Justia U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Evans, a state prisoner with multiple health issues, alleged that he developed nasal polyps and that the prison medical staff refused to authorize surgery, the only effective remedy. He sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging Eighth Amendment violations. The district court dismissed Evans’s case with prejudice as a discovery sanction. Kayira, one of the defendants, attempted to depose Evans. Kayira noticed the deposition by mail on February 16, for February 21. Evans swears that he did not receive that notice until February 22. When, on the 21st, he was taken from his cell to meet with the defendants’ lawyers, he says that he had no idea why they were there and was feeling ill and could not sit for the deposition. Evans refused to be sworn or to answer questions. The Seventh CIrcuit reversed. Although dismissal is sometimes the proper sanction for a discovery violation, it is one of the harshest sanctions a court can impose. Courts must be especially careful before taking that step. If a party appears for his deposition but refuses to cooperate, the proper procedure is to obtain a Rule 37(a) order, directing him to be sworn and testify. The order permitting Evans’s deposition was far from an order compelling Evans to do anything. In addition, Evans was entitled at least to actual notice. View "Evans v. Griffin" on Justia Law

Until 2013, Wozniak had tenure on the University of Illinois faculty. He waged an extended campaign against students who did not give him a teaching award. As he had done before when the University enforced school policies, Wozniak filed suit. Disagreeing with the University’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the Board of Trustees terminated Wozniak. After the Committee had issued its report, Wozniak posted the entire document and evidence on his website, revealing the identities of the students involved. Wozniak also filed a state court civil suit seeking damages from the students, planning to get a judicial order requiring the students to sit for depositions. Wozniak sued the University alleging violations of the First Amendment. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Wozniak was fired for intentionally causing hurt to students, and refusing to follow the Dean’s instructions, not simply for publicizing the effects of his actions. Wozniak acted in his capacity as a teacher and used his position to inflict the injuries that precipitated his discharge. The First Amendment does not govern how employers respond to speech that is part of a public employee’s job. How faculty members relate to students is part of their jobs. Speech that concerns personal job-related matters is outside the scope of the First Amendment, even if that speech is not among the job’s duties. View "Wozniak v. Adesida" on Justia Law

In 1997, Campos began working as a Cook County Sheriff’s Office correctional officer. In 2011, he was arrested for driving under the influence, striking a vehicle, and leaving the scene of an accident. Campos self-reported. The sheriff suspended him without pay and referred him for termination. The Merit Board has exclusive authority to terminate Sheriff’s Office employees. While the Board proceedings were ongoing, a state court granted Campos’s motion to suppress and quashed his arrest. The Board voted to terminate Campos. The circuit court vacated that decision as too vague to allow for judicial review and remanded. In 2017, the Board again voted to terminate Campos. The circuit court again remanded based on a defect in the Board’s composition. It had been almost seven years since the sheriff suspended Campos without pay. Rather than wait for a third Board decision, Campos filed suit in federal court, arguing that the protracted proceedings have violated his substantive due process rights. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of his claims. Campos has not met the high standard for stating a substantive due process claim. Employment rights are not fundamental rights and Campos identified no independent constitutional violation. The eight-year process is not so arbitrary or outrageous as to violate substantive due process. View "Campos v. Cook Countyx" on Justia Law

Three Chicago police officers stopped three black men in a grey sedan to investigate a shooting that had happened nearby a few hours earlier. When the passengers sued a year later, none of the officers remembered the Terry stop. They relied on other evidence to show that reasonable suspicion had existed. Cell phone footage taken by one of the plaintiffs during the encounter depicted Sergeant King, the officer who initiated the stop, citing the plaintiffs’ suspicious behavior in the area of the shooting as the reason that he had pulled them over. A police report showed that dispatches to officers, including King, identified the suspects as three black men in a grey car. The descriptions of the car’s model varied. The district court held that these descriptions were close enough to justify the Terry stop and that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity because the stop did not violate clearly established law. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting a “suggestion” that the defendants’ failure of memory was a concession of liability. The Fourth Amendment does not govern how an officer proves reasonable suspicion for a Terry stop; he can rely on evidence other than memory. The police report demonstrates what King knew and the cell-phone video shows him giving the shooting as the reason for the stop. View "cTorry v. City of Chicago" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against a correctional officer, her supervisor, and the warden, claiming that the officer's behavior violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. In this case, plaintiff alleged that he suffered from PTSD, that he asked the officer not to stand directly behind him so as to not trigger his symptoms, but the officer repeatedly refused to do so. The district court denied defendants' motion for summary judgment.The Seventh Circuit reversed, holding that defendants were entitled to qualified immunity because, at the relevant times, it did not violate clearly established constitutional law for non-medical correctional staff to refuse to provide a prisoner with what amounts to a medical accommodation that had not been ordered by medical staff and the need for which was not obvious to a layperson. Accordingly, the court remanded with instructions to grant summary judgment in favor of defendants. View "Leiser v. Kloth" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a prison inmate, filed suit alleging that he was punished based on his race, that he was deprived of liberty without due process of law, and that the prison staff's conduct in the wake of his mental health crisis amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. On appeal, plaintiff challenged the district court's summary judgment decision and sought a new trial based on his Batson claim. The Seventh Circuit held that plaintiff's Batson claim was timely and that the district court's decision otherwise was not harmless. The court remanded for an evidentiary hearing on the Batson claim and, if necessary, a new trial on all claims that were tried.The court also reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment for the nurse on plaintiff's taunting claim, holding that the Eighth Amendment can apply to an extreme case where medical staff use an inmate's known psychological vulnerability to cause psychological anguish. In this case, the nurse taunted plaintiff for his failed suicide attempts and encouraged him to try again. The court affirmed in all other respects. View "Lisle v. Welborn" on Justia Law

The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of a class action suit challenging the red light camera program of the Village of Lakemoor. Plaintiffs alleged that the violation notices they received were invalid because the notices lack a proper municipal code citation, and that Lakemoor denied them due process by limiting the defenses that can be asserted before a hearing officer to contest a violation.The court held that the process that plaintiffs received was constitutionally sufficient and therefore they have failed to state a federal due process claim. The court also held that plaintiffs' argument that the violation notices were void ab initio failed as a matter of law, because the "specific reference" provision was directory rather than mandatory. Accordingly, plaintiffs' unjust enrichment claim also failed. View "Knutson v. Village of Lakemoor" on Justia Law

Two Stateville inmates, struck by buckshot fired by prison guards, sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983, asserting that the guards violated their Eighth Amendment rights when they discharged their shotguns over a crowded prison dining hall. The guards claimed that they fired the shots as a necessary warning to two other inmates who were fighting and resisting the efforts of guards on the floor, armed only with pepper spray, who were trying to break up the conflict. The inmates claimed that the shots were fired after the fight had been broken up and that the officers did not aim their shots at a "shot box" intended to prevent ricochets. The district court granted the defendants summary judgment. The Seventh Circuit vacated, noting that the force was more than de minimus and that the allegations would support findings of intent to make contact and of malice. Many of the facts are disputed. Construing the facts in favor of the plaintiffs, the force applied was grossly disproportionate to the force that could plausibly have been thought necessary. View "McCottrell v. White" on Justia Law

Stepp sued his former employer, Covance, alleging violations of 42 U.S.C. 2000e–3, by refusing to hire him permanently in retaliation for his earlier complaints about discrimination. Stepp received positive performance reviews in his first nine months. Two of Stepp’s temporary coworkers were made permanent around their nine-month anniversary. While a temporary worker, Stepp, an African-American male, complained that Casteel, his team leader, treated female and white employees better than male and African-American employees and confronted Casteel directly. A manager investigated Stepp’s complaints but found them baseless. Stepp filed formal charges with the EEOC Casteel complained to Ball, a supervisor, that Stepp often stared at him, shook his head, smirked, and said “uh oh.” Shortly thereafter, with Stepp still in temporary status, Covance froze new hires in his department. Stepp asked Ball if Covance did not give him permanent status before the freeze because Casteel had complained about him; she responded “yes.” Stepp’s one-year term as a temporary worker ended soon after. Grubb, a human resources partner, planned to give a 90-day extension to temporary workers whose terms ended near the December holidays but Covance advised him that a 90-day extension was too long, so he shortened the extensions. The Seventh Circuit vacated a judgment in favor of Covance. A reasonable jury could conclude that Covance refused to promote Stepp to permanent status because of his complaints. View "Stepp v. Covance Central Laboratory Services, Inc." on Justia Law

Wilson, an inmate at Illinois’s Stateville Correctional Center, had an inguinal hernia that was first spotted in the 1990s, but then apparently subsided. In 2011, it reappeared in the identical spot. Wilson says that the recurrence was extremely painful. He claims that the prison’s medical officers refused to listen to him and delayed giving him hernia-repair surgery, instead forcing him repeatedly and fruitlessly to push the herniated tissue back into his abdominal cavity. In September 2014 Wilson received surgery, which was successful. Wilson alleged violation of his Eighth Amendment rights through deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs and sought damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983. The court dismissed a defendant, Dr. Carter, on statute of limitations grounds, and excluded several reports and ultimately dismissed the case. The Seventh Circuit reversed with respect to one defendant, Dr. Obaisi too quickly, but otherwise affirmed. Construing the facts in Wilson’s favor, a reasonable jury could believe Wilson’s testimony over Obaisi’s insistence on the completeness of his notes and could conclude that Dr. Obaisi not only learned of the painful hernia in January 2013, but also explicitly refused to hear potentially relevant medical details and was dismissive about Wilson’s pain. View "Wilson v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc." on Justia Law