Herrera v. Cleveland

• Citation: 8 F.4th 493
• Decision Date: 06 August 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-2076,20-2076
• Parties: Justin HERRERA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Teresa CLEVELAND, Samuel Diaz, and Enrique Martinez, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

8 F.4th 493

Justin HERRERA, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Teresa CLEVELAND, Samuel Diaz, and Enrique Martinez, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 20-2076

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued December 1, 2020

Decided August 6, 2021

Todd A. Gale, Katie Welch, Attorneys, Dykema Gossett PLLC, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Francis J. Catania, Attorney, Office of the Cook County State's Attorney, Chicago, IL, Ryan Suniga, Attorney, Office of the Cook County State's Attorney, Torts and Civil Rights Litigation, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellants

James Davy, Attorney, Jim Davy, Philadelphia, PA, Samuel Weiss, Attorney, Rights Behind Bars, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae

Before Sykes, Chief Judge, and Brennan And Scudder, Circuit Judges.

Brennan, Circuit Judge.

Justin Herrera, an Illinois state prisoner, filed a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against three correctional officers of the Cook County Jail for failing to protect him from assault and denying him prompt medical care. In his timely filed original complaint, Herrera named each of the defendants "John Doe" as a nominal placeholder until he could ascertain the proper identities of the officers. Herrera then twice amended his complaint to include their actual names—but did so outside of the two-year limitations period.

The officers moved to dismiss Herrera's claim as time barred, and the district court denied that motion. Reasoning that suing "John Doe" defendants constituted a "mistake" under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c)(1)(C)(ii), the district court concluded that Herrera's amended complaint "related back" to his original complaint. The officers then filed this interlocutory appeal. Because knowingly suing a John Doe defendant is not a "mistake" within the meaning of Rule 15(c), we reverse the district court's judgment.

I

On October 25, 2016, Herrera—then a pretrial detainee at the Cook County Jail in Chicago—was physically assaulted by a group of detainees while temporarily placed together in a holding cell.¹ A fellow detainee accosted Herrera, accused him of affiliation with a rival gang, and threatened him. As the situation intensified, Herrera alerted the correctional officers by banging on the door and calling for help. A correctional officer approached the cell to observe the situation, brushed off Herrera's warnings, and walked away. Shortly after, the aggressive detainee and eight others attacked Herrera, severely injuring him. Only after the assault did a correctional officer open the door and remove Herrera from the holding cell. Herrera then waited two hours before correctional officers took him to the jail's health service facility and an additional six hours before they transported him to a hospital.

On October 9, 2018, seventeen days before the limitations period was set to expire,² Herrera filed a pro se complaint against three correctional officers assigned to monitor the holding cell on the day of his assault. He claimed the officers deliberately ignored his calls for help and denied him prompt medical care, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Not knowing the proper identities of the officers, Herrera named each of the three defendants "John Doe" as a nominal placeholder. Two months later, the district court published an order, adding Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart as a nominal defendant and directing the U.S. Marshal to serve Dart. In that order, the district court denied Herrera's motion for attorney representation and urged him to "identify and name the real parties in interest as soon as possible in order to avoid potential statute of limitations problems." After Dart waived service in January 2019, Herrera moved for an extension of time to complete service. The district court responded with an order informing Herrera that Dart had waived service and that "[a]t this time, no action on the part of Plaintiff is required."

In April 2019, Herrera sent two letters to Dart, with copies to the court, seeking information about the identities of the correctional officers on duty on the day of his assault. He requested the "name, badge number, and the rank" of the officers assigned to supervise the holding cell "on 10/25/16 during the 7am–3pm shift." Dart subsequently provided information that allowed Herrera to identify the last names of two officers listed in the incident report containing information about Herrera's assault. The district court appointed counsel to represent Herrera on May 28, 2019. Then on October 3, 2019, Herrera amended his complaint, naming Teresa Cleveland and Samuel Diaz as two of the three John Doe defendants. After further discovery, Herrera identified Enrique Martinez as the third John Doe officer and added him as a defendant in the second amended complaint on December 10, 2019.

The officers moved to dismiss the complaint, asserting that Herrera's claims were time barred. Although the officers acknowledged that Herrera filed his original complaint within the applicable limitations period of two years, they argued that Herrera did not identify all three defendants until more than a year after the limitations period had run. Herrera's amended complaint, the officers continued, did not "relate back" to the date when he filed his original complaint because naming John Doe defendants is not a "mistake" under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c)(1)(C)(ii). What is more, the officers contended that equitable tolling cannot save Herrera's § 1983 action because he failed to exercise reasonable diligence in pursuing his claims.

The district court disagreed. It explained that Herrera's second amended complaint related back to his timely filed original complaint because naming a John Doe defendant constituted a mistake within the meaning of Rule 15(c). In doing so, the district court recognized circuit precedent observing that naming a John Doe defendant is not a mistake. See Hall v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. , 469 F.3d 590, 596 (7th Cir. 2006). But Hall , the district court emphasized, stood "inconsistent" with the Supreme Court's more recent holding in Krupski v. Costa Crociere S.p.A. , 560 U.S. 538, 555–57, 130 S.Ct. 2485, 177 L.Ed.2d 48 (2010), in which the Court concluded that suing a similarly named (but wrong) corporate entity was a "mistake." Then citing other unpublished decisions in our circuit, the district court here concluded that Krupski "serve[d] to overrule Hall " and that "amendments identifying previously unidentified defendants relate back to the timely filed original complaint." So it denied the officers’ motion to dismiss without addressing the equitable tolling question.

Following that decision, the officers moved to certify an interlocutory appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) on the question of whether naming a John Doe defendant in lieu of an actual defendant constitutes a "mistake" under Rule 15(c). The district court granted the motion, and this court accepted the officers’ interlocutory appeal. We review de novo the district court's denial of a motion to dismiss on statute of limitations grounds. Smith v. City of Chicago , 3 F.4th 332, 335 (7th Cir. 2021).

II

Under Rule 15(c)(1)(C), an amendment to a pleading that "changes the party or the naming of the party against whom a claim is asserted" relates back to the date of the original pleading so long as: (1) the amendment asserts a claim or defense arising out of the same conduct, transaction, or occurrence as the original complaint; (2) "within the period provided by Rule 4(m)," the party added by amendment "received such notice of the action that it will not be prejudiced in defending on the merits"; and (3) the added party "knew or should have known that the action would have been brought against it, but for a mistake concerning the proper party's identity ." (emphasis added). This appeal concerns the third point—whether naming a John Doe defendant constitutes a mistake concerning the identity of the proper party.

This court has previously recognized that Rule 15(c) ’s "mistake" clause does not apply when the plaintiff "simply lacks knowledge of the proper defendant."

Hall , 469 F.3d at 596. In Hall , a plaintiff timely sued the wrong corporation and later moved to amend the complaint to add the proper defendant. Id. at 593. By the time he filed a motion to amend, the limitations period had expired, so the plaintiff could amend the complaint only if it related back to his original pleading. Id. The plaintiff argued that his failure to name the correct corporation was a mistake concerning the proper party's identity under Rule 15(c). Id.

Not so, said this court. We rejected the plaintiff's argument and concluded that "[a] plaintiff's ignorance or misunderstanding about who is liable for his injury" does not satisfy Rule 15(c) ’s mistake requirement. Id. at 596. This court analogized the plaintiff's case with John Doe cases, noting that in both scenarios the parties "did not know who to name as defendants before the limitations periods expired." Id. Elaborating on this point, this court emphasized that a plaintiff naming a John Doe defendant "because he does not know who harmed him" is not a mistake under Rule 15(c). Id. Our circuit has long adhered to this "John Doe rule." See, e.g. , Gomez v. Randle , 680 F.3d 859, 864 n.1 (7th Cir. 2012) (noting that in a John Doe case, a "plaintiff's lack of knowledge about a defendant's identity is not a ‘mistake’ within the meaning of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(c)"); Worthington v. Wilson , 8 F.3d 1253, 1257 (7th Cir. 1993) (explaining that a plaintiff's "lack of knowledge" as to the defendants’ identities does not amount to "a mistake in their names"); Wood v. Worachek , 618 F.2d 1225, 1230 (7th Cir. 1980) (stating that Rule 15(c) "does not permit relation back where ... there is a lack of knowledge of the proper party").

Herrera argues Krupski undermined this longstanding rule. Other courts in this circuit—including the district court here—have done the same, suggesting Krupsk...