Federal Civil Practice

Ct. of Appeals vacated on mootness grounds Dist. Ct.’s order that denied plaintiffs-eight students’ request for preliminary injunction to preclude enforcement of defendant-University’s policy that required unvaccinated students and faculty to get COVID-19 vaccine or subject themselves to wearing masks and getting regular COVID-19 tests. Record showed that seven out of eight plaintiffs qualified for religious exemption to vaccine mandate, and eighth plaintiff declared that she had no plans to return as student to University. As such, lawsuit was moot, where no plaintiff faced potential consequence of vaccine mandate. Also, Ct. rejected plaintiffs’ contention that mootness doctrine did not apply, because subject of lawsuit is capable of repetition, but evading review, since: (1) capable-of-repetition doctrine applies only if dispute can recur between same parties, and instant plaintiffs will not be aggrieved by defendant’s vaccine requirement in future; and (2) instant vaccine requirement is not in short-lived category, whose application will be complete before court can act.

Dist. Ct. erred in granting defendants-prison guards’ motion for summary judgment in plaintiff-prisoner’s section 1983 action, alleging that defendants violated his 8th amendment rights by encouraging another inmate to assault him. Dist. Ct. found that dismissal was required because plaintiff had not filed prison grievance prior to filing instant lawsuit, and that defendant had not otherwise exhausted his administrative remedies. Ct. of Appeals found that plaintiff was not required to exhaust his administrative remedies, so as to allow instant action to proceed, where plaintiff stated that his prison counselor had refused his request for required grievance form, and where prison officials had threatened to hurt him if he had filed grievance.

Dist. Ct. erred in entering permanent injunction in plaintiff-prisoners’ class action, alleging that defendants-Illinois Dept. of Corrections officials failed to provide constitutionally adequate mental-health care. Record showed that parties eventually settled case, which required that defendants meet certain hiring and other benchmarks across more than dozen areas of mental health for prisoners. After defendant failed to reach said benchmarks, plaintiff returned to Dist. Ct. and argued, as required by settlement agreement, that defendants' failure to reach said benchmarks itself caused 8th Amendment violation. Dist. Ct. held that plaintiffs made requisite showing in five areas of mental health treatment and eventually entered permanent injunction requiring defendants to hire and maintain specific number of additional staff and imposing other requirements for delivery of mental-health on Dist. Ct.’s timetable. Ct. of Appeals, though, found that injunction had been improperly entered, where, although defendants had failed to meet benchmarks, record showed that, particularly with issue of under-staffing, defendants took reasonable efforts to add additional staff, so as to preclude finding that they had recklessly disregarded known risk for 8th Amendment purposes. Also, injunction violated Prison Litigation Reform Act by prescribing specific staffing levels and treatment timelines, which failed to go no further than necessary to correct any 8th Amendment violation. (Dissent filed.)

Dist. Ct. erred in denying plaintiff’s motion for class action certification with respect to three proposed subclasses in his Title VII action regarding defendant’s initial written exam, written situational exam and physical fitness test for hiring correctional officers, where plaintiff alleged that he and others were not hired as correctional officers, because said examinations had disparate and negative impact on black applicants. While Dist. Ct. found that plaintiff had failed to satisfy commonality factor for class action certification under Rule 23, Dist. Ct.’s analysis did not clearly delineate its reasoning for declining to certify instant subclasses. Moreover, unlike disparate treatment claims, disparate impact claims have greater likelihood of satisfying commonality factor in certification process, where: (1) focus of said claim is on challenged policy that, according to plaintiff, has disparately impacted class members; and (2) concern as to instant subclasses does not pertain to exercise of discretion by many actors, but rather to uniform administration of standardized tests to each class member. Moreover, Dist. Ct. could not inquire into merits of plaintiff’s disparate impact claims to determine instant commonality issue once plaintiff had identified policy that allegedly resulted in discrimination.

Dist. Ct. erred in denying defendants-police officials’ motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity grounds in plaintiff’s section 1983 action alleging that defendants withheld favorable evidence and fabricated evidence in plaintiff’s initial murder trial that resulted in hung jury, where plaintiff conceded that instant 14th Amendment claim was not cognizable under either Lewis, 914 F.3d 472 or Kuri, 990 F.3d 573. However, Ct. of Appeals dismissed defendants’ appeal from Dist. Ct.’s denial of their summary judgment motion with respect to plaintiff’s 4th Amendment claim, alleging that plaintiff was detained for three years without probable cause prior to jury’s eventual acquittal of murder charges at second trial, since there was factual dispute as to whether there was probable cause to support defendant’s arrest and pretrial detention.

Court of Appeals certified following question to Illinois Supreme Court: “Do section 15(b) and 15(d) claims [under Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act] accrue each time private entity scans a person’s biometric identifier and each time a private entity transmits such a scan to a third-party, respectively, or only upon the first scan and first transmission?” In its motion to dismiss, defendant-employer argued that plaintiff’s claims arose first time plaintiff scanned her fingerprint into its system after law took effect in 2008, and as such, plaintiff’s lawsuit was untimely under longest possible limitations period. Dist. Ct. denied defendant’s motion to dismiss, but certified issue for appellate review under 28 USC section 1292(b).

Dist. Ct. erred in dismissing as untimely plaintiffs’ complaints, alleging that defendant’s inferior vena cava (IVC) filters were defective, where: (1) plaintiff had directly-filed their cases in instant previously established multidistrict litigation in Southern District Court of Indiana; (2) Indiana applied two-year limitations period for personal injury actions; (3) plaintiffs' home states of South Carolina and Mississippi had three-year limitation periods for said actions; and (4) plaintiffs’ lawsuits would have been timely had they filed their cases in their home states and then had their cases eventually transferred to Southern District Court of Indiana as part of multidistrict litigation process. Record showed that under choice of law rules to which defendant had previously consented, plaintiffs’ lawsuits were governed by law of their originating jurisdictions, as opposed to law of Dist. Ct.’s forum state. Moreover, various case management orders issued by Dist. Ct. provided additional evidence that defendant had implicitly consented to have Dist. Ct. apply choice of law rules from properly identified originating jurisdictions for directly-filed cases. As such, defendant could not reverse course and seek dismissal under Indiana law for directly-filed cases from plaintiffs, whose causes of action had arisen from other jurisdictions and who had directly filed their cases with understanding that their cases would be governed by law of their originating jurisdiction.

Dist. Ct. abused its discretion in granting class action treatment to plaintiff’s lawsuit that raised due process challenges to defendant-City’s ordinance and procedures that allowed defendant to tow and dispose of plaintiff’s vehicle after making determination that said vehicle had been abandoned on defendant’s street. Dist. Ct. had failed to properly analyze plaintiff’s seven claims to determine whether there were common, individual and/or predominant issues regarding whether plaintiff had actual notice that her car would be towed or disposed of, and whether plaintiff’s claims were factual or as-applied challenges. Dist. Ct. further failed to clearly define proposed classes and claims and to properly analyze whether plaintiff, who received notice of defendant’s actions through her daughter, would be adequate representative for all proposed class members in view of Memphis Light, 436 U.S. 1.

Ct. of Appeals lacked jurisdiction to consider merits of appeal of Bankruptcy Ct.’s order remanding plaintiff-creditor’s foreclosure action to state court. Section 1447(d) provides that order that remands matter to State court from which it had been removed is generally not reviewable on appeal, and 28 USC section 1452(b) limits ability of Ct. of Appeals to review remand orders pertaining to matters relating to bankruptcy cases. As such, both sections 1447d) and 1452(b) precluded Ct. of Appeals from considering merits of remand order under circumstances where Bankruptcy Ct. had made finding that it lacked jurisdiction over foreclosure action because of prior finding that defendants-debtors’ prior bankruptcy discharge did not cover debt at issue in foreclosure action. Defendants also waived any argument on appeal of Dist. Ct.’s award of attorney’s fees and costs associated with remand order, where defendants’ argument against said award of fees and costs was different from their appellate challenge to said award.

Dist. Ct. did not err in granting defendant’s motion for summary judgment with respect to plaintiff’s three FOIA requests seeking materials relating to university campuses in foreign countries, as well as documents relating to U.S. Agency for International Development. During course of instant lawsuit, defendant produced some complete and partial records, as well as withheld some documents based on national security and deliberative-process exemptions. Moreover, defendant conducted additional searches based upon agreed-upon keywords to filter already-identified universe of potentially responsive documents. While plaintiff registered objection seven months after defendant had produced its key-word search, Dist. Ct. could properly find that said objection was untimely. Also, Ct. of Appeals rejected plaintiff’s claim that defendant made inadequate search for relevant documents, where: (1) agency’s sworn statements regarding its efforts to satisfy document requests enjoys presumption of good-faith; and (2) defendant provided documentation regarding its extensive, good-faith efforts to satisfy plaintiff’s three FOIA requests. Moreover, fact that plaintiff’ gave suggestion of locations that should have been searched did not require different result, where said locations either: (1) did not exist; (2) were in fact searched; or (3) were unlikely to have contained relevant documents. Too, defendant could properly withhold certain documents under national security exemption, where requests concerned confidential information regarding harassment of education official, as well as information revealed in confidence and information that risked harm to U.S.-Qatari relations.