Ali v. City of Chicago
| Decision Date | 17 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | 21-1536 |
| Citation | 34 F.4th 594 |
| Parties | Khalid ALI, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendants-Appellees, Appeal of: Glenn Miller, Petitioning Intervenor–Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Kenneth N. Flaxman, Joel A. Flaxman, Attorneys, Law Office of Kenneth N. Flaxman P.C., Chicago, IL, for Petitioning Intervenor-Appellant.
Ethan Merel, Attorney, City of Chicago Law Department, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before Rovner, Hamilton, and St. Eve, Circuit Judges.
In this appeal, we consider the timeliness of appellant Glenn Miller's motion to intervene after a settlement was reached in another person's civil rights suit that had not been pled as a class action. In some circumstances, such a post-settlement motion may be timely because the would-be intervenor had reasonably relied on other parties—such as representatives of a putative class—to protect her interests. E.g., United Airlines, Inc. v. McDonald , 432 U.S. 385, 394–95, 97 S.Ct. 2464, 53 L.Ed.2d 423 (1977). This case, however, had not been litigated as a class action. Plaintiff Khalid Ali brought the case as an individual claim against the City of Chicago and multiple police officers. He alleged that his constitutional rights were violated when he was detained overnight on an out-of-county warrant for another person with the same name and was not permitted to post bond.
About one year into the litigation, the district court rejected Ali's attempt to move for class certification without amending his complaint. Ali then moved for leave to amend, but the court denied that motion as well. Shortly after that, Ali settled his claim. Appellant Miller was never a party to Ali's case, but he wanted to challenge the district court's rulings. He moved to intervene, represented by the same law firm that had represented Ali. The district court denied Miller's motion as untimely. The court reasoned that, unlike potential intervenors in other cases, including United Airlines v. McDonald , Miller could not have relied on Ali to protect his interests because Ali had not brought his case as a class action.
On appeal, Miller raises three issues: (1) whether the district court abused its discretion in denying his motion to intervene as untimely; (2) whether the district court erred by striking Ali's motion for class certification because the complaint did not include any class allegations; and (3) whether the court erred by later denying Ali's motion for leave to amend his complaint to add class allegations. The first issue is decisive. The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Miller's motion to intervene as untimely. That means he is not a party to this lawsuit and cannot pursue the other challenges. See United States v. City of Milwaukee , 144 F.3d 524, 531 (7th Cir. 1998) (); see also SEC v. First Choice Management Services, Inc. , 767 F.3d 709, 711 (7th Cir. 2014) ().
In January 2019, plaintiff Ali brought this civil rights action against the City of Chicago and several police officers. He alleged that the officers had violated his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights when they arrested and detained him overnight based on a warrant for a different "Khalid Ali." That warrant had been issued by an Illinois state judge in another county. In his second amended complaint, Ali alleged that the officers were following a City policy "of refusing to release on bond an arrestee taken into custody on an arrest warrant issued by an Illinois state court outside of Cook County." In each version of his complaint, Ali requested compensatory and punitive damages. None of the complaints, however, included any class allegations or requests for class-wide relief.
In December 2019, two days before the deadline for completing fact discovery, Ali moved to certify a class of all persons who, on or after January 1, 2017, were detained by Chicago police officers on out-of-county warrants and were not permitted to post bond at the police station. He asserted in a footnote that he was not required to amend his complaint to include class allegations. The City moved to strike the motion for class certification, objecting that the complaint had never included any class allegations and that Ali had waited until the close of fact discovery to file his motion.
The district court granted the City's motion to strike. Since Ali had not added class allegations to his complaint, the certification motion "amounted to a request, at the end of fact discovery, to add a class-action claim to the case." The court concluded that such a request had to be denied because "notice of some kind must be given to the defense that Plaintiff is pursuing a class action." Ali petitioned this court for interlocutory review pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f), but we denied the petition.
Ali then moved for leave to amend his complaint to include class allegations. He argued that he did not have evidentiary support for the existence of the alleged City policy until the deposition of a police lieutenant in November 2019. The City replied that it had admitted to following the policy in discovery responses served on Ali months earlier. The district court agreed with the City and denied the motion for leave to amend. The court said that the request came too late in the case, particularly since it had been clear at least as early as September 2019 that Ali "was probably not alone in being subject to a broad policy requiring an appearance in bond court." Ali v. City of Chicago , 503 F. Supp. 3d 661, 667 (N.D. Ill. 2020).
Several weeks later, Ali settled his case. The settlement agreement did not permit him to appeal the district court's class certification ruling. On January 25, 2021, the parties filed a stipulation to dismiss. The district court entered an order dismissing the case without prejudice and with leave to reinstate by April 12, 2021.
On the same day that Ali stipulated to dismissal, January 25, appellant Glenn Miller moved to intervene in the case under Rule 24. Miller asserted that he was a member of Ali's proposed class because he had been arrested by Chicago police officers in January 2018 and had not been permitted to post bond at the police station because of the City's policy. Miller sought to appeal the district court's orders striking Ali's motion for class certification and denying leave to amend the complaint.
Almost one month later, with his motion to intervene still pending, Miller filed a notice of appeal from the district court's January 25 order. That appeal was docketed in this court as No. 21-1353. Miller asked this court to remand to the district court so that it could rule on his motion to intervene. The City responded that the appeal was premature because the district court had dismissed the case only "without prejudice and with full leave to reinstate via motion."
On March 24, while that appeal was pending, the district court denied Miller's motion to intervene. The court concluded that intervention was untimely because plaintiff Ali had "never presented an operative complaint with a proposed class action," so Miller "did not reasonably rely on Ali's case to pursue class certification." Ali v. City of Chicago , No. 19-CV-00022, 2021 WL 1193791, at *2 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 24, 2021). Miller then filed a second notice of appeal, challenging both the denial of intervention and the January 25 order. That second notice was docketed in this court as this appeal, No. 21-1536.
In June 2021, a motions panel of this court dismissed the first appeal (No. 21-1353) as "unnecessary, if not premature because the district court had not issued its ruling on [Miller's] motion to intervene" at the time the appeal was filed.
Before turning to the merits, we must clarify the basis and scope of our jurisdiction. In general, federal courts of appeals have jurisdiction over "appeals from all final decisions of the district courts of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 1291. A judgment "is not final for purposes of § 1291 until it disposes of all claims in the suit." Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. TiEnergy, LLC , 894 F.3d 851, 854 (7th Cir. 2018) ; see also Borrero v. City of Chicago , 456 F.3d 698, 700 (7th Cir. 2006) ().
The district court's January 25 order was not final. The order said that
We have often expressed concerns about dismissals with leave to reinstate and their potential to create jurisdictional confusion, which we tried to reduce in Otis v. City of Chicago , 29 F.3d 1159, 1163 (7th Cir. 1994) (en banc). We have explained: "Because the conditional ability to revive the case renders the dismissal a disposition without prejudice, neither side may appeal immediately." Id. Instead, we treat "the order dismissing the case as the appealable order, with finality springing into existence when the time to satisfy the condition expires." Id. at 1166. A dismissal without prejudice and with leave to reinstate "does not terminate the litigation in the district court in any realistic sense and so is not a final decision within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1291." JTC Petroleum Co. v. Piasa Motor Fuels, Inc. , 190 F.3d 775, 776 (7th Cir. 1999) ; see also ...
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