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

Doherty and Farano formed Worth. The bank loaned Worth $400,000, with their personal guaranties. The bank extended the loan’s maturity date multiple times. Worth defaulted. The bank sued Worth, Farano, and Doherty. Doherty, an attorney, filed an appearance on behalf of himself and Worth and raised affirmative defenses, including that the bank extended the loan without authorization and charged fees and an interest rate not agreed upon. The court entered a default judgment for the loan balance against Farano. Doherty later received a report from a forensic document examiner, opining that his signature had been forged on loan extension paperwork. The bank dismissed its claims against Worth and Doherty without prejudice. Over a year later, Doherty sued the bank and individuals, alleging breach of contract, forgery, excessive fees, fraud, legal malpractice, and malicious prosecution. The trial court dismissed, holding that most of Doherty’s claims were barred by res judicata because he should have brought them in the guaranty action. Before Doherty’s appeal was heard, the bank went into the FDIC receivership. The FDIC removed this action to federal district court, which adopted the Illinois court’s decision. The Seventh Circuit vacated. Res judicata does not bar Doherty’s claims. None of the cited Illinois cases address this situation; similar cases suggest that applying the doctrine would be inappropriate. Applying res judicata here neither advances the purposes of res judicata nor meaningfully serves the interests of judicial economy. View "Doherty v. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation" on Justia Law

Police arrested five men involved in a string of Milwaukee armed robberies in 2016. Three of the defendants cooperated with the government and pled guilty. The two remaining defendants, Hunter and Evans, were convicted. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, upholding the district court’s handling of jury selection and denial of their Batson challenge. Even if the court could have conducted a more perfect jury selection by starting over with a new panel, the choice to restart the process with the same panel was not clear error. The Supreme Court has expressly declined to mandate a procedural approach for handling jury selection after a party raises a Batson challenge. The court rejected an argument that the district court violated the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause when it prevented them from cross‐examining government witnesses about the specific prison terms they avoided through their cooperation. The defense’s cross‐examination exposed enough information for the jury to deduce that the witnesses received a serious benefit from cooperating with the government. The court also rejected challenges to how the trial court handled witness testimony and to the sufficiency of the evidence. View "United States v. Evans" 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

In 1998, Williams hired Jaffe as her attorney. The statute of limitations expired before Jaffe filed a complaint. Williams sued for legal malpractice, obtained a default judgment, and recorded that judgment on property owned by Jaffe and his wife as tenants by the entirety. Jaffe filed a chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in 2015, which identified that debt, indicating it was secured by a judgment lien on his residence. On the petition date, Jaffe and his wife owned the property as tenants by the entirety. Before bankruptcy proceedings were complete Jaffe’s wife died.When she died the tenancy by the entirety terminated; Jaffe held the property individually in fee simple. In Illinois, a creditor cannot force the sale of the tenancy by the entirety property to collect a debt against only one of the tenants but not all interests held by tenants by the entirety are immune from process. Jaffe argued that his contingent future interest in the property was exempt under 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3)(B), which refers to “any interest in property which the debtor had, immediately before the commencement of the case, an interest as a tenant by the entirety or joint tenant to the extent that such interest as a tenant by the entirety or joint tenant is exempt from process under applicable nonbankruptcy law.UnThe Seventh Circuit reasoned that the statute exempts any interest held by an individual as a tenant by the entirety to the extent that state law exempts that particular interest so that the property cannot be excluded from the bankruptcy estate. View "Williams v. Jaffe" on Justia Law

SportFuel registered its first “SportFuel” trademark for “food nutrition consultation, nutrition counseling, and providing information about dietary supplements and nutrition,” which became “incontestable” in 2013 (15 U.S.C. 1065). SportFuel later registered the trademark for “goods and services related to dietary supplements and sports drinks enhanced with vitamins.” Gatorade, created in 1965, is more widely known and is the official sports drink of the NBA, PGA, MLB, MLS, and other organizations. In addition to its traditional sports drinks, Gatorade now customizes its sports drinks by selling formulas that are tailored to the nutritional needs of individual professional athletes and sells other sports nutrition products. It began to publicly describe its products as sports fuels in 2013. In 2016 it registered the trademark “Gatorade The Sports Fuel Company.” Gatorade disclaimed the exclusive use of “The Sports Fuel Company” after being advised that the phrase was merely descriptive of its products. SportFuel sued for trademark infringement, unfair competition, and false designation of origin in violation of the Lanham Act. Gatorade sought cancellation of SportFuel’s trademark, moved to exclude SportFuel’s expert’s testimony and survey evidence concerning the likelihood of consumer confusion from Gatorade’s use of the slogan. The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Gatorade, finding that SportFuel failed to produce evidence that demonstrated a factual dispute on any of the three elements of Gatorade’s fair use defense. Gatorade descriptively used the term “Sports Fuel” in its slogan fairly and in good faith. View "SportFuel, Inc. v. PepsiCo, Inc." 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

Defendants appealed their convictions for crimes related to their involvement in a bank robbery. Defendant Thompson's attorney field an Anders brief explaining that he does not believe Thompson has any viable arguments on appeal. The Seventh Circuit affirmed and dismissed appeal No. 19-1519.The court affirmed Thomas's conviction and sentence in appeal No. 19-1356, holding that there was no plain error in admitting the testimony of Thomas' probation officer; there was no abuse of discretion by deciding to allow evidence of Thomas's statement that the Mercedes was worth $30,000; there was not abuse of discretion in the government's use of the word "you" instead of "reasonable person" in its closing argument to describe the inquiry for intimidation; the delay in this case did not violate the Speedy Trial Clause of the Sixth Amendment; and there was no error, let alone plain error, in the jury instruction regarding accomplice liability. View "United States v. Thomas" 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