Weekly Case Digests December 30, 2019 January 3, 2019.

Byline: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

7th Circuit Digests

7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Carleous Clay

Case No.: 19-1223

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

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines

Carleous Clay challenges his within-guidelines life sentence as unreasonable. He pled guilty to kidnapping a woman, setting her afire, and leaving her to die. In a plea agreement, he also admitted for sentencing purposes that, while he was in pretrial detention in jail for those charges, he held a case worker hostage and threatened to kill her. Clay argues that he is entitled to a new sentencing hearing because the district judge based his sentence solely on aggravating factors and ignored his acceptance of responsibility. Because the district judge adequately justified the sentence based on the statutory sentencing factors, we affirm the judgment.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Dexter Fisher

Case No.: 18-2765

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and KANNE and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sentencing Supervised Release

In the late summer and fall of 2014, multiple pharmacies in Indianapolis were robbed at gun point. Police eventually arrested Dexter Fisher, who was later charged with nine offenses for his involvement in three of the robberies. A jury found Fisher guilty of Hobbs Act robbery, brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence, and being a felon in possession of a firearm. The district court then imposed a sentence, which included conditions of supervised release and an order that Fisher forfeit the firearm used in his offenses.

Fisher appealed his convictions for brandishing a firearm, the forfeiture of his firearm, and parts of his sentence relating to supervised release. Only one alleged error needs correction: an inconsistency between the oral sentence and the written judgment, regarding whether terms of supervised release attach to certain counts. We remand with specific instructions to correct that portion of the written judgment.

Affirmed in part. Remanded in part.

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Linda Waldon, et al. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.,

Case No.: 19-1529

Officials: RIPPLE, ROVNER, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Sufficiency of Evidence

While shopping at a Wal-Mart store, Linda Waldon believes she slipped on a plastic hanger and fell causing her injuries. Under Indiana premises-liability law, a defendant must have actual or constructive knowledge of a condition on the premises that involves an unreasonable risk of harm to an invitee. After discovery, the district court concluded there was no evidence Wal-Mart knew of such a condition and granted it summary judgment. We review this decision, and we consider whether photographs the Waldons rely on to show store conditions have been intentionally altered, requiring sanctions against the Waldons' counsel.

Affirmed with Order to show cause

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Shirlena Barnes v. City of Centralia, Illinois, et al.

Case No.: 19-1377

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and KANNE and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: 4th Amendment Violation Unlawful Seizure and Malicious Prosecution

While arresting gang members in Centralia, Illinois, police officer Michael Peebles felt intimidated when Shirlena Barnes, a city resident with gang connections, drove up and yelled derogatory epithets. Later, Barnes posted statements on social media that Peebles believed threatened him and his family. As a private citizen, Peebles submitted a complaint to the police department and participated no further. After a police investigation, Barnes was arrested, and a criminal prosecution followed. The state later dismissed the charges, and Barnes sued Peebles and the City of Centralia asserting her civil rights were violated. The district court granted summary judgment to the officer and the city, which we affirm.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Rex A. Frederickson v. Tizoc Landeros, Detective

Case No.: 18-1605

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and KANNE, Circuit Judges

Focus: Equal Protection Violation

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that state actors have, at a minimum, a rational basis for treating similarly situated people differently. Rex Frederickson alleges that Officer Tizoc Landeros prevented him from updating his Illinois sexual offender registration and otherwise used his official position to harass Frederickson purely out of personal dislike. Without an updated registration, Frederickson was unable to move from Joliet, Illinois, to nearby Bolingbrook.

The district court found that Frederickson had put forth enough evidence to allow a jury to find that Landeros had singled Frederickson out for unfavorable treatment, and that in so doing Landeros was motivated solely by personal animus and thus lacked a rational basis for his actions. Frederickson v. Landeros, No. 11 C 3484, 2018 WL 1184730 (N.D. Ill. March 7, 2018). The district court also held, relying on our decision in Hanes v. Zurick, 578 F.3d 491, 496 (7th Cir. 2009), that "Frederickson's equal protection right to 'police protection uncorrupted by personal animus' [was] clearly established." 2018 WL 1184730 at *8 (quoting from Hanes). Relying on these two conclusions, the district court denied Landeros's motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity as it applied to Frederickson's equal protection theory. It also found that Landeros was entitled to qualified immunity on Frederickson's theories based on a substantive due process right to intrastate travel and an alleged procedural due process right to register under the Illinois sex offender legislation. Frederickson did not cross-appeal from the latter two findings, and so we need not address them. Landeros filed a timely appeal from the partial denial of qualified immunity. We conclude that the district court's order must be affirmed.

Affirmed

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7th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Monette E. Saccameno v. U.S. Bank National Association

Case No.: 19-1569

Officials: BAUER, BRENNAN, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Bankruptcy Damages

Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a promise to a debtor: if you comply with the bankruptcy plan, then you can get a fresh start. That promise went unfulfilled for Monette Saccameno. She had done everything that was required of her: she cured the delinquencies in her mortgage and made 42 monthly mortgage payments under the court's watchful eye. Near the end of her bankruptcy, she obtained statements from her mortgage servicer, Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC, that she was paid upthat she was paid ahead even. The court granted her a discharge.

Ocwen, however, immediately began trying to collect money that it was not owed and threatening foreclosure. No problem, Saccameno thought, it must be a simple mistake. She sent Ocwen all the paperwork it could have needed to fix its records. When that did not work, she sent it again. Then she sent it a third and fourth time, with a request from an acquaintance, a lawyer, for an explanation why Ocwen thought she owed money. Ocwen did not explain. Ocwen did not care. Ocwen did not truly grasp how wrong its records were until almost four years later, two days into Saccameno's jury trial when its witness was testifying.

It is little wonder, then, that the jury awarded Saccameno substantial damages for the pain, frustration, and emotional torment Ocwen...