Sommerfield v. City of Chi.

• Decision Date: 21 February 2017
• Docket Number: Case No. 08-CV-3025
• Parties: DETLEF SOMMERFIELD, Plaintiff, v. THE CITY OF CHICAGO, SERGEANT KNASIAK #1841, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

DETLEF SOMMERFIELD, Plaintiff, v. THE CITY OF CHICAGO, SERGEANT KNASIAK #1841, Defendants.

Case No. 08-CV-3025

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS EASTERN DIVISION

February 21, 2017

Judge Joan B. Gottschall

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Plaintiff Detlef Sommerfield ("Plaintiff"), a patrol officer in the Chicago Police Department, brought this action under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1983 against the City of Chicago ("the City") and Sergeant Lawrence Knasiak ("Knasiak"). Plaintiff alleged that Knasiak repeatedly harassed and otherwise discriminated against him on the basis of his race, religion, and national origin, and that Knasiak retaliated against him after he complained about the harassment. In 2009, the court dismissed Plaintiff's claims against the City as duplicative of his claims in an earlier-filed lawsuit against the City. Sommerfield v. City of Chi., No. 08 C 3025, 2009 WL 500643, Feb. 26, 2009. In 2014, a jury returned a $540,000 verdict in this case against Knasiak for punitive damages. (See ECF No. 366 at 1.)

Two motions filed by Plaintiff are before the court. In the first, Plaintiff asks the court to reconsider the portion of the order entered August 14, 2015, ("the August 2015 order") denying his request for prejudgment interest. The second is titled "Motion for Judgment" and asks the court to enter a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 58 judgment enumerating all of the categories of damages (and retaining jurisdiction) to which the plaintiff believes himself entitled.

I. BACKGROUND

The court's prior orders and opinions amply cover the long and winding procedural path this case has taken. (See, e.g., ECF No. 469 at 2-4.) Briefly, and as relevant here, the parties agreed before trial to leave the calculation of back pay for the court, if necessary, after the jury trial. The trial ended more than two-and-a-half years ago, yet the wrangling over those issues has not abated.

Plaintiff filed a "Motion For Ruling On Certain Issues With Calculation To Follow After Court's Ruling" ("Motion for Ruling") on October 17, 2014. (ECF No. 397.) He argued that he was entitled to various forms of relief, including, but not limited to, reimbursement for the five days of pay that he lost when he was wrongfully suspended, back pay from December 16, 2006, through the date of judgment, compensation for the monthly stipend of $175 that he would have received if he had been promoted to the position of canine handler, promotion to the "D2 position" of canine handler, and prejudgment interest, among other things. After the motion was fully briefed, plaintiff sought and obtained leave to supplement that motion in February 2015. (ECF No. 410.) He sought leave to supplement a second time in July 2015, but the court denied his request. (See ECF No. 435 (denying motion to supplement, ECF No. 431).)

In an August 14, 2015 decision, the court denied Plaintiff's Motion for Ruling, concluding that he had failed to show that he was entitled to the relief he sought, given that the City had already agreed to provide Plaintiff with more relief than he could obtain from the court. The court declined to opine on whether Plaintiff was entitled to receive compensation for lost wages/back pay and front pay from Knasiak, given that the City had already agreed to make Plaintiff whole.

Plaintiff moves to reconsider that ruling. He also asks the court to enter a judgment listing asdamages against Knasiak the sums attributed to back pay the city has paid him on Knasiak's behalf. In March 2016, the court entered an order denying Plaintiff's request to amend his complaint to add an indemnity claim against the City. (ECF No. 469 at 4-5 (finding claim would be moot).) The court stated it understood that if any dispute remained outstanding, it pertained to the amount of overtime wages Plaintiff would have been paid had he been promoted to canine handler in 2008. (Id. at 4.)

II. MOTION TO RECONSIDER

"Motions for reconsideration serve a limited function: to correct manifest errors of law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence." Caisse Nationale de Credit Agricole v. CBI Indus., Inc., 90 F.3d 1264, 1270 (7th Cir. 1996) (quoting Keene Corp. v. Int'l Fidelity Ins. Co., 561 F. Supp. 656, 665 (N.D. Ill. 1982)). The losing party's disappointment with the outcome does not demonstrate manifest error. Oto v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 224 F.3d 601, 606 (7th Cir. 2000).

The August 2015 order reads in pertinent part:

Plaintiff did not seek prejudgment interest in his complaint. See Compl. ¶ 145 (prayer for relief). Nor did Plaintiff identify prejudgment interest as a remedy he was seeking in the motion pending before the court. Indeed, the words, "prejudgment interest," did not appear in connection with Plaintiff's present motion until Plaintiff filed his second supplement in support of the motion. And in this document, Plaintiff identified prejudgment interest as one remedy in a list of remedies he would like to receive, without providing citations to authority to support any of them. What is more, Plaintiff does not clarify whether he is seeking prejudgment interest (a) on the damages that the jury awarded him or (b) on the sum he is seeking from Knasiak for lost wages.

As the court sees it, Plaintiff, represented by counsel, used his Second Supplement to list in scattershot fashion every possible form of relief he hopes to receive, including prejudgment interest on a sum he fails to identify. Plaintiff's unsupported request for prejudgment interest, tucked into the last page of a supplementalbrief, is denied.

(ECF No. 437 at 4-5.)

In his motion for reconsideration, Plaintiff explains that his failure to brief adequately his entitlement to prejudgment interest resulted from a misunderstanding: Plaintiff believed that Defendant had agreed to an award of prejudgment interest. (See ECF No. 470 2-3.) A motion to reconsider may serve to correct a manifest error where "the Court has patently misunderstood a party, or has made a decision outside the adversarial issues presented to the Court by the parties, or has made an error not of reasoning but of apprehension." Bank of Waunakee v. Rochester Cheese Sales, Inc., 906 F.2d 1185, 1191-92 (7th Cir. 1990) (quoting Above the Belt, Inc. v. Mel Bohannan Roofing, Inc., 99 F.R.D. 99, 101 (E.D. Va. 1983)). The party seeking reconsideration bears the burden of explaining why the court should change its mind. Ahmed v. Ashcroft, 388 F.3d 247, 249 (7th Cir. 2004). Plaintiff cites nothing in his original motion or his supplements to it that he claims would have alerted the court to the parties' alleged agreement, the existence of which Defendant disputes.¹ (See id.) Nevertheless, a review of Plaintiff's original motion discloses a footnote on page one stating that "The defendant agrees that the plaintiff is entitled to prejudgment interest, overtime, a $175 monthly stipend that canine handlers receive, and, presumably pension." (ECF No. 397 at 1 n.1.) Defendant did not dispute that representation in his response to the original motion. (ECF No. 400.) Defendant points to language in a letter from his counsel dated October 10, 2014, in which he proferred a calculation of prejudgment interest that reserved Defendant's right to challenge the amount recoverable. (See ECF No. 482 at 1.) Defendant's failure to dispute Plaintiff's representation of an agreement in his response tothe original motion, however, effectively took the issue out of contention. Accordingly, the court misapprehended Plaintiff's position in the August 2015 order.

To account for the time value of money, the Seventh Circuit has held that "[p]rejudgment interest . . . must be an ordinary part of any award of back pay (or other incurred expense) under § 1981." Williamson v. Handy Button Mach. Co., 817 F. 2d 1290, 1297 (7th Cir. 1987). Because "prejudgment interest is presumptively available to victims of federal law violations," it is presumptively available in § 1983 suits. Tate v. Troutman, 683 F. Supp. 2d 897, 912 (E.D. Wis. 2010) (citing Gorenstein Enter. v. Quality Care-USA, Inc., 874 F.2d 431, 436 (7th Cir. 1989)) (awarding prejudgment interest in § 1983 action); DeLaCruz v. Pruitt, 590 F. Supp. 1296, 308-09 (N.D. Ind. 1984) (awarding prejudgment interest and stating that "prejudgment interest serves to further the congressional purposes underlying section 1983"). Defendant argues neither that Plaintiff delayed unreasonably in filing this action or that the amount of back pay is not readily ascertainable here. See Williamson, 817 F.2d at 1297-98 (explaining that an award of prejudgment interest may not be appropriate in these circumstances). Defendant does argue, however, that the court determined that Plaintiff has already been made whole by the City's payments in its August 2015 order. See id. at 1297 (explaining that "prejudgment interest is necessary to make the award fully compensatory" (citing Hunter v. Allis-Chalmers Corp.,, 797 F.2d 1417, 1425-27 (7th Cir. 1986))). The order said that the City has agreed to make the Plaintiff whole "in these respects," referring to payments for back wages. (ECF No. 437 at 3.) Defendant does not suggest that the City's payments included prejudgment interest that accounted for the time value of Plaintiff's back pay. Thus, prejudgment interest is presumptively available to Plaintiff for back pay. See Williamson, 817 F.2d at 1297-98; Tate, 683 F. Supp. 2d at 912; DeLaCruz, 590 F. Supp. at 1308-09.

Nevertheless and despite years of posttrial litigation, Plaintiff still leaves the court unable to compute the amount, if any, that is recoverable as prejudgment interest. Plaintiff's motion to reconsider does not address all of the defects identified in the August 2015 order. The motion to reconsider specifies a general proposed method for calculating the appropriate interest rate, but it still does not say on what amount the interest should be calculated-back wages, front pay, punitive damages, or any...