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Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 23-2478 

KEVIN JOHNSON, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

MARTIN PURDUE, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:21-cv-00201-JMS-MG — Jane Magnus-Stinson, 

 Judge.

____________________ 

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 12, 2024 — DECIDED JANUARY 21, 2025 

____________________ 

Before HAMILTON, SCUDDER, and LEE, Circuit Judges. 

SCUDDER, Circuit Judge. Kevin Johnson alleges that he received deficient medical care while serving his state sentence 

in an Indiana prison. He turned to federal court for relief, proceeding pro se and alleging a violation of his Eighth Amendment rights. The litigation came during the COVID-19 pandemic which, as with so many other aspects of life, created 

substantial challenges for the parties and the district court. 

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2 No. 23-2478 

Adding to the complexity was the fact that Johnson moved 

prisons on several occasions, spending time in facilities in Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia. Relevant here is Johnson’s contention that difficulties receiving mail plagued his lawsuit and 

left him in the position of never receiving the defendants’ 

summary judgment filings. 

After Johnson failed to respond to the defendants’ motions, the district court entered summary judgment for the defendants. Johnson now appeals, claiming he never received 

the motions in the prison mail. We assume he is right on that 

point. But Johnson’s claim fails because, under the unusual 

circumstances shown here, he had sufficient constructive notice of the summary judgment motions and has never challenged the merits of the district court’s decision. So, while this 

case is plenty messy, in the end we affirm. 

I 

The underlying events occurred at Pendleton Correctional 

Facility in central Indiana. Johnson’s lawsuit challenges the 

dental and mental health care he received in 2019 and 2020. 

He filed his initial complaint in January 2021, invoking 42 

U.S.C. § 1983 and naming as defendants medical personnel, 

prison officials, and Wexford of Indiana, the prison’s contracted medical provider. 

Following discovery, the defendants moved for summary 

judgment in April and June 2022. After several months 

passed, Johnson filed a “notice” on October 24, 2022 informing the district court that he had called the clerk of court and 

learned that he had not received the defendants’ motions because of interruptions with the prison mail service during the 

COVID-19 pandemic. He updated the district court with his 

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No. 23-2478 3

new mailing address on October 17, 2022 because he had 

moved facilities yet again. 

Johnson’s filings got the district court’s attention. Indeed, 

the district court astutely realized there was a potential mailing issue: Johnson may not have received all the filings in this 

case due to the address changes accompanying his many 

transfers to different prisons. Our review of the record shows 

that, during the two-and-a-half-year period of litigation, 

Johnson filed at least five notices of change of address, with 

four filings returned as undeliverable. Put most simply, the 

district court lacked confidence that Johnson had received the 

defendants’ original summary judgment motions. 

To rectify the issue, the district court denied those motions 

without prejudice on January 19, 2023. From there the court 

provided the defendants 14 days to refile for summary judgment and to serve Johnson at the most recent mailing address 

he supplied in his filing with the district court. Attempting to 

avoid a repeat of the same mailing problems, the district 

judge also directed the defendants to inform the court if they 

received notification that their motions went undelivered to 

Johnson. The court’s order gave Johnson 28 days from receipt 

of any new filings to respond and explained that “if Mr. Johnson wishes to request that the Court take some action in this 

case, he is encouraged to file a Motion rather than a Notice.” 

Johnson acknowledged in his subsequent motion to vacate 

that he received the court’s order with these instructions and 

the timeline for the new summary judgment motions. 

As the district court expected, the defendants wasted no 

time refiling their summary judgment motions. For his part, 

though, Johnson never responded within the 28-day opposition deadline. Perhaps worried that mail troubles had 

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resurfaced, the district court refrained from ruling for five 

months. At that point, in June 2023, the district court lifted the 

bookmark, granted the defendants’ motions for summary 

judgment, and dismissed the case. 

A few weeks later, on July 17, 2023, Johnson filed a “motion to vacate order and judgment,” explaining that he did not 

respond because he never received the defendants’ new summary judgment motions. Invoking his right to notice under 

the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, he asked the district court to vacate the judgment as void. The district court 

denied the motion, which it construed as one brought pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), emphasizing that 

its January 2023 order provided Johnson with clear notice that 

the defendants had authority to file new summary judgment 

motions “and that he should file a motion if he needed the 

Court to take a requested action.” 

Johnson now appeals, represented by very able counsel. 

II

With the case now before us, we consider Johnson’s challenge to two of the district court’s rulings—the entry of summary judgment for the defendants and the denial of his motion to vacate. 

But we immediately confront a limitation on our jurisdiction, as Johnson only appealed the district court’s adverse 

summary judgment ruling. He failed to file an amended or 

new notice of appeal, as required by Federal Rule of Appellate 

Procedure 4(a)(4)(B)(ii), to challenge the district court’s denial 

of his post-judgment motion. See White v. United States Dep’t 

of Just., 16 F.4th 539, 543 (7th Cir. 2021) (concluding that we 

cannot review district court decisions disposing of postCase: 23-2478 Document: 47 Filed: 01/21/2025 Pages: 10
No. 23-2478 5

judgment motions based on a notice of appeal filed from the 

original judgment because, in such a circumstance, Rule 

4(a)(4)(B)(ii) requires a second or amended notice of appeal). 

What all of this means is that Johnson’s challenge to the district court’s construction of his post-judgment motion as one 

brought pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), rather than Rule 60(b)(4), is not before us. 

The procedural complexity only compounds from there. 

Even though he has (timely and properly) appealed the district court’s summary judgment ruling, Johnson does not dedicate even one sentence of his brief to the merits of that ruling 

(and his underlying claim alleging deficient medical care). Instead, Johnson devotes his entire brief to the merits of the district court’s ruling on his post-judgment motion—yet, as we 

have emphasized, he never properly appealed that ruling. So 

we have a procedural mess before us. 

In no way do we mean to criticize Johnson. He has no legal 

training and proceeded pro se in the district court, undoubtedly doing the best he could. But the procedural shortcomings 

add substantial complexity to sorting out the permissible 

scope of our review on appeal. 

In the final analysis, the only challenge before us is to the 

district court’s entry of summary judgment for the defendants. We see no error—no substantive error because Johnson 

presses no substantive challenge, and no procedural error because the district court took care to ensure Johnson had constructive notice of the new round of summary judgment motions before entering judgment for the defendants.

Our reasoning requires two layers of unpacking. 

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A 

First, we are confident that Johnson’s notice of appeal 

from the district court’s summary judgment order provides 

us with authority to resolve whether he received adequate notice of the summary judgment filings. When a party timely 

appeals a district court’s grant of summary judgment, we see 

no barrier to the party contesting the procedural fairness of 

that ruling on appeal based on a complete lack of notice. See 

Mullane v. Cent. Hanover Bank & Tr. Co., 339 U.S. 306, 314 

(1950) (describing notice as “[a]n elementary and fundamental requirement of due process in any proceeding which is to 

be accorded finality”). That is Johnson’s essential contention 

here, inviting us to void the district court’s entry of summary 

judgment because he had no notice of the proceedings. Cf. Relational, LLC v. Hodges, 627 F.3d 668, 671 (7th Cir. 2010) (explaining that “a judgment is void as to any party who was not 

adequately served” and therefore lacked proper notice of the 

proceedings). 

To be sure, all this complexity would evaporate had Johnson appealed the district court’s denial of his post-judgment 

motion, where he raised the same procedural challenge to the 

judgment’s validity. But this fact does not deprive us of our 

authority to consider the fundamental fairness of the district 

court’s summary judgment ruling given Johnson’s timely appeal of that ruling. Implicit in the district court’s entry of summary judgment for the defendants was its reasonable belief 

that the notice issues had been resolved. Given Johnson’s 

timely appeal of the ultimate summary judgment ruling, we 

have jurisdiction to review his challenge to the fundamental 

validity of the district court’s judgment. 

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No. 23-2478 7

B 

Second, we agree with the district court’s implicit determination that Johnson had constructive notice of the defendants’ new summary judgment motions. 

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, our adversarial system of justice rests on the important assumption that parties 

receive copies of their opponents’ submissions to the court 

and a fair opportunity to respond. Indeed, the Federal Rules 

of Civil Procedure, particularly Rules 4 and 5, are designed to 

establish that basic foundation for fair civil litigation. So we 

are sympathetic to Johnson’s claim that he never received the 

defendants’ motions for summary judgment. He swore to this 

effect in his motion to vacate, and the defendants have submitted no evidence to the contrary. 

But our inquiry cannot end there because the law also permits constructive notice. See Krecioch v. United States, 221 F.3d 

976, 980 (7th Cir. 2000) (“The operative question is whether 

notice was adequate at the time that the notice was sent[.] ... 

However, due process does not require actual notice, so long 

as the government ‘acted reasonably in selecting means likely 

to inform the persons affected.’”) (citations omitted). On the 

record before us we are persuaded that Johnson had constructive notice of the pending motions, so the district court’s order 

granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants did 

not violate his right to due process. 

Due process requires “notice reasonably calculated, under 

all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present 

their objections.” Mullane, 339 U.S. at 314. Proof of actual notice is not required because due process does not demand that 

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a party use “the best possible method of notification.” Krecioch, 221 F.3d at 981 (quoting Towers v. City of Chicago, 173 F.3d 

619, 628 (7th Cir. 1999)). 

By his own admission, Johnson received the district 

court’s January 2023 order resetting the summary judgment 

briefing schedule. We conclude that the district court’s order

left Johnson with notice “reasonably calculated” to apprise 

him of the risk of renewed summary judgment motions being 

filed within the next 14 days and, by extension, a judgment 

being entered against him. 

The district court’s January 2023 order reflects a meaningful effort to protect Johnson’s due process rights, affording 

him multiple opportunities to respond or notify the court of a 

mailing issue. First, the district court dismissed the original 

summary judgment motions without prejudice, providing the 

defendants with a firm timeline—14 days—to file anew and 

serve Johnson at his new address. It also instructed them to 

notify the court of any issues with the mail. Second, the district court waited for Johnson’s response. Five months passed 

with no activity—no response from Johnson and no further 

filings indicating any issue with the prison mail service. Only 

then did the district court enter its order granting summary 

judgment. 

Critically, Johnson acknowledges that he received the district court’s January 2023 order resetting the summary judgment briefing schedule. We have previously found that court 

orders directing a party to respond to a pending motion suffice to put the party on notice. See Trask v. Rodriguez, 854 F.3d 

941, 944 (7th Cir. 2017) (holding that a pro se plaintiff had adequate notice of a pending summary judgment motion, despite claiming she never received it, because the court entered 

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No. 23-2478 9

an order directing her to respond to the motion and she 

acknowledged receiving that order). 

Even assuming that Johnson did not receive actual notice

of the pending motions, the same result is appropriate here. 

Johnson received the district court’s January 2023 order denying defendants’ motions without prejudice and inviting them 

to refile. In these circumstances, Johnson should have known 

that summary judgment motions would likely be filed within 

the next 14 days. At the very least, given the history of notice 

difficulties in the case, it was not unreasonable to expect Johnson to make some effort on his end to monitor or inquire 

about the status of his case well before the district court ruled 

several months later. Yet at no point between the district 

court’s January 2023 order and its ultimate summary judgment ruling on June 22, 2023 did Johnson file anything saying 

his mail problems persisted or that he was in the dark about 

anything with the litigation. 

The prior history of undelivered mail does not cast doubt 

on our conclusion. The record shows that the defendants sent 

the motions to Johnson’s updated mailing address, where he 

received the district court’s January 2023 order and summary 

judgment order, and which has no documented history of 

mailing issues. All of this is enough to show that Johnson had 

constructive notice. 

At oral argument defense counsel suggested that Johnson 

shouldered the burden to prove he did not receive these filings, stating at one point that he could have requested prison 

mail records. In our view, that is a bridge too far in these circumstances. The burden does not rest with an incarcerated 

pro se litigant to prove a negative. In any event, the problem 

fatal to Johnson’s appeal is not that he failed to prove he did 

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not receive the new round of summary judgment motions. It 

is instead a combination of factors: that he failed to take any 

action in this case despite being put on notice that the defendants’ motions would shortly be refiled, that the district court 

instructed defendants to notify the court of any issues with 

service, and that, from a broader perspective, Johnson has offered no argument that the district court’s decision was 

wrong on the merits of the summary judgment motions. 

For these reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district 

court.

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