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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14‐3388

DKCLM, LTD., and DALE KREIL,

Plaintiffs‐Appellants,

v.

COUNTY OF MILWAUKEE and PAMELA K. MILLER,

Defendants‐Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 2:11‐cv‐00933‐RTR — Rudolph T. Randa, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JUNE 2, 2015 — DECIDED JULY 20, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Apollo Properties, LLC, owned real

property in the City of Franklin, Wisconsin, a suburb of

Milwaukee. It had rented the property to another company,

DKCLM, Ltd., which used it as a site for the sale and servic‐

ing of boats and related marine equipment. The company

kept boats, motors, parts, tools, and business records there,

and also subleased a portion of the property to Dale Kreil, an

officer of DKCLM, who lived in a house on his leased part of

Case: 14-3388 Document: 32 Filed: 07/20/2015 Pages: 6
2 No. 14‐3388

the property and kept all sorts of personal possessions there,

including family memorabilia, household goods, and vehi‐

cles. The parties treat DKCLM and its officer Kreil as a unit,

and we’ll do the same, referring to them jointly as Kreil.  

In 2005, according to Apollo, Kreil defaulted on his obli‐

gation to pay rent, and in response Apollo initiated eviction

proceedings in Milwaukee County’s small claims court. Be‐

fore the suit was far advanced, however, the parties entered

into a stipulation whereby Apollo agreed to dismiss the case

and in exchange Kreil both promised to pay the rent due and

agreed that in the event of a future default Apollo would be

entitled to ask a court for a writ of restitution (meaning re‐

possession of the property and thus eviction of the tenant)

without notice to Kreil. Apollo asked a Wisconsin court for

that relief on August 15, 2005, Kreil having defaulted, and

nine days later the court issued the writ, but stayed en‐

forcement until September 26. The execution of the writ be‐

gan on October 5, Kreil was evicted, and later a judgment of

almost $54,000 for unpaid rent was entered against him.

Six years later Kreil filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in a

federal district court in Wisconsin against Milwaukee Coun‐

ty and a Milwaukee County detective named Pamela Miller

(and others who were later dismissed), claiming that the

eviction had violated his federal constitutional rights in a va‐

riety of ways. All his claims were rejected by the district

court and only two of them are asserted in this appeal. The

first is that the entry onto the property was an unreasonable

seizure of the tenant’s (Kreil’s) leasehold, thus violating the

Fourth Amendment (made applicable to state action by in‐

terpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment), because it occurred after the statutory dead‐

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No. 14‐3388 3

line for accomplishing an eviction. The second claim that he

is pressing is that the County and its agents had in violation

of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause removed

or caused to be removed, and having done so destroyed or

otherwise discarded or caused to be discarded, the tenant’s

private property (boats, household possessions, etc.) found

on the leasehold.

An eviction pursuant to a court‐ordered writ of restitu‐

tion must be completed by the sheriff within 10 business

days after his receiving the writ from the issuing court. Wis.

Stat. §§ 799.45(5)(a), 801.15(1)(b). It’s unclear whether that

deadline was met. The eviction began on October 5 and was

completed on October 20, 2005. The judge thought it possible

that the sheriff’s office had received the writ the morning of

October 5, in which case October 20 would indeed have been

the tenth business day after receipt. But the sheriff may have

received the writ as early as August 29, according to the rec‐

ords of the sheriff’s office; and if so, Kreil argues, the clock

started to tick on September 26, the day the stay of enforce‐

ment expired. But the district judge didn’t think the eviction

unlawful even if the sheriff’s office had not completed it

within ten days of receiving the writ. The judge based this

conclusion on the fact that the eviction had been delayed

by—of all things—the presence of a skunk.

We agree that the eviction did not violate the Fourth

Amendment even if the sheriff missed the 10‐day deadline.

And not because of the skunk’s intervention. The 10‐day

deadline is imposed by state law rather than by the Fourth

Amendment. The standard governing the legality of a search

or seizure challenged under the Fourth Amendment is fur‐

nished by federal rather than state law. Virginia v. Moore, 553

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4 No. 14‐3388

U.S. 164, 176 (2008); Sroga v. Weiglen, 649 F.3d 604, 607 (7th

Cir. 2011); Jackson v. Parker, 627 F.3d 634, 640 (7th Cir. 2010).

And the standard is reasonableness, not ten days; and even

if the sheriff’s team should not have blanched at having to

confront a skunk, Kreil hasn’t shown that the length of time

it took the sheriff to remove all of Kreil’s possessions was

unreasonable. It’s true that in Wolf‐Lillie v. Sonquist, 699 F.2d

864 (7th Cir. 1983), a district court’s holding that a writ of

restitution executed after the state’s statutory deadline vio‐

lated the Fourth Amendment wasn’t contested on appeal.

But even if our opinion in that case could be read as endors‐

ing that district court’s holding, this would not help Kreil

because any such reading would be contrary to the Supreme

Court’s decision in Virginia v. Moore.

As Kreil himself stresses, his personal possessions were

strewn over the property. Some of them (like the boats) were

very bulky and heavy; the property also included the entire

contents of Kreil’s home. The sheriff’s team couldn’t remove

all that stuff in a day or two. Kreil was frequently on the

property during the removal of his possessions, and he de‐

cided to abandon many of them, including most of the ap‐

pliances, the entire contents of a cinderblock building on his

leasehold, and his filing cabinets including the papers in

them. His claim that the eviction resulted in “gratuitous de‐

struction, diversion or disposal of millions of dollars” worth

of personal property owned by him is unsupported by a list‐

ing of the items and evidence of their value.

He argues that moving companies hired by Milwaukee

County to remove his personal property to a safe place and

return it to him when the eviction (and hence removal of all

that property) was complete failed to return it all. He further

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No. 14‐3388 5

argues, quite without personal knowledge, that the missing

property was discarded by order of the defendants. Alt‐

hough he joined both moving companies as defendants in

the suit, he apparently did not seek discovery of them even

though they obviously would have known had the County

ordered them to throw away the personal property of his

that they removed from the eviction site. Moreover, he vol‐

untarily dismissed his claims against one of the movers, and

the district court dismissed his claims against the other for

the same reasons it dismissed his claims against the public

defendants. To support his case Kreil relies solely on his dec‐

laration, which is too vague about what he lost and why he

thinks he knows what happened to it and in short who did

what. See Ani‐Deng v. Jeffboat, LLC, 777 F.3d 452, 454–55 (7th

Cir. 2015).  

Besides charging a violation of the Fourth Amendment,

Kreil argues that the removal and (alleged) destruction of his

property deprived him of property without due process of

law, in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment. The argument fails for the same reason as the

Fourth Amendment claim—insufficient evidence was pre‐

sented in opposition to the defendants’ motion for summary

judgment. But we do want to comment on the defendants’

alternative defense to the due process claim—that it is

barred by the tenant’s having an adequate remedy under

state law. The doctrine of Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527

(1981), is that an adequate state remedy for a deprivation of

property provides all the due process that a plaintiff suing

state officers for such deprivation is entitled to; the problem

in this case is that the Wisconsin state statute that provides a

remedy for such a deprivation caps the liability of state

agencies and officers at a measly $50,000, Wis. Stat.

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§ 893.80(3), which if Kreil’s estimate of damages had been

correct would be less than a twentieth of his actual damages.

We are inclined to think, though we need not decide in view

of the bar to his due process claim just discussed, that a ceil‐

ing so far below a plaintiff’s loss renders the state remedy

inadequate. See Julian v. Hanna, 732 F.3d 842, 846–48 (7th Cir.

2013).

The parties raise some other issues, but they needn’t be

resolved in order to demonstrate that the judgment of the

district court must be, and it therefore is,

AFFIRMED.

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