Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-19-01434/USCOURTS-ca7-19-01434-0/pdf.json

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

---

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted March 26, 2020*

Decided May 4, 2020 

Before 

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

No. 19-1434 

MARIA M. ROSAS, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

ADVOCATE CHRIST MEDICAL 

CENTER, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 18 C 5340 

Gary Feinerman, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Maria Rosas contends that a state agency and others wrongfully institutionalized 

her ten years ago. The district court correctly ruled that the agency is not a “person” 

subject to suit and the two-year statute of limitations blocks her claims, so we affirm. 

*

 We have agreed to decide this case without oral argument because the briefs 

and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would 

not significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 

Case: 19-1434 Document: 48 Filed: 05/04/2020 Pages: 4
No. 19-1434 Page 2 

This case concerns Rosas’s two mental health institutionalizations—one in 2009 

and another in 2010. (In reviewing her claims, we accept as true her well-pleaded 

allegations and draw all reasonable inferences in her favor. See, e.g., Anicich v. Home 

Depot U.S.A., Inc., 852 F.3d 643, 648 (7th Cir. 2017)). She alleges that in 2009, a neighbor 

reported to the Chicago police that she had been revving her car engine and throwing 

rocks at cars and houses. Police arrived and found Rosas in her car, revving the engine, 

and refusing to leave. Rosas says she was merely trying to warm her car and that when 

police arrived she feared for her safety and did not want to get out. She denies that she 

was throwing rocks. 

Her first hospitalization occurred next. The police transported Rosas to a medical 

center, where a doctor diagnosed her with “acute onset psychosis” and “delusional 

behavior.” Rosas was soon transferred to the Madden Mental Health Center, a state 

psychiatric hospital. She objected to staying there and told staff that she wanted to go 

home. Medical staff mistreated and over-medicated her, she also alleges. Madden 

discharged Rosas the next month. 

 

Rosas’s second hospitalization occurred the following year after a similar 

trajectory. Rosas was seen vandalizing cars at an automotive body shop. When she 

returned to that shop a few days later, the owner called the police. The police officer 

reported (falsely, Rosas alleges) that she admitted to having mental health issues. She 

was taken to a hospital briefly, and then, as in 2009, to Madden. There, she refused to 

sign a “consent for services” but remained there for a week. Rosas alleges that, because 

of a “conspiracy” to commit her without justification, her experience at Madden 

exacerbated her depression and “heightened [her] fear of doctors.” 

Six years later, in 2016, Rosas (with her daughter’s help) began investigating her 

hospitalizations to prepare for this lawsuit. She received her medical and police records 

in 2017 and sued the next year. Invoking 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, and 1986, Rosas alleges 

that police officers, along with other “known and unknown” co-conspirators, agreed to 

“exaggerate and fabricate allegations against her and thereby deprive her of her 

constitutional rights.” She further alleges that the staff at the hospitals failed to prevent 

this abuse. At the outset of the suit, Rosas asked the district court to recruit counsel. She 

listed 26 calls that she made to lawyers, and their responses. Her submission showed 

that she did not follow-up on the responses. For instance, Legal Aid Chicago invited her 

to attend one of its walk-in clinics, but she did not; after Loevy & Loevy said that it did 

not have native Spanish speakers, she did not tell the firm that she speaks some English; 

Case: 19-1434 Document: 48 Filed: 05/04/2020 Pages: 4
No. 19-1434 Page 3 

and after Miner, Barnhill & Galland said that it would call her back, she did not seek a 

return call. The court denied her motion to recruit counsel, concluding that Rosas had 

not shown an inability to afford counsel or a reasonable effort to obtain counsel on her 

own. 

The district court later granted defendants’ motions to dismiss. It ruled that 

Madden Health Center was part of a state agency (the Illinois Department of Human 

Services), and thus was not a “person” under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, or 1986. Will v. 

Michigan Dept. of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 71. The claims against the other defendants 

could not proceed, the court explained, because the statute of limitations blocked them. 

The statute of limitations for claims under § 1986, which is set forth in the statute itself, 

is one year; the limitations period for §§ 1983 and 1985 claims, borrowed from Illinois 

law, is two years. See Lewis v. City of Chicago, 914 F.3d 472, 477 (7th Cir. 2019) (§ 1983); 

Small v. Chao, 398 F.3d 894, 898 (7th Cir. 2005) (§ 1985). The court rejected Rosas’s tolling 

argument: she argued that, until she obtained her medical records in 2017, she did not 

know the cause of her injuries. The court explained that Rosas did not need those 

records to know the cause of her injuries, and in any case she had not offered a reason 

why she could not have obtained them earlier. 

On appeal, Rosas first argues that the district court abused its discretion when 

denying her motion to recruit counsel, but we disagree. Rosas asked for counsel before 

the defendants had been served. Until defendants have responded to a complaint, the 

district court faces “the difficulty of accurately evaluating the need for counsel.” Mapes 

v. Indiana, 932 F.3d 968, 971–72 (7th Cir. 2019). Furthermore, “[a] litigant’s good faith ... 

effort to obtain counsel is a necessary condition to the provision of judicial assistance to 

recruit a lawyer.” Pickett v. Chi. Transit Auth., 930 F.3d 869, 871 (7th Cir. 2019); 

see also Pruitt v. Mote, 503 F.3d 647, 654 (7th Cir. 2007) (en banc). The district court here 

reasonably concluded that Rosas failed to show that she made such an effort because 

she did not follow up on any of her calls, including the potentially promising leads. 

Without disputing that the longest limitations period is two years, Rosas next 

argues that the limitations period should be equitably tolled for two reasons. Both are 

unavailing. First, she contends that, because of her mental illness, she could not 

“manage ... her estate” (the standard for disability under Illinois’s guardianship statute, 

5 ILCS 70/1.06), and she did not know that she could sue until 2018. But she did not 

raise this argument in the district court, so she has forfeited the contention. See Scheidler 

v. Indiana, 914 F.3d 535, 540, 544 (7th Cir. 2019). 

Case: 19-1434 Document: 48 Filed: 05/04/2020 Pages: 4
No. 19-1434 Page 4 

Second, she argues that she did not discover her injuries until 2017—when she 

(with her daughter’s help) obtained her records. But a claim accrues “when a plaintiff 

knows the fact and the cause of an injury.” Amin Ijbara Equity Corp. v. Vill. of Oak Lawn, 

860 F.3d 489, 493 (7th Cir. 2017). And Rosas alleges in her complaint that she knew in 

2009 and 2010 that Madden and its staff had civilly confined her without adequate 

justification. Thus, Rosas did not need to obtain any records to know of her alleged 

injury in 2010, which means that the two-year limitations period ended by 2012. 

Moreover, even if she needed those records to learn the identities of defendants, she 

and her daughter did not begin to ask for them until more than six years after 2010, by 

which time the limitations period had already ended four years earlier. And she did not 

present to the district court a reason why she or her daughter was prevented from 

seeking those records earlier. See Rosado v. Gonzalez, 832 F.3d 714, 716–17 (7th Cir. 2016). 

Finally, any asserted ignorance of the legal significance of what she knew back in 2010 

does not justify equitably tolling the statute of limitations. See Tobey v. Chibucos, 890 F.3d 

634, 646 (7th Cir. 2018). Thus, the claims are time-barred. See Amin Ijbara Equity Corp., 

860 F.3d at 493; Brooks v. Ross, 578 F.3d 574, 579 (7th Cir. 2009) (statute-of-limitations 

defense blocks a claim where “the relevant dates are set forth unambiguously in the 

complaint”). In addition, in her reply brief, Rosas argues for the first time that she was 

in fact still disabled until 2017, but she forfeited that point by failing to raise it earlier. 

Rosas does not challenge the district court’s conclusion that Madden is not a 

“person” capable of being sued under §§ 1983, 1985, or 1986, so we need not address 

that part of the court’s order. 

AFFIRMED 

Case: 19-1434 Document: 48 Filed: 05/04/2020 Pages: 4