Equitable Estoppel.

Byline: Derek Hawkins

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: John Vergara, et al. v. City of Chicago, et al.

Case No.: 18-1266

Officials: MANION, SYKES, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Equitable Estoppel

John Vergara, Carlos Ruiz, and Jose Garcia filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the City of Chicago and Chicago Police Officers John Dal Ponte, Boonserm Srisuch, and Perry Nigro. The defendants moved to dismiss the suit as untimely. The plaintiffs asked the district judge to equitably estop the defendants from raising the limitations defense, claiming that the officers intimidated them into silence.

The judge dismissed the suit in a minute order saying she would later file an opinion explaining her reasons. The promised opinion came almost two years later, and the plaintiffs then appealed. Under the Rules of Appellate Procedure, however, entry of judgment for appeal purposes occurred 150 days after the judge's minute order, see FED. R. APP. P. 4(a)(7)(A), and the 30-day time to file a notice of appeal ran from that date, see Walker v. Weatherspoon, 900 F.3d 354, 356 (7th Cir. 2018). The appeal was therefore woefully late.

The defendants noted the untimeliness problem in their docketing statement, but this filing too was quite late. Our circuit's rules require the appellee to identify errors in the...

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