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

Plaintiff filed a charge with the EEOC accusing her employer, the Department of the Navy, of discriminating on account of race, sex, national origin, age, and disability. The EEOC found the charge unsupported. In the district court, neither party conducted discovery. Plaintiff sought judgment on the pleadings. The district judge denied the motion. After more than a year of inaction, the district judge dismissed the case for want of prosecution. Plaintiff's lawyer then filed an ex parte motion for relief from judgment, but did not serve the motion on his adversary or explain why a secret motion was authorized. The district judge denied the motion. Seventh Circuit affirmed, rejecting an argument that Local Rule 41.1 (the basis for dismissal for want of prosecution) violates the due process clause as "almost unintelligible." The court characterized the appeal as frivolous, stating that It bypassed the only possible argument:that the district judge abused his discretion by dismissing the suit without first warning about the risks of procrastination. The court gave plaintiff's attorney 21 days to show cause why he should not be subject to monetary sanctions for filing a frivolous appeal and violating Circuit Rule 30, and why he should not be censured, suspended, or disbarred on account of his apparent inability to practice competently and diligently in the federal courts.

Mother applied for supplemental security income on her daughter's behalf shortly before daughter's s eighteenth birthday, claiming that daughter was disabled by a combination of mental impairments (including bipolar disorder) and by physical impairments resulting from a 2005 car accident. An administrative law judge found the collective impairments severe but not disabling. The Seventh Circuit reversed and remanded. The ALJ did not properly analyze the opinion of a treating psychiatrist and did not adequately question vocational experts with respect to limitations on her concentration, pace, or persistence.

Airlines, users of airports owned by the City of Chicago, have use agreements that make they city responsible for runway clearing. The airlines pay a per-landing fee, based on the city's actual expenses. In 1999 and 2000 the airports were crippled by severe snowstorms. The city obtained $6,000,000 in reimbursement from FEMA under the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. 5121. Years later FEMA ordered the city to return the money, based on a provision of the Act concerning duplicate benefits. FEMA asserted that the use agreements entitled the city to reimbursement of costs from the airlines. After exhausting administrative remedies the city filed suit. The district court denied the airlines' motion to intervene. The Seventh Circuit reversed. Finding that the airlines have standing, the court stated that t would not be as "efficient to litigate this three-cornered dispute in two lawsuits rather than one."

A newborn suffered severe brain damage because doctors failed to promptly diagnose and treat an infection contracted at his 2003 birth. He was born prematurely and certain tests, normally done during pregnancy, were not performed by the federally-subsidized clinic where the mother received care. The clinic and its doctors are deemed federal employees under the Federally Supported Health Centers Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. 233(g)-(n), and shielded from liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In 2005 the parents filed suit in state court and, in 2006, HHS denied an administrative claim for damages. Within six months of the denial the case was removed to federal court. In 2010, the district court held that the claim was filed within the two year statute of limitations under the FTCA (28 U.S.C. 2401(b)) and awarded more than $29 million in damages against the government. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. A claim only accrues when a plaintiff obtains sufficient knowledge of the government-related cause of his injury; the plaintiffs were reasonably diligent.

Federal regulators limit the number of hours during which commercial truck drivers may operate their vehicles in a given day and over the course of a week, 49 C.F.R. 395.8(b) (2010). The traditional paper system for recording time is subject to manipulation and falsification. When the FMCSA considered requiring truckers to use electronic on-board records (EOBRs) instead of logbooks for documenting their records of duty status, it acknowledged that Congress contemplated rules mandating electronic monitoring, but also required the agency to ensure that any such device is not used to "harass vehicle operators." The 2010 final rule applied to motor carriers "that have demonstrated serious The Seventh Circuit held that the rule is invalid because the agency failed to consider an issue that it was statutorily required to address.

Inmates sued (officials in the Illinois Department of Corrections for marking up the price of commissary goods beyond the statutory cap (730 ILCS 5/3-7-2a). The district court screened the complaint under 28 U.S.C. 1915A and dismissed for failure to state a claim. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, stating that the case is really about a substantive violation of Illinois law, not about the procedures required before the plaintiffs can be deprived of a property interest. Even assuming a property interest, no pre-deprivation process could have predicted or prevented the alleged deprivation, and plaintiffs have not alleged the absence of adequate post-deprivation remedies. Where meaningful pre-deprivation review would either be impossible or ineffectual, adequate post-deprivation remedies may satisfy constitutional due process requirements.

Asian carp have migrated up the Mississippi River and are at the brink of the man-made Chicago-Area Waterway System path to the Great Lakes. The carp are dangerous to the eco-system, people, and property. States bordering the Lakes filed suit, alleging that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago manage the system in a manner that will allow carp to move into the Great Lakes, in violation of the federal common law of public nuisance. The district court denied a preliminary injunction that would have required additional physical barriers, new procedures to stop invasive carp, and an expedited study of how best to separate the Mississippi and Great Lakes permanently. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Plaintiffs presented enough evidence to establish a likelihood of harm, a non-trivial chance that carp will invade Lake Michigan in numbers great enough to constitute a public nuisance and that harm to the plaintiff states would be irreparable. The defendants have, however, mounted a full-scale effort to stop the carp and has promised that additional steps will be taken in the near future. This effort diminishes any role that equitable relief would otherwise play and an interim injunction would only get in the way.

Decedent, on active duty, committed suicide in his barracks. Navy and Department of Defense personnel had been called and arrived at his residence, but did not find the gun they were told he had. They permitted decedent to go to the bathroom accompanied by his friend. Upon entering, he pulled a gun from his waistband and committed suicide by shooting himself. After attempting unsuccessfully to recover from the Navy through administrative procedures, decedent's family brought a wrongful death claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The district court found the case barred by the Feres doctrine, which provides that "the Government is not liable ... for injuries to servicemen where the injuries arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service." The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Decedent stood "in the type of relationship to the military at the time of his . . . injury that the occurrences causing the injury arose out of activity incident to military service."

American citizen-civilians alleged that they were detained and illegally tortured by U.S. military personnel while in Iraq in 2006 and released from military custody without being charged with a crime. At the time they worked for a privately-owned Iraqi security services company. Plaintiffs sought damages and brought a claim to recover personal property that was seized. The district court denied motions to dismiss. The Seventh Circuit affirmed in part, holding that plaintiffs alleged sufficient facts supporting Secretary Rumsfeld's personal responsibility for the alleged torture and that he is not entitled to qualified immunity on the pleadings. The law was clearly established in 2006 that the alleged treatment was unconstitutional. No reasonable public official could have believed otherwise. A "Bivens" remedy is available for alleged torture of civilian U.S. citizens by U.S. military personnel in a war zone. The court noted that U.S. law provides a civil remedy for aliens who are tortured by their own governments. Claims by aliens, alleging torture by U.S. officials, are distinguishable. The Administrative Procedure Act's "military authority" exception precludes judicial review of military actions affecting personal property in a war zone.

Defendants ran the township trustee's office, which provides various social services. They defrauded the office by taking substantial payments for work they did not perform, deposited checks made out to the office into their personal bank accounts. They were convicted of two counts of mail fraud (18 U.S.C. 1341, 1346). The Seventh Circuit affirmed. While evidence of mailing was circumstantial, based on usual office practice, it was sufficient. The 2010 Supreme Court decision in Skilling v. U.S. did not mandate acquittal; even if honest services fraud is erased from the picture, the jury would have convicted defendants on a monetary fraud theory. The jury was properly instructed on both theories.