Carver v. Sheriff of LaSalle County IL

• Decision Date: 15 March 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-1569,00-1569
• Citation: 243 F.3d 379
• Parties: (7th Cir. 2001) Margaret M. Carver and Randall S. Carmean, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Sheriff of LaSalle County, Illinois, Defendant, and LaSalle County, Illinois, Appellee
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 379

243 F.3d 379 (7th Cir. 2001)

Margaret M. Carver and Randall S. Carmean, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Sheriff of LaSalle County, Illinois, Defendant, and LaSalle County, Illinois, Appellee.

No. 00-1569

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Argued November 9, 2000

Decided March 15, 2001

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 94 C 2240--Charles R. Norgle, Sr., Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before Fairchild, Easterbrook, and Manion, Circuit Judges.

Easterbrook, Circuit Judge.

When Anthony Condie was Sheriff of LaSalle County, Illinois, two of his employees filed suit under 42 U.S.C. sec.1983 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Plaintiffs contended that Sheriff Condie perpetrated sex discrimination and other wrongs. Litigation against sheriffs in Illinois must take account of the fact that, although each county's sheriff is an elected official, the sheriff's budget (and thus the source of funds for paying a judgment) depends on the county board (the county's legislative branch). Plaintiffs therefore named LaSalle County as an additional defendant. But the County sought and procured its dismissal, persuading the district judge that it could not control, and thus should not be responsible for, Sheriff Condie's activities. See Thompson v. Duke, 882 F.2d 1180 (7th Cir. 1989) (a sheriff is not a county's policymaker in Illinois, so a county may not be held liable under sec.1983 for a sheriff's misconduct, given Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978)). With the County gone, Sheriff Condie settled the case for a promise to pay plaintiffs $500,000, and the district court used this promise as the basis for a money judgment. Ever since, plaintiffs have been trying without success to collect.

Condie is not personally liable on this judgment. The sec.1983 suit was against him in his official capacity (which is to say, against the office, see Will v. Michigan Department of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989)), and the Title VII claim necessarily was an official-capacity action because only an "employer" is covered by that statute. We held in Williams v. Banning, 72 F.3d 552 (7th Cir. 1995), that even a supervisor is not a proper defendant in Title VII; the suit must proceed against the employer as an entity rather than against a natural person. Thus the Title VII claim necessarily was an official-capacity suit. Cf. Walker v. Snyder, 213 F.3d 344 (7th Cir. 2000). Because Condie is no longer the sheriff, we have recaptioned the case. But plaintiffs, holding a judgment against the Sheriff's Office, have a problem: The Sheriff's Office lacks funds and does not have the power to tax. This led the plaintiffs to commence proceedings under Fed. R. Civ. P. 69 against the County, asserting that it either is required to indemnify the Sheriff's Office or is directly liable. Either way, the judgment would be paid from the County's bank accounts. The district court initially dismissed this proceeding, but we reversed, holding that it is a proper invocation of Rule 69. Carver v. Condie, 169 F.3d 469 (7th Cir. 1999). On remand, the district court dismissed a second time, concluding that the County is not responsible for payment. (N.D. Ill. Feb. 10, 2000).

Our case is just one instance of a recurring question: Who pays official- capacity judgments in Illinois when the wrongdoer is an independently-elected officer? Sheriffs, treasurers, clerks of court, and several other officers within Illinois counties are elected directly by the people and establish their own policies, but they lack authority to levy taxes or establish their own budgets. This leads the independently-elected officers to contend that the counties must pay; but the counties, which are unable to control the conduct of the officers, insist that they cannot be held liable because an official-capacity judgment runs against the office and not against an "employee" of the county. The law of Illinois does not provide a clean solution to this conflict, in which each insists that the other must pay.

Let us start with the possibility that federal law requires the county to pay. Plaintiffs insist that this is so, but no free-standing rule of federal law requires any particular state or local entity to pay a judgment. Neither sec.1983 nor Title VII provides which state actor is responsible for paying a given judgment or how the money will be raised; neither statute authorizes sheriffs to write checks on county treasuries, if state law denies sheriffs that power. If, as the County insists, Sheriff Condie overstepped his authority by agreeing to pay $500,000, then the settlement must be set aside and the litigation resume, for a person purporting to settle a federal suit needs actual authority to do so. United States v. LaCroix, 166 F.3d 921 (7th Cir. 1999); Morgan v. South Bend School Corp., 797 F.2d 471 (7th Cir. 1986). Federal law does not empower a state officer to "agree" with plaintiffs, in violation of state law, to shift financial responsibility to an innocent unit of government. See Dunn v. Carey, 808 F.2d 555 (7th Cir. 1986).

Identification of an "employer" under Title VII is a question of federal law. See Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742, 754-55 (1998). But the source of funds need not coincide with the identity of the employer. Congress enacts budgets for the Bureau of Prisons and the Marshal Service (the federal bodies closest to the functions of a sheriff in Illinois), just as a county controls a sheriff's budget, but financial control does not make Congress the "employer" of a prison guard or a marshal for purposes of Title VII. Likewise a firm that uses an independent contractor often controls the contractor's purse strings, but the entity that supplies the funds is not automatically the relevant employer under Title VII. If the independent contractor adheres to corporate formalities when dealing with its own staff, it is a separate "employer," and the "deep pocket" is not liable for the independent contractor's wrongs (or the reverse). See Vakharia v. Swedish Covenant Hospital, 190 F.3d 799 (7th Cir. 1999); Papa v. Katy Industries, Inc., 166 F.3d 937 (7th Cir. 1999); Sharpe v. Jefferson Distributing Co., 148 F.3d 676 (7th Cir. 1998); Ost v. West Suburban Travelers Limousines, Inc., 88 F.3d 435 (7th Cir. 1996). Plaintiffs do not doubt that the Sheriff's Office and LaSalle County have adhered to the formalities that make them separate entities, and thus separate "employers" for purposes of Title VII. Thus the questions "who pays, and from what kitty?" must find their answers in Illinois law.

Plaintiffs contend that 745 ILCS 10/9- 102 supplies the answers. This portion of the state's Tort Immunity Act provides:

A local public entity is empowered and directed to pay any tort judgment or settlement for compensatory damages for which it or an employee while acting within the scope of his employment is liable in the manner provided in this Article. All other provisions of this Article, including but not limited to the payment of judgments and settlements in installments, the issuance of bonds, the maintenance of rates and charges, and the levy of taxes shall be equally applicable to judgments or settlements relating to both a local public entity or an employee and those undertakings assumed by a local public entity in intergovernmental joint self-insurance contracts. A local public entity may make payments to settle or compromise a claim or action which has been or might be filed or instituted against it when the governing body or person vested by law or ordinance with authority to make over-all policy decisions for such entity considers it advisable to enter into such a settlement or compromise.

The first sentence of sec.10/9-102 requires a "local public entity" to pay a "tort judgment or settlement for compensatory damages" for which "it" or "an employee acting within the scope of his employment" is liable. A county is a "local public entity," and we may assume that Illinois would treat both sec.1983 and Title VII as establishing "torts" for purposes of sec.10/9-102. (The Supreme Court of Illinois made the same assumption in Yang v. Chicago, ___ N.E.2d ___ (Ill. Feb. 16, 2001).) An individual- capacity suit against a sheriff would be one against an "employee"-- though Moy v. Cook County, 159 Ill. 519, 542, 640 N.E.2d 926, 931 (1994), holds that for some other purposes it is improper to call the sheriff a county's employee, given the sheriff's status as an independently-elected officer who can't be hired or fired by a county. More to the point, an official-capacity suit such as ours is against a sheriff's office, not against any "employee," and for this purpose the sheriff's office itself seems to be the "local public entity." Then sec.10/9-102 tells the Sheriff's Office that it "is empowered and directed to pay" the judgment--but it does not make any funds available to fulfil this command. Because a sheriff's office cannot be deemed an "employee" of a county, and because a sheriff's office is not itself a county, plaintiffs' reliance on the first sentence is problematic.

Perhaps the last sentence of sec.10/9- 102--which says that a "local public entity" must pay a settlement when "the governing body or person vested by law or ordinance with authority to make over-all policy decisions for such entity considers it advisable to enter into such a settlement or compromise"--has more to offer. If the only "entity" to which this sentence refers is the Sheriff's Office, then it adds nothing. But it might be possible to treat a county as the "entity" to which this sentence refers, and to say that a sheriff is the person "with authority to make over-all policy decisions for such entity" because no one else in a county appears to have any authority to compromise litigation filed against a sheriff's office. Driving this...