McCall-Bey v. Franzen

• Decision Date: 13 November 1985
• Docket Number: P,Nos. 85-2415,CALL-BE,85-2501,s. 85-2415
• Parties: Larry Mclaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. Gayle FRANZEN, et al., Defendants-Appellants, Cross-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1178

777 F.2d 1178

3 Fed.R.Serv.3d 1206

Larry McCALL-BEY, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. Gayle FRANZEN, et al., Defendants-Appellants, Cross-Appellees.

Nos. 85-2415, 85-2501.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued and Decided Sept. 20, 1985.

Opinion Nov. 13, 1985.

Theodore G. Karavidas, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellants, cross-appellees.

James A. Geocaris, Jenner & Block, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellee, cross-appellant.

Before ESCHBACH and POSNER, Circuit Judges, and SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The defendants, who are corrections officials of the State of Illinois, appeal under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1292(a)(1) from a mandatory injunction by the district court, 611 F.Supp. 947. The injunction orders them to admit the plaintiff, an inmate in an Illinois state prison, to a work-release facility, under an agreement settling the plaintiff's federal civil rights suit against them. Because the deadline for the plaintiff to enroll in Roosevelt University, as permitted by the work-release program from which the district court found that he had been improperly expelled, was September 20, the date of the oral argument, and because we had stayed the district court's injunction until then, we decided the appeal by unpublished order (Judge Swygert dissenting) after the oral argument and the conference of the judges, with a notation that an opinion explaining the grounds of our action would follow.

We address two questions. The first is whether the district judge had jurisdiction to adjudicate a dispute arising under the settlement agreement; the second is whether, if so, his resolution of that dispute in the plaintiff's favor can be sustained. The jurisdictional issue is extremely--unnecessarily--difficult; although concluding ultimately that the judge did have jurisdiction, we think that a full examination of the issue may serve to prevent similar issues from arising in the future.

The plaintiff filed his original suit in 1980. The suit was under section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, now 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, and alleged that in 1977 the defendants had denied the plaintiff due process of law in prison disciplinary proceedings. After the district court granted partial summary judgment for the plaintiff, the parties on December 8, 1984, executed a settlement agreement under which the plaintiff dropped his claim for damages in exchange for the defendants' agreeing to shift him from a state prison outside Chicago to a work-release program in Chicago, where he would be confined at night in a work-release center (a minimum-security prison) and attend college during the day. The agreement required, as a condition of the plaintiff's remaining in the program, that he obey the rules of the work-release center. This is the key provision so far as the substantive issue on appeal is concerned; so far as the jurisdictional issue is concerned the key provision is the following: "Also, the terms of this agreement and any [attorney's] fee agreement will remain confidential and will not be made part of the court file in [docket number]; however, the parties retain their rights to petition the Court regarding any breach or violation of this agreement." Although the word "retain" suggests that the parties did not intend to confer a right to petition the court to enforce the agreement, but just intended not to waive any preexisting rights they may have had to petition for enforcement, the parties make no issue of this, and we shall therefore assume that the parties did intend that they would have a contractual right to petition the court to enforce the agreement. Of course this does not mean that the court had jurisdiction to do so; it just means that the judge could not have denied the plaintiff's petition to enforce the agreement on the ground that the parties did not intend the agreement to be enforceable in this way.

On December 13, 1984, five days after the settlement agreement had been signed, the district judge dismissed the plaintiff's suit in an order that reads in its entirety, "Order cause dismissed pursuant to stipulation of the parties." The record does not indicate that the judge, when he signed the order, had ever seen either the settlement agreement or the parties' stipulation. The stipulation carries no date of execution, but it was not filed with the district court till December 18, five days after the court had dismissed the suit. It states that the parties "by and through their respective counsel, ... hereby stipulate pursuant to Rule 41(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to dismissal of this cause according to the terms and conditions of the [settlement agreement] entered into by the parties. Said dismissal shall be with prejudice and without costs." The judge was, however, aware that settlement negotiations were in progress, and we may assume was advised when he signed the order dismissing the case that a settlement had been reached, as indeed it had been. The settlement agreement had been signed as we said on December 8, five days before the order was issued and ten days before the stipulation referred to in the order was filed.

When the settlement agreement was signed, the plaintiff was no longer in the work-release program, having been sent to a regular prison the previous month because he had violated the rules of the work-release center. But on February 18, 1985, roughly two months after the suit was dismissed, the plaintiff wrote a letter to the district judge, stating, "I now would like to file a Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus alleging that I am being detained under an unconstitutional disciplinary action." The judge treated this as a petition to enforce the settlement agreement, ordered the defendants to respond (which they did), concluded that the defendants had indeed violated the settlement agreement by failing to give the plaintiff due process of law in the disciplinary proceeding that had resulted in the revocation of his work release, and ordered the defendants to put the plaintiff back into the work-release program.

The prison disciplinary committee had found that the plaintiff had committed five disciplinary infractions in the course of refusing to take off his undershorts to allow a guard to search for drugs. The judge found that the committee had not explained the grounds for its decision adequately, at least with respect to four of the five infractions charged. The judge said, "the report [of the committee] states that plaintiff admitted not removing his shorts [and thus disobeying a direct order--one of the infractions charged], but says nothing about the remaining charges and the evidence relied upon to find the plaintiff guilty as charged." He added, "the only violation possibly supported by the evidence of this record is plaintiff's violation of DR-403, 'Disobeying a Direct Order.' " Among other things the judge ordered the defendant to expunge from the record any reference to the charges, except disobeying a direct order; the main relief ordered, however, was to transfer the plaintiff back into the work-release program, and that is the only part of the order that the defendants have appealed from.

Regarding jurisdiction to enforce the settlement agreement, the judge said only that the plaintiff had "moved this Court for an order to enforce settlement pursuant to the Court's dismissal of this cause on September 4, 1984 and the Court's retention of jurisdiction to enter any appropriate order pending completion of the details of the parties' settlement agreement." It is not quite clear how retention of jurisdiction to enter any appropriate order "pending completion of the details of the parties' settlement agreement" would confer jurisdiction to enter orders months after the agreement had been signed, sealed, and delivered. The order of September 4, 1984, had stated in its entirety: "By agreement of the parties, order cause dismissed without prejudice. Court retains jurisdiction for 45 days to enter any appropriate order, as parties are completing details of settlement." On October 5 the judge had issued another order, this one retaining jurisdiction until December 3, and then on November 23 he had restored the case to his active calendar and scheduled a status hearing (never held) for December 14. When he dismissed the case on December 13 he did not say that he was retaining jurisdiction to enforce the settlement agreement.

When an equity case ends in a permanent injunction, the trial court, with or without an explicit reservation of jurisdiction, retains jurisdiction to enforce the injunction, as by contempt proceedings. See, e.g., Suntex Dairy v. Bergland, 591 F.2d 1063, 1068 (5th Cir.1979); In re Corrugated Container Antitrust Litigation, 752 F.2d 137, 142 (5th Cir.1985). No one wants an injunction that cannot be enforced, or that can be enforced only by bringing a fresh suit, which might have to be in a different court; for a change in a party's residence, or other changes, might divest the original court of jurisdiction of the second action--if an independent basis of jurisdiction for that action were necessary. An injunction is supposed to be a swift and effective remedy, summarily enforceable through contempt or other supplementary proceedings in the court that issued the injunction. It would make no difference that the injunction had been issued pursuant to a settlement, as in the Corrugated Container case. But no consent decree or other injunction was issued in this case.

When a court grants a voluntary dismissal of a case under Rule 41(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the situation is less clear. A dismissal under this subsection is "upon such terms and conditions as the court deems proper." These might be, one might have thought, terms or conditions calling for subsequent judicial enforcement. It could therefore be argued that jurisdiction was automatically...