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

The definition of "consumer" under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act includes consumers who have been alleged by debt collectors to owe debts that the consumers themselves contend they do not owe. The Seventh Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of plaintiff's action against Main Street, alleging violations of the FDCPA and the Illinois Collection Agency Act. The court held that, based on the text of the FDCPA, plaintiff was a qualifying consumer under 15 U.S.C. 1692 where Main Street alleged that plaintiff owed debt and tried its case to the bench in small claims court, even if it failed to prove the claim. View "Loja v. Main Street Acquisition Corp." on Justia Law

The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment for Shellpoint in an action alleging that Shellpoint discriminated against plaintiffs based on race when it prohibited them from assuming the loan of a home that they had purchased. The court held that no reasonable jury could find that Shellpoint discriminated against plaintiffs based on their race where their only evidence was vague and speculative. Furthermore, the requirement that plaintiffs satisfy the outstanding loan payment was consistent with the loan agreement, which conditions assumption on Shellpoint's determination that its security would not be impaired. The court also held that plaintiffs did not point to evidence countering the Shellpoint representative's statement that they never produced a complete application. View "Sims v. New Penn Financial LLC" on Justia Law

The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion for a hearing under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), to probe the credibility of the FBI agent who procured a warrant for samples of his DNA. In this case, defendant conditionally pleaded guilty to bank robbery. The court held that, although the wording of the warrant affidavit was misleading, curing the inaccuracy would not defeat probable cause. Nevertheless, the court held that defendant failed to make a substantial preliminary showing that the misstatement was deliberate or reckless. View "United States v. Daniels" on Justia Law

The Seventh Circuit affirmed defendant's 71 month sentence after he pleaded guilty to distributing fentanyl. The court held that any error in calculating defendant's criminal history category was harmless because it had no effect on the sentenced imposed. The court also held that the district court gave a sufficient explanation for departing from the recommended 3-year term. The court remanded with instructions for the district court to correct two clerical errors in the written judgment. View "United States v. Clark" on Justia Law

The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of a petition for writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. 2254. Petitioner claimed that the prosecutor made improper statements during closing arguments. The court held that the prosecutor's comment on petitioner's failure to testify was not an invitation for the jury to consider petitioner's decision as evidence of his guilty. To the extent that any prejudice arose from the comment, the clear jury instructions cured it. The court also held that the prosecutor's argument concerning the Gangster Disciples did not prejudice petitioner. View "Clark v. Lashbrook" on Justia Law

The Seventh Circuit affirmed defendant's convictions for eight counts of health care fraud and eight counts of making false statements affecting a healthcare matter. The court held that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's guilty verdict where there was ample evidence in the record from which the jury could infer that in order to make insurance companies pay for something that otherwise fell outside their policies, defendant performed a cosmetic procedure on patients whom he intentionally misdiagnosed. The court held that the evidence also supported the finding that defendant committed fraud by submitting claims that IPL by itself destroyed 15 or more lesions caused by actinic keratosis, something he knew it could not do. Finally, the court declined to reach the merits of defendant's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. View "United States v. Memar" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed two discretionary conditions of his supervised release after pleading guilty to two counts of filing fraudulent federal tax returns. The first condition prohibited "excessive use" of alcohol and the second condition obligated defendant to submit to visits from his probation officer at any reasonable time.The Seventh Circuit held that defendant waived his challenge to the visitation condition where his counsel had previously told the district court that the condition was reasonable. In regard to the alcohol condition, the court held that, although the district court procedurally erred by failing to mention the objective benchmark in the district court's oral pronouncement of the sentence or later in its written judgment, the error could be fixed and remand was unnecessary. Accordingly, the court affirmed defendant's sentence. View "United States v. Smith" on Justia Law

The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of disability insurance benefits to plaintiff. The court held that substantial evidence supported the ALJ's decision to deny benefits where the opinion's of plaintiff's treating physician were inconsistent with the opinions from other doctors, and the physician's opinions lacked detail and did not show that he knew of the functional capacity evaluation from 2008. Furthermore, the ALJ did not improperly discount plaintiff's own testimony where the ALJ found plaintiff not fully credible for many specific reasons supported by the evidence. View "Hall v. Berryhill" on Justia Law

The Seventh Circuit reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment for Stryker in an action filed by plaintiff, a former employee, alleging a claim of retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The court, giving plaintiff as the non-moving party the benefit of conflicts in the evidence and any reasonable inferences in her favor, held that there was a genuine issue of material fact about the reason Stryker fired her. In this case, a reasonable jury could interpret the suspicious timing of her firing as evidence that one or both decision‐makers initially found plaintiff's actions in the Vail incident to be tolerable, and that they decided only later, after she had filed her internal complaint, to use that incident as a pretext to fire her for retaliatory reasons. Accordingly, the court remanded for further proceedings. View "Donley v. Stryker Corporation" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed suit against her former employer, Pearson, alleging claims of Title VII sex discrimination and other claims, after she allegedly did not get the same chance to resign with severance pay that three male employees received. Plaintiff also claimed that Pearson lost a key email exchange.The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court's overruling of plaintiff's objection about the emails and the district court's cure -- barring plaintiff from disputing her description of the emails but declining to grant further sanctions -- was sufficient. The court also affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment on the severance-pay discrimination claim where the three proposed comparators were not similarly situated to plaintiff. The court held that there was no evidence of pretext and the misstatement of the standard of review was harmless because the court's review was de novo. View "Barbera v. Pearson Education, Inc." on Justia Law