Federal Civil Practice

Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit alleging that the defendant and various board members for the defendant violated plaintiffs' First Amendment rights by removing one of the plaintiffs from a public board meeting and restricting her ability to attend subsequent meetings. The appeal, however, did not involve the substance of the lawsuit but incidents that occurred during a deposition where an attorney for the plaintiffs allegedly assaulted opposing counsel. The district court ordered an evidentiary hearing and ultimately entered sanctions that removed the attorney from the case and required the plaintiffs’ remaining counsel to pay reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs to the defendants. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the sanctions entered against the attorney who was removed from the case but vacated the sanctions against the other attorneys for lack of notice. (KIRSCH and PRYOR, concurring)

Plaintiff filed a lawsuit against his employer after the employer verified that he had been racially harassed by other employees alleging that the employer subjected him to a hostile work environment, failed to promote him based on his race, and retaliated against him. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant and plaintiff appealed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that the district court properly applied the sham-affidavit rule when it disregarded an affidavit submitted by the plaintiff in opposition to the motion and in finding that the plaintiff did not present sufficient evidence for either of his substantive claims. (PRYOR and KOLAR, concurring)

Plaintiff filed an action asking the federal court to intervene in an eminent domain action proceeding in state court, and requesting that the federal court enjoin the state court proceedings and award damages for alleged constitutional and federal law violations. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim and plaintiff appealed. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, explaining that the plaintiffs claims had been raised in the state court condemnation proceedings and that they could not relitigate them as “thinly disguised” federal claims. (KIRSCH and KOLAR, concurring)

Plaintiffs, a group of consumers, filed arbitration claims before the American Arbitration Association alleging that defendants, through their electronic devices, unlawfully collected and stored biometric data in violation of Illinois law. Defendant refused to pay the administrative filing fees and the AAA terminated the arbitration proceedings. The plaintiffs then filed a petition to compel arbitration in federal court and the district court ordered defendant to pay the associated arbitration filing fee. Defendant appealed and the Seventh Circuit reversed, finding that the plaintiffs failed to meet their evidentiary burden in proving the existence of an arbitration agreement and noting that because the parties’ alleged agreement incorporated AAA’s rules and procedures, the AAA had substantial discretion over resolving fee disputes. (EASTERBROOK and SYKES, concurring)

Plaintiff’s law firm appealed from a district court order declining to award the firm’s requested attorneys fees in an underlying disability matter. The district court had disregarded a contingency fee agreement signed by the plaintiff and reduced the requested fees by 60 percent, finding that the full amount of the fees was prohibited by the statute as a “windfall” to the law firm. The Seventh Circuit vacated the district court’s order and remanded for further proceedings, finding that the district court abused its discretion when it did not first consider the language of the contingency fee agreement before considering the reasonableness of the request.

Plaintiff brought a lawsuit and proposed collective action alleging that she and her co-workers were wrongly denied overtime pay pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Defendant filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that plaintiff had signed an arbitration agreement and the district court did not have jurisdiction over the matter. The district court granted the motion over plaintiff’s objection that defendant had waived its argument. The Seventh Circuit reversed, explaining that while defendant did not waive its arguments relating to the arbitration agreement the federal court nonetheless had jurisdiction because the arbitration agreement was governed by the Federal Arbitration Act. The Seventh Circuit left the question of whether the case could pursue as a collective action for another day. (BRENNAN and PRYOR, concurring)

The plaintiff obtained a default judgment against the defendant arising out of an injury to a worker at a construction site. Plaintiff attempted to collect the judgment by adding an insurance company to the action as a garnishee using Illinois state law and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The district court, however, dismissed the matter by finding that adjudicating the scope of coverage under the applicable insurance policy was outside of its subject matter jurisdiction because it was factually and legally distinct from the underlying lawsuit. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, explaining that under federal ancillary jurisdiction, proceedings collateral to an underlying lawsuit must be sufficiently related to the facts and legal issues of the original action and that attempting to adjudicate new issues of liability against new parties fell outside the scope of ancillary enforcement jurisdiction. The appellate court noted that in order to resolve the dispute in a federal forum the plaintiff was required to file a new civil action. (BRENNAN and KIRSCH, concurring)

Plaintiff filed an application with the State Department for a waiver of a waiting period to apply for a visa. After his application had been pending for more than a year, plaintiff filed a lawsuit in district court seeking an order directing the agency to render a decision. The district court, however, dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, finding that judicial review was precluded by the applicable language of the federal statutes and that there was no authority for the court to order the executive branch to process a visa waiver application within a specific period of time. (BRENNAN and SCUDDER, concurring)