Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01695/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01695-0/pdf.json

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. 14-1695

DANNY FARLEY,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

JACOB KOEPP, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 3:13-cv-234-DGW — Donald G. Wilkerson, Magistrate Judge.

____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 4, 2014 — DECIDED JUNE 8, 2015

____________________

Before MANION, WILLIAMS, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge. At 4:15 p.m. on Friday, March 8, 

2013, the plaintiff’s attorney in this civil-rights case opened

an electronic case file in the Southern District of Illinois by 

e-mailing the complaint and civil cover sheet to the clerk’s 

office as required by the local court rules. The clerk received 

the e-mail, opened a new case file in the Case Management/

Electronic Case Filing system (“CM/ECF”), and at 5:11 p.m. 

notified the attorney that the electronic file was available to 

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receive uploads. On the next business day—Monday, 

March 11—the attorney’s assistant tried to upload the complaint but encountered problems with the electronic payment system. It was not until Tuesday, March 12, that she

successfully paid the filing fee and uploaded the complaint. 

But the deadline to sue under the two-year statute of limitations was Monday, March 11, and under the local rules, the 

complaint was not deemed “filed” until it was uploaded into 

CM/ECF. The district court dismissed the suit as untimely.

We vacate the judgment and remand for reinstatement of

the complaint. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 

“[a] civil action is commenced by filing a complaint with the 

court,” FED. R. CIV. P. 3, and a paper is “filed” simply by

“delivering it ... to the clerk,” FED. R. CIV. P. 5(d)(2)(A). The 

clerk may not “refuse to file a paper solely because it is not 

in the form prescribed by these rules or by a local rule or 

practice.” FED. R. CIV. P. 5(d)(4). Here, counsel e-mailed the 

complaint to the clerk, as required to open a new electronic 

case file in the Southern District of Illinois. Although the 

filing process was not complete under the local rules until 

the complaint was uploaded, transmitting the complaint via

e-mail effectively “delivered” it to the clerk for purposes of

Rule 5(d)(2). The delay in uploading the complaint was 

merely a defect in form (in the electronic sense) and did not 

prevent the e-mailed complaint from tolling the statute of

limitations.

I. Background

Danny Farley alleges that on March 9, 2011, police officers in Granite City, Illinois, violated his Fourth Amendment 

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No. 14-1695 3

rights when they arrested him in his hotel room at the Econo 

Lodge Inn & Suites. According to the complaint, Farley 

called the police to report a disturbance in an adjacent room. 

When officers responded, they inexplicably arrested him and

used excessive force in the course of the arrest. Farley named 

as defendants the arresting officers (Jacob Koepp and 

Jonathan Hadley); a hotel employee (Vinit Jitendra Tailor); 

the owner of the hotel (Granite City Motel & Resort LLC); 

and Granite City.1 The complaint sought damages for civilrights violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and for wrongful 

eviction under state law.

On March 8, 2013, Farley’s attorney began the process of 

filing the complaint in the Southern District of Illinois. As a 

general matter, the local rules require that documents be 

filed electronically through the CM/ECF system; attorneys 

are required to use the system unless they’ve obtained a 

specific exemption. See SDIL-LR 5.1(c) (Dec. 2009) (“All 

parties must file documents by electronic means that comply 

with procedures established by the Court unless specifically 

exempted for good cause shown.”); SDIL Electronic Case 

Filing R. 1 (Nov. 2012) (“Attorneys must utilize the ECF

system, unless specifically exempted by the court for good 

cause shown.”). Under the rules in place at the time, however, e-filers could not open a new case in CM/ECF on their 

own. Instead, according to the user manual then in effect, 

“[a]ttorneys must [first] submit civil cases by e-mail,” and 

“[w]hen filing a new case by e-mail, [the] complaint/notice of 

removal MUST be sent in PDF to the proper divisional 

mailbox.” SDIL CM/ECF User Manual § 4.0 (Sept. 2009). The 

 

1 Pramukh, Inc., also a named defendant, was dismissed in the district 

court by stipulation.

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manual also explained that upon receipt of the e-mailed 

complaint or notice of removal, “[t]he Clerk will open your 

case in ECF and notify you via the CM/ECF system that the 

case is opened and available for you to electronically file the 

complaint/notice of removal [using the ECF web interface].”

Id.

At 4:15 p.m. on March 8, an assistant to Farley’s attorney 

e-mailed the complaint and civil cover sheet to the proper 

e-mail address. The clerk’s office responded at 5:11 p.m. with 

a notice stating that “a new civil case has been opened” but 

that “the complaint ... is not deemed ‘filed’ with the clerk 

until it is transmitted to the ECF system.” The assistant 

attempted to upload the complaint the next business day—

Monday, March 11—but she avers that “complications arose 

concerning the electronic payment of the filing fee.” On 

Tuesday, March 12, she clarified the payment issue and 

successfully uploaded the complaint to CM/ECF.

The trouble is that the two-year statute of limitations for 

the § 1983 claims expired on March 11.2 The defendants 

moved to dismiss the § 1983 claims as untimely. A magistrate 

judge granted the motion, dismissing the § 1983 claims with 

prejudice and the state-law claim without prejudice. This 

appeal followed.

 2 The statute of limitations for claims brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is 

the limitations period for analogous personal-injury claims in the forum 

state, Ray v. Maher, 662 F.3d 770, 772 (7th Cir. 2011)—here, two years, 

735 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/13-202. Because the two-year mark of March 9 fell 

on a Saturday, the time to commence the action was automatically 

extended to Monday, March 11. See FED. R. CIV. P. 6.

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II. Discussion

Farley argues that e-mail delivery of his complaint to the 

court clerk was sufficient under the federal rules to commence the action and stop the running of the statute of 

limitations. On these facts, we agree. When the local rules 

require counsel to e-mail the complaint to the court clerk to 

open an electronic case file, the e-mail submission of the 

complaint “delivers” it to the clerk, as required to commence 

a civil action under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 

This tolls the statute of limitations even if the local rules 

require additional steps to complete the filing process.

The timeliness of an action based on federal-question jurisdiction turns on the date the action was commenced in 

accordance with Rule 3 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See, e.g., West v. Conrail, 481 U.S. 35, 39 (1987); Farzana

K. v. Ind. Dep’t of Educ., 473 F.3d 703, 706 (7th Cir. 2007). This

rule applies even where, as here, the limitations period must 

be borrowed from state law because the federal statute lacks 

its own statute of limitations. See Conrail, 481 U.S. at 39 & n.4

(noting that when the cause of action is based on state law, 

the state’s rules for arresting the statute of limitations are 

applied out of respect for state substantive decisions, but

“[t]his requirement, naturally, does not apply to federalquestion cases”).

Under Rule 3 “[a] civil action is commenced by filing a 

complaint with the court.” Rule 5(d)(2), in turn, explains 

what “filing” means: “A paper is filed by delivering it ... to 

the clerk.” Rule 5 further provides that “[t]he clerk must not 

refuse to file a paper solely because it is not in the form 

prescribed by these rules or by a local rule or practice.” FED.

R. CIV. P. 5(d)(4). More broadly, under Rule 83(a)(2), “[a] local 

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rule imposing a requirement of form must not be enforced in 

a way that causes a party to lose any right because of a 

nonwillful failure to comply.” FED. R. CIV. P. 83(a)(2).

Read together, these provisions instruct us that to determine when a “filing” has been made, “deliver[y] ... to the 

clerk” is of paramount importance, and requirements of 

form—whether in the federal or local rules—are insufficient 

to disqualify a filing. Moreover, “local rules [and practice] ...

cannot defeat a right, which in this case is a right to arrest 

the running of the statute of limitations by filing a complaint 

in the district court, that is conferred by the national rules.”

Robinson v. Doe, 272 F.3d 921, 923 (7th Cir. 2001).

In Robinson, for example, the complaint was rejected by 

the clerk for failure to include either a filing fee or a motion 

to proceed in forma pauperis, yet we nonetheless treated it as 

timely filed. Id. We held that “[t]he complaint is ‘filed’ for 

purposes of [arresting a statute of limitations] when the 

court clerk receives the complaint, not when it is formally 

filed in compliance with all applicable rules involving filing 

fees and the like ... .” Id. at 922–23. It is immaterial whether 

the form requirements of the local rule are explicitly authorized by federal law, as is the filing-fee requirement. See

28 U.S.C. § 1914(c) (“Each district court by rule or standing 

order may require advance payment of fees.”).

There is no question in this case that e-mailing the complaint to the clerk was a proper way of delivering it. FED. R.

CIV. P. 5(d)(2). Farley’s attorney did not simply drop the

complaint on the floor in the vicinity of the clerk’s office or

send an unsolicited e-mail to a court clerk unequipped to 

handle e-mailed complaints. To the contrary, the local procedures required that the complaint be e-mailed to a specific 

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e-mail address in the clerk’s office, subject to very limited 

exceptions. SDIL CM/ECF User Manual § 4.0 (Sept. 2009).

Although the local rules also required counsel to upload the

complaint to CM/ECF to complete the filing process, the 

two-day delay in doing so was merely a defect in the form of 

filing under the local rules. See United States v. Harvey, 516 

F.3d 553, 556 (7th Cir. 2008) (holding that submitting a 

document electronically instead of on paper as required by 

local rules was a “mere error of form”); Farzana K., 473 F.3d 

at 707 (holding that filing a complaint electronically under 

the wrong docket number was a defect in form). And under 

Rules 5(d)(4) and 83(a)(2), that defect in form did not prevent 

the e-mail delivery of the complaint from being effective to 

stop the running of the statute of limitations.

The defendants argue that Rule 5(d)(4) doesn’t apply

when the clerk or an electronic filing system has not actually 

refused or rejected a tendered filing. In this case, the clerk 

received the tendered complaint on March 8, opened an 

electronic case file in CM/ECF, and instructed Farley’s attorney to file his complaint electronically by uploading it into 

the system. That is, the clerk didn’t refuse to accept the 

complaint. But a formal rejection of the tendered document

isn’t necessary for the substantive protection of Rule 5(d)(4)

to be effective. The rule prevents litigants from inadvertently 

forfeiting their legal rights by mistakes in form regardless of 

whether the clerk has actually refused or rejected the tendered filing.

Indeed, we’ve applied the predecessor to Rule 5(d)(4) in a 

case in which the clerk did not reject the nonconforming 

filing. See Harvey, 516 F.3d at 556. The local rule at issue in 

Harvey required that a notice of appeal be filed “conventionCase: 14-1695 Document: 30 Filed: 06/08/2015 Pages: 9
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ally on paper.” Id. The appellant submitted his appeal notice

electronically; the clerk advised the appellant’s counsel to file 

a paper copy, but he didn’t do so until well after the appeal 

deadline had passed. Id. The electronic notice of appeal 

wasn’t formally rejected, yet we applied then-Rule 5(e) (the 

predecessor to Rule 5(d)(4)) and held that the notice of 

appeal was timely. We also relied on Rule 83(a)(2), noting

that dismissing the appeal would deprive the appellant of a 

substantive right based solely on a defect in form. Id. The 

same reasoning applies here.3

Finally, the defendants argue that Rule 5(d)(3) authorizes

clerks to treat noncomplying electronic filings as invalid. 

Rule 5(d)(3) states, in pertinent part, that “[a] local rule may 

require electronic filing,” although it may do so “only if 

reasonable exceptions are allowed.” The defendants argue, 

in essence, that this rule confers on local rulemakers the 

authority to permit clerks to invalidate filings based on 

defects in form, overriding Rules 5(d)(4) and 83(a)(2). That’s 

not a sound reading of the rule, which simply authorizes the 

creation of mandatory e-filing systems by local rule. Nothing 

in Rule 5(d)(3) alters substantive rights or displaces 

Rule 5(d)(4) or Rule 83(a)(2).

In holding that Farley’s complaint was timely, we do not 

suggest that litigants are excused from following local 

e-filing rules. If Farley had not promptly come into compliance with the local requirements, the complaint could have 

been dismissed for failure to prosecute. FED. R. CIV. P. 41(b).

 3 Harvey was a criminal case, but the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure expressly incorporate the civil rules pertaining to filing and service. 

See FED. R. CRIM. P. 49(b), (d).

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We hold only that under Rule 5(d) a complaint is “filed” on 

the date it is delivered to the clerk, regardless of defects in 

form (including electronic defects), and under Rule 3 the 

action is “commenced” on that date, which tolls the running 

of the statute of limitations. Farzana K., 473 F.3d at 706–08.

Here, the CM/ECF rules in effect at the time required

Farley’s counsel to e-mail the complaint to the clerk as the 

first step in the electronic-filing process.4 Accordingly, the 

complaint was filed (i.e., “delivered”) on the date it was 

transmitted to the clerk via e-mail. That occurred on 

March 8, 2013, so the complaint was timely filed.

VACATED AND REMANDED.

 

4 As of early 2015, new civil cases filed by attorneys in the Southern 

District of Illinois must be opened directly on the CM/ECF system and 

cannot be opened by e-mailing the clerk. See SDIL CM/ECF User Manual 

§ 4.0 (Jan. 2015). This is a step forward, eliminating the requirement that 

a complaint be submitted to the clerk twice. We note, however, that the 

protections of Rules 5(d)(4) and 83(a)(2) apply to the new e-filing regime. 

We’ve held as a general matter that these rules apply with equal force 

both to e-filing systems and human clerks. See Farzana K. v. Ind. Dep’t of 

Educ., 473 F.3d 703, 708 (7th Cir. 2007) (“An e-filing system ... must 

accept every document tendered for filing; it cannot reject any paper that 

the clerk must accept.”).

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