Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01728/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01728-0/pdf.json

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

---

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted December 4, 2015*

 Decided December 9, 2015 

Before 

KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge 

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge 

ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge

No. 15-1728 

MICHAEL E. FLOURNOY, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

WINNEBAGO COUNTY SHERIFF’S 

DEPARTMENT, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.

No. 14-cv-528-jdp 

James D. Peterson, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Michael Flournoy was arrested in July 2012 after an investigation conducted 

jointly by federal and state authorities. Initially he was charged with drug crimes under 

Illinois law, but state prosecutors voluntarily dismissed those charges when federal 

authorities decided to prosecute. A jury in federal court found Flournoy guilty of 

 

*

 The defendants were not served with process in the district court and are not 

participating in this appeal. After examining the appellant’s brief and the record, we 

have concluded the case is appropriate for summary disposition. See FED. R. APP. P. 

34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

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

Case: 15-1728 Document: 24 Filed: 12/09/2015 Pages: 3
No. 15-1728 Page 2 

conspiracy and attempted possession of cocaine, and the district court sentenced him to 

a total of 204 months’ imprisonment. Flournoy’s direct appeal from those convictions 

remains pending. See United States v. Flournoy, No. 14-2325 (7th Cir. filed June 11, 2014). 

Meanwhile, after he was sentenced, Flournoy filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. At 

screening, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the district court read Flournoy’s amended complaint to 

allege that he was arrested in July 2012 without probable cause, in violation of the Fourth 

Amendment. The court dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim, reasoning that 

Flournoy’s own account of the events preceding his arrest establishes the existence of 

probable cause. See Fleming v. Livingston Cnty., Ill., 674 F.3d 874, 878 (7th Cir. 2012) 

(noting that existence of probable cause forecloses Fourth Amendment claim alleging 

false arrest); Morfin v. City of E. Chicago, 349 F.3d 989, 997 (7th Cir. 2003) (same). In a 

motion to reconsider, Flournoy argued that the state judge, by granting the prosecutor’s 

motion to dismiss the original charges, established conclusively that he was arrested 

without probable cause. And that ruling, Flournoy insisted, was binding in his federal 

suit. The district court disagreed, reasoning that the state judge’s order was not a 

decision on the merits and lacks preclusive effect. 

Flournoy appeals. He does not dispute the district court’s reading of his amended 

complaint as raising a single Fourth Amendment claim about his arrest in July 2012. Nor 

does he identify any error in the court’s conclusion that his own factual allegations show 

that probable cause to arrest existed. Instead, Flournoy repeats his contention that the 

order dismissing the state charges establishes conclusively that probable cause to arrest 

him was lacking. But under Illinois law—which a federal court applies when 

considering the preclusive effect of an Illinois judgment, see 28 U.S.C. § 1738—a decision 

is not binding in a later proceeding unless, among other requirements, that decision 

constitutes a final judgment on the merits and the parties in both actions are the same or 

in privity. See Brown v. City of Chicago, 599 F.3d 772, 774 (7th Cir. 2010); Dunlap v. Nestle 

USA, Inc., 431 F.3d 1015, 1018 (7th Cir. 2005); People v. Anderson, 1 N.E.3d 54, 58 (Ill. App. 

Ct. 2013). Neither requirement is satisfied here. The state judge dismissed the charges 

against Flournoy on the prosecutor’s motion without ever reaching the question of 

probable cause; this type of early dismissal of a criminal case has no preclusive effect. 

See People v. Daniels, 718 N.E.2d 149, 157 (Ill. 1999) (explaining that prosecutor’s motion 

to dismiss “is like a nonsuit or discontinuance in a civil suit, and leaves the matter in the 

same condition in which it was before the commencement of the prosecution”) (internal 

quotation marks and citation omitted); People v. Gill, 886 N.E.2d 1043, 1046–47 (Ill. App. 

Ct. 2008) (same); People v. Matuck, 528 N.E.2d 1102, 1103–04 (Ill. App. Ct. 1988) (same). 

More importantly, even if the state judge actually had ruled that probable cause to arrest 

Case: 15-1728 Document: 24 Filed: 12/09/2015 Pages: 3
No. 15-1728 Page 3 

Flournoy was lacking, the plaintiff’s argument would not succeed. We have held that a 

ruling in a state criminal proceeding is not conclusive in a civil rights action against 

police officers because they “were not parties to the state court proceedings and did not 

have a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue of whether they had probable cause 

to arrest.” Booker v. Ward, 94 F.3d 1052, 1057 (7th Cir. 1996); see also Kraushaar v. Flanigan, 

45 F.3d 1040, 1050–51 (7th Cir. 1995); Williams v. Kobel, 789 F.2d 463, 470 (7th Cir. 1986). 

AFFIRMED. 

Case: 15-1728 Document: 24 Filed: 12/09/2015 Pages: 3