Carver v. Condie
| Citation | 169 F.3d 469 |
| Decision Date | 25 February 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 97-2731,97-2731 |
| Parties | 79 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 478, 75 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 45,853 Margaret M. CARVER and Randall S. Carmean, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Anthony M. CONDIE, Sheriff of LaSalle County, Illinois, Defendant. Appeal of: County of LaSalle |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit) |
Steven N. Fritzshall, Fritzshall & Gleason, Chicago, IL; Andrew W. Levenfeld (argued), Levenfeld & Associates, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.
Gary R. Garretson, Morris, IL, for Defendant.
William C. Barasha (argued), Kurnik, Cipolla & Barasha, Arlington Heights, IL, for Appellant.
Before FLAUM, ROVNER, and DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judges.
This case presents a thorny question about the interaction between an Illinois sheriff and the county his department serves. In many ways, sheriffs in Illinois are independent political actors, but in one crucial way they are not. All funding for sheriffs' departments must come from appropriations by the county with which the department is associated. Here, Sheriff Anthony M. Condie of LaSalle County settled a lawsuit that had been brought against the county, the LaSalle County Sheriff's Department, and the sheriff himself, for the tidy sum of $500,000. In essence, the county is now trying to contest its own liability to pay this sum on the ground that it did not agree to the settlement. The district court ruled that the county had lost its status as a party to the underlying action and therefore it had to fight out its internecine battle with the sheriff in state court. We conclude that the district court acted too hastily in finding that the county could not contest its liability under the consent decree, and we therefore remand for further proceedings.
Most of the relevant underlying facts pertain to the course of the proceedings below, rather than the original substantive claims. This suit began when plaintiffs Margaret M. Carver and Randall S. Carmean, former employees of the LaSalle County Sheriff's Department, sued the county, the sheriff's department, and the sheriff, claiming sexual harassment, sex discrimination, deprivations of equal protection, and retaliation, in violation of Title VII and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In June 1994, LaSalle County moved to be dismissed as a defendant, and the court granted its motion. Neither then nor at any later time did the court grant a motion under Rule 54(b) that would have permitted the plaintiffs to take an appeal from this order. Furthermore, the plaintiffs have not taken a cross-appeal in this action. Some time thereafter, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint with the same allegations, but naming only Sheriff Condie as the defendant. At that point, the county was more than happy to be rid of the case. Only later, when it looked as if the county might have to foot the bill, did it renew its interest in the litigation.
Pretrial preparations went forward under the amended complaint. As is common, the parties at the same time were engaged in settlement discussions. At one point, the plaintiffs considered and rejected an offer of $30,000. Time passed, and trial was set to begin on August 12, 1996. The court summoned a prospective jury panel, the parties appeared, and everything looked ready to go. Instead, however, the court gave the parties a short final break for settlement discussions, and they returned with the news that they had resolved the case. Under the tentative settlement, whose terms were then confidential, Sheriff Condie agreed to language under which $500,000 in compensatory damages would be assessed "against defendant, Anthony M. Condie, Sheriff of LaSalle County." The settlement said nothing about punitive damages, which the plaintiffs had requested in their amended complaint. At the parties' mutual request, on August 16, 1996, the court entered a consent decree terminating the litigation in accordance with the settlement. Before it did so, the parties informed it that the sheriff was entering the decree in his institutional capacity, and that they regarded the judgment as an obligation of the sheriff's department.
On August 30, 1996, the plaintiffs filed and served a third-party citation to discover assets on the county, to be used to satisfy the consent decree out of funds that had been appropriated for the sheriff's department. The county responded with a motion to quash the citation and a Rule 60(b) motion to set aside the consent decree. The district court denied the latter, finding that the county was not entitled to make such a motion because it was not a party to the litigation (and had not been since it won dismissal from the suit before the complaint was amended) and it had not filed a proper motion to intervene under Rule 24(e). The court also commented that it would have been disinclined to grant a motion to intervene, since the county had not demonstrated that the consent decree infringed on its rights or interests. "The decree places no legal obligation upon LaSalle County," wrote the court, and thus it had no reason to intervene in the action. Finally, the court noted that Fed.R.Civ.P. 69(a) permits a judgment creditor to obtain discovery from "any person," using the procedures provided by the law of the state where the district court sits. In Illinois, the pertinent rule is Ill. Sup.Ct. R. 277(a), which allows a party to commence a supplementary proceeding "with respect to a judgment which is subject to enforcement ... against the judgment debtor or any third party the judgment creditor believes has property of or is indebted to the judgment debtor." Concluding that there was no evidence in the record indicating that the county had in its possession any of the sheriff's assets, the court quashed the citation.
This ruling prompted the county to file a motion to alter or amend under Rule 59(e). It argued that it had actually remained a party to the action because there had never been a Rule 54(b) order rendering final the judgment dismissing it. The district court denied that motion. It noted that more than 30 months had elapsed since the order dismissing the county, that the amended complaint had not re-named the county, that neither the plaintiffs nor the sheriff had treated the county like a party, and, "[m]ost importantly, LaSalle County did not act like a party and did not assert any interest in the case" after being dismissed. The county's decision to stay out of the suit meant, in the court's view, that it would have to litigate any questions about its responsibility for paying under the consent decree in state court.
In our view, the question whether the county remained a formal party to the litigation is something of a red herring. The critical issue is whether it had a sufficient interest in the outcome of the Rule 277 supplementary proceeding to permit it to litigate its liability to satisfy the judgment before the district court. The county's party status is relevant to the latter question only because, if the county had been something like a silent partner of the sheriff's department all along, it would be indisputable that it had the right to participate in the Rule 277 proceeding, while if it was not a party, a somewhat different analysis applies.
No one disputes several key facts about the county's role in the case. It was named as a defendant in the original complaint; it filed a motion to have itself dismissed; and it succeeded in that motion. When the plaintiffs filed their amended complaint, the county was nowhere to be seen. At no time prior to entering final judgment, in the form of the consent decree, did the district court ever reconsider its order dismissing the county. The county certainly had no interest in its doing so and the plaintiffs had acquiesced in that ruling. Once the amended complaint was filed, however, it became the governing document in the case and any allegations and parties not brought forward fell by the wayside. See, e.g., Collins v. Kibort, 143 F.3d 331, 335 (7th Cir.1998); Wellness Community Nat'l v. Wellness House, 70 F.3d 46, 49 (7th Cir.1995). This does not mean that the plaintiffs--the parties aggrieved by the order of dismissal--could not have complained about the original order in the county's favor upon an appeal or cross-appeal. An appeal from a final judgment brings up all interlocutory orders entered in the case, and the court's order dismissing the county was one such ruling. But plaintiffs did not take a cross-appeal here, and the county is not claiming that the court erred in dismissing it from the action.
The county's argument that in a broader sense it remained a party throughout the proceedings, even up until now, relies on the fact that the district court did not enter an order under Rule 54(b) making its dismissal final for purposes of appellate review. Rule 54(b), however, does not affect the county's "party" status one way or the other. The only purpose of a Rule 54(b) order is to render "final" for purposes of appellate review a discrete part of a case that can and should stand on its own immediately. Once a final judgment disposing of all claims and all parties is entered, a Rule 54(b) order, entered either before or after the final judgment, has no role to play. The outer limit of the...
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