Ross ex rel. Ross v. Bd. of Educ. Tp. High School

• Decision Date: 11 May 2007
• Docket Number: No. 06-2060.,06-2060.
• Citation: 486 F.3d 279
• Parties: Lindsey ROSS, by and through her parents and next friends, Michael and Diane ROSS, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT 211, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

486 F.3d 279

Lindsey ROSS, by and through her parents and next friends, Michael and Diane ROSS, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOWNSHIP HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT 211, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-2060.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued January 3, 2007.

Decided May 11, 2007.

Juli Wilson Marshall, Brett M. Doran (argued), Latham & Watkins, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Jack J. Carriglio (argued), Meckler, Bulger & Tilson, Chicago, IL, Michael T. Trucco (argued), Stamos & Trucco, Chicago, IL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and WOOD and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Circuit Judge.

In this case, as in its companion Board of Education of Township High School District 211 v. Ross, 486 F.3d 267 (7th Cir.2007) ("Ross I"), decided today, Lindsey Ross and her parents ask us to consider Lindsey's claim that Township High School District 211 violated her rights in various ways during her high school years. Lindsey, who is afflicted with Rett syndrome a neurodevelopmental disorder that strikes girls almost exclusively, claims here through her parents that she is not bound by a settlement agreement that her parents signed on her behalf when she was a minor. If she were freed from the strictures of that agreement, which figures in Ross I, she believes that she would be entitled now to assert claims against the District and Dr. Daniel E. Cates, the District's Director of Special Education, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. § 12132; section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794; and the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983. She has also raised state law claims against Dr. Bennett L. Leventhal, an outside expert who participated in her treatment plan, for medical malpractice, battery, and violation of the Illinois Mental Health and Disabilities Code, 405 ILCS 5/2-107.

Lindsey's current effort foundered at the outset when the district court found that, settlement or no settlement, the new set of claims against the District and Dr. Cates was barred under the doctrine of claim preclusion. After dismissing the federal claims, the district court elected to dismiss the state supplemental claims without prejudice. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3). Lindsey has appealed, claiming that she is not bound by anything that occurred in Ross I, and thus that her new claims cannot be barred. We conclude, to the contrary, that her current claims could and should have been brought in the first action and that nothing about the settlement agreement changes that fact. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment dismissing her federal claims with prejudice and her state claims without prejudice.

I

We limit our discussion of the facts to those that are important to Lindsey's ability to pursue the present case. A more detailed account of her experience in District 211's Conant High School appears in Ross I. The earlier case centered on the question whether District 211 had fulfilled its obligation under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 20 U.S.C. § 1414, to provide Lindsey with a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. It reached the district court when, on August 27, 2002, District 211 filed a complaint seeking to enjoin Lindsey's parents from invoking the "stay put" provision of the IDEA, under which the District would have been required to keep Lindsey in her current placement while the school and the parents resolved differences of opinion about the optimal placement for her. See 20 U.S.C. § 1415(j); Rodiriecus L. v. Waukegan Sch. Dist. No. 60, 90 F.3d 249, 252 (7th Cir.1996). Negotiations between Lindsey's parents and the District were at least temporarily successful, insofar as they resulted in the settlement agreement at issue in the present case on November 5, 2002. The parties to the agreement were the District and "Michael and Diane Ross, on their own behalf and on behalf of Lindsey Ross."

In that agreement, the Rosses agreed, among other things, to

fully and forever release and discharge the School District and its Board members, employees and agents from any and all claims . . . which have or may have arisen as a result of the past actions or inactions of the School District, its current and former Board members, employees and/or agents . . . including those arising under the IDEA[,] . . . Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794, the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq., their respective implementing regulations, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983, up through and including the effective date of this Agreement.

In exchange, the District promised to use its resources and work with an expert panel to create a plan to help Lindsey return to Conant. Unfortunately, her return was ultimately unsuccessful, and after a final meeting that included Lindsey's parents, members of the expert panel, and her "individualized educational plan" or IEP team on November 5, 2003, the District returned to the court with another emergency petition to block "stay put" relief.

At that point, Lindsey filed an answer and a counterclaim against the District; the counterclaim detailed a number of ways in which the District had allegedly failed to meet its obligations under the IDEA. After a year in which an administrative hearing took place, the result of which was to uphold the District's placement decision, Lindsey filed a First Amended Cross-Complaint [sic] against District 211. The new pleading (which, because it was against an opposing party, should have been labeled a counterclaim, see FED.R.CIV.P. 13(a), (b), rather than a cross-claim, see FED.R.CIV.P. 13(g)) challenged the state hearing officer's decision and added new claims against District 211 under the IDEA, the ADA, and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of District 211, a ruling that we affirm today in Ross I.

Approximately a month after she filed her notice of appeal in Ross I, Lindsey filed the present suit against District 211 and Dr. Cates. This time she relied exclusively on the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and the Civil Rights Act as the theories under which she asserted a right to recover. The district court held that her new action was barred by res judicata, or claim preclusion, because her claims arise out of the same basic events as those underlying the first suit. Insisting that the court should have relieved her of the broad release contained in the November 2002 settlement agreement (because at this point she is no longer a minor), that she has a right to relitigate many of the issues resolved in Ross I, and that some of her claims involve matters that occurred after the settlement agreement was signed, Lindsey asks this court to reverse.

II

The similarities between Ross I and the present case are striking enough that the common-sense question arises why a second lawsuit should be permitted after the first one apparently resolved the dispute between the parties. The common-sense response that it ordinarily should not be goes more formally by the name of claim preclusion or res judicata. In Montana v. United States, the Supreme Court described the doctrine concisely as follows:

A fundamental precept of common-law adjudication, embodied in the related doctrines of collateral estoppel and res judicata, is that a "right, question or fact distinctly put in issue and directly determined by a court of competent jurisdiction . . . cannot be disputed in a subsequent suit between the same parties or their privies . . . ." Southern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 168 U.S. 1, 48-49, 18 S.Ct. 18, 27, 42 L.Ed. 355 (1897). Under res judicata, a final judgment on the merits bars further claims by parties or their privies based on the same cause of action. Cromwell v. County of Sac, 94 U.S. 351, 352, 24 L.Ed. 195 (1877); Lawlor v. National Screen Service Corp., 349 U.S. 322, 326, 75 S.Ct. 865, 867, 99 L.Ed. 1122 (1955); 1B J. Moore, Federal Practice ¶ 0.405[1], pp. 621-624 (2d ed.1974) . . .; RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF JUDGMENTS § 47 (Tent. Draft No. 1, Mar. 28, 1973) (merger); id., § 48(bar).

440 U.S. 147, 153, 99 S.Ct. 970, 59 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979). This court has identified three requirements that a party asserting claim preclusion must satisfy: (1) identity of the claim, (2) identity of parties, which includes those in "privity" with the original parties, and (3) a final judgment on the merits. See Perry v. Globe Auto Recycling, Inc., 227 F.3d 950, 952 (7th Cir. 2000); Roboserve, Inc. v. Kato Kagaku Co., 121 F.3d 1027, 1034 (7th Cir.1997).

The federal law of claim preclusion applies here because the earlier judgment was rendered by a federal court. See Schor v. Abbott Labs., 457 F.3d 608, 615 (7th Cir.2006); Barnett v. Stern, 909 F.2d 973, 977 (7th Cir.1990); RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF JUDGMENTS § 87 (1982). In order to decide whether the two cases involve the same claim, we ask whether they arise out of the same transaction. If they did, whether or not they were actually raised in the earlier lawsuit, they may not be asserted in the second or subsequent proceeding. It is critical, therefore, to define what falls within the single transaction or litigation unit encompassed by the first case. We took a functional approach to that task in Perkins v. Board of Trustees of University of Illinois:

What is a single transaction? The usual answer — "common core of operative fact," see Car Carriers, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 789 F.2d 589, 593 (7th Cir. 1986) — poses questions of its own. Because the function of res judicata is to require the joinder of all legal challenges to a wrong, and all claims for relief arising out of those events, without compelling the joinder of claims arising from separate wrongs, we concluded in Herrmann v. Cencom Cable Associates, Inc., 999 F.2d 223, 226 (7th Cir.1993), that claims "based on the same, or...