s findings as to her claims of sex discrimination and aiding and abetting discrimination, the District Judge should have reviewed de novo the Magistrate Judge’s recommended disposition of those claims.”
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