Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-19-01525/USCOURTS-ca7-19-01525-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 442
Nature of Suit: Civil Rights Employment
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted March 19, 2020*

Decided March 23, 2020 

Before 

DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge 

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge 

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

No. 19-1525 

ORLANDO BROWN, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 12 CV 2921 

Sharon Johnson Coleman, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

This is the second appeal we have seen in former police officer Orlando Brown’s 

lawsuit against the City of Chicago and other defendants involved in his firing. 

See Brown v. City of Chicago, 771 F.3d 413 (7th Cir. 2014). Our first decision remanded the 

case for the district court to consider Brown’s due-process claim against Captain Patrick 

Gunnell, his former supervisor. At the same time, we invited the district court to 

*

 We agreed to decide the 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 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 

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No. 19-1525 Page 2 

explore whether the claim was precluded by one of Brown’s prior state-court lawsuits, 

and we told the court it was “free” to relinquish supplemental jurisdiction over Brown’s 

state-law claims. Id. at 416. Now that the district court has ruled that the due-process 

claim is indeed precluded and has relinquished supplemental jurisdiction, Brown 

appeals once more. We affirm. 

In 2007 Captain Gunnell launched an investigation into some of Brown’s on-duty 

absences from his assigned district. Brown countered with an internal complaint against 

Linda Salustro, the assigned Internal Affairs investigator, but nothing came of it. 

Brown turned to state court in 2011. His two-count complaint against the City 

of Chicago alleged that Gunnell (who is white) had harassed and discriminated against 

Brown (who is black) on the basis of race, and that Gunnell had started the investigation 

in retaliation for Brown’s objections to discrimination. 

While that suit was ongoing, the Police Board held a hearing on Brown’s 

misconduct and fired him in March 2012. Brown did not amend his state-court 

complaint to challenge the hearing’s procedures or outcome. Instead, Brown filed a 

second suit in federal court in April 2012 suing the City, the Board, and some board 

members for racial discrimination and retaliation. He also said that the Board 

proceedings violated due process because they were prompted by Gunnell’s 

wrongdoing and they violated Illinois administrative law. 

At first the district court stayed the case pending resolution of the state lawsuit. 

Then, in August 2012 the Illinois trial court dismissed Brown’s harassment claim with 

prejudice; soon after Brown voluntarily dismissed his retaliation claim. The district 

court then lifted the stay, dismissed Brown’s discrimination and retaliation claims as 

barred by res judicata (i.e., claim preclusion), and dismissed his challenge to the Board 

proceedings as an unreviewable state-law claim. 

Brown appealed. As to the federal claims for discrimination and retaliation, we 

affirmed because these theories were or could have been included in Brown’s state suit. 

But we saw in Brown’s challenge to the Board proceedings a due-process claim that the 

district court had overlooked, so we remanded the case. Still, as noted, we invited the 

district court to explore whether this challenge—based as it was on Gunnell’s supposed 

misconduct in triggering the investigation—was likewise precluded by the state suit. Id. 

We added that the district court was “free” to relinquish supplemental jurisdiction over 

Brown’s remaining Illinois administrative-law claim. Id. 

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No. 19-1525 Page 3 

In the meantime, a wrinkle had arisen in state court. In June 2013, while Brown’s 

first appeal to us was pending, he filed yet another lawsuit in Illinois state court, this 

time under Illinois administrative law. But the state trial court dismissed that case for 

lack of jurisdiction. (The record does not tell us the trial court’s reasoning.) Although 

Brown then filed a notice of appeal, the state appellate court dismissed his case for 

failure to prosecute because Brown failed to timely file the record on appeal. 

Back in the federal district court on remand, Brown filed in February 2016 a 

second amended complaint. Here he explicitly directed his due-process claim at 

Gunnell. And he reiterated his state administrative-law challenge to the Board’s 

decision, naming as defendants the City, the Board, some board members, and former 

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. 

After the close of discovery in March 2017, more than two years after our remand 

order and five years after filing his original federal complaint, Brown moved for leave 

to file a third amended complaint, this time seeking to add several new defendants, 

including investigator Salustro. The district judge denied that motion, explaining that 

Brown easily could have added those parties sooner and that to do so five years after 

his initial filing would unduly prejudice them and make discovery too burdensome. 

Finally, on Gunnell’s motion for summary judgment and the parties’ 

supplemental briefing, the court dismissed Brown’s due-process claim as barred by 

both claim preclusion and issue preclusion. It declined to exercise supplemental 

jurisdiction over his state-law claim. 

In today’s appeal Brown contends that his due-process claim is not precluded by 

his state litigation because he has newly discovered evidence of misconduct by 

investigator Salustro. His theory is difficult to follow. In any event, the due-process 

claim in the operative complaint concerns alleged misconduct by Gunnell, not Salustro. 

And Salustro’s overall role in the investigation was known to Brown well before the 

conclusion of the state suit. The claim against Gunnell easily could have been resolved 

in the first state lawsuit. 

Yet, as the defendants acknowledge in their brief, the district court could have 

been clearer about the basis for its holding on claim preclusion. In its order the court 

seems to say that the due-process claim could have been raised before the Police Board 

and then in Brown’s administrative-review action (which was dismissed for want of 

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No. 19-1525 Page 4 

jurisdiction). Because we are unsure that Brown actually obtained judicial review of the 

Board’s decision, cf. Durgins v. City of East St. Louis, 272 F.3d 841, 843 (7th Cir. 2001), we 

think it simpler to recognize that the 2011 state-court suit against Gunnell would have 

been a proper forum for the due-process claim against him—particularly since the 

Board completed its review and fired Brown before this state suit ended, accord Brown, 

771 F.3d at 416–17; see also Hayes v. City of Chicago, 670 F.3d 810, 813 (7th Cir. 2012) 

(holding that plaintiff’s § 1983 claim against the Police Board was precluded in federal 

court because he should have brought it in state court alongside other claims arising 

from the same set of operative facts); Durgins, 272 F.3d at 843–44 (same). Because the 

prior state suit precluded Brown’s due-process claim, we need not address the district 

court’s alternative ruling on issue preclusion or the defendants’ other proposed 

rationales for affirmance. 

Brown also challenges the district court’s decision to decline supplemental 

jurisdiction over his state administrative-law claim. But we see no abuse of discretion 

here. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3) (stating that the district court may decline supplemental 

jurisdiction over state-court claims when it has “dismissed all claims over which it has 

original jurisdiction”); Carlsbad Tech., Inc. v. HIF Bio, Inc., 556 U.S. 635, 639 (2009). As we 

suggested in the first appeal, there was no compelling reason for a federal court to 

resolve these paradigmatic issues of state law involving actors other than Gunnell. 

Brown, 771 F.3d at 416. To be sure, Brown objects that it is now too late for him to 

procure administrative review in state court—but what matters is that at one time, he 

could have. Illinois law permits an administrative-review action to be joined to a 

discrimination lawsuit like the one Brown filed in 2011. See Durgins, 272 F.3d at 843. We 

see no obstacle to Brown’s having done so in his first lawsuit once the Board issued its 

decision. And although Brown’s later, separate administrative-review action was 

dismissed, Brown appealed that decision but then failed to prosecute his appeal, which 

led to its dismissal. None of this required the district court to channel his state-law 

claim into a federal forum. 

Finally, Brown challenges the denial of his motion to file a third amended 

complaint adding Salustro and other defendants. He contends that when he deposed 

Salustro in 2017, he learned that she was responsible for initiating several of the 

disciplinary charges against him. He asserts that this “new” information contradicted 

her testimony before the Police Board years earlier regarding Gunnell’s role in initiating 

charges. 

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We will reverse the denial of leave to amend “only if no reasonable person could 

agree” with it. United States ex rel. Berkowitz v. Automation Aids, Inc., 896 F.3d 834, 843 

(7th Cir. 2018) (quotation marks omitted). But the district court rightly explained that 

the parties Brown sought to add were never hidden from him, so he could have 

included them at the outset of his case. To add them more than five years later would 

have unduly prejudiced those parties, particularly in discovery. That ruling was 

reasonable, especially given that Brown had amended his complaint twice before. As 

for Brown’s assertion that he obtained “new” information that Salustro lied before the 

Police Board, the record shows no such thing. Brown knew all along that Salustro was 

investigating him; it cannot have come as any surprise that she played a role in 

initiating charges against him. 

We have considered Brown’s other arguments, but none has merit. 

AFFIRMED 

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