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

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 15-1328 

NEAL D. SECREASE, JR., 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

THE WESTERN & SOUTHERN LIFE

INSURANCE COMPANY, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Southern District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. 

No. 1:14-cv-00955-JMS-TAB — Jane E. Magnus-Stinson, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED AUGUST 25, 2015 — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 1, 2015 

____________________ 

Before CUDAHY, KANNE, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges. 

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. This appeal is a reminder of a 

district judge’s inherent power to impose the severe sanction 

 After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral 

argument is unnecessary. The appeal has been submitted on the briefs 

and record. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

Case: 15-1328 Document: 27 Filed: 09/01/2015 Pages: 8
2 No. 15-1328 

of dismissal (on a plaintiff) or default (on a defendant) when 

a party deliberately tries to defraud the court. We affirm the 

dismissal with prejudice here. 

Plaintiff Neil Secrease sued his former employer, The 

Western & Southern Life Insurance Company, and some of 

its supervisors, alleging unlawful discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 

U.S.C. §§ 2000e–2 and 2000e–3(a). He also brought several 

state-law claims. The district court dismissed his suit with 

prejudice because, in opposing a motion to dismiss, Secrease 

attempted to defraud the court by asking it to enforce a phony arbitration agreement. We affirm because the fraud finding was not clearly erroneous and the sanction of dismissal 

was appropriate. 

After Secrease filed suit in June 2014, Western & Southern 

moved to dismiss the suit as untimely. It argued that 

Secrease had tried to make his Title VII claims look timely by 

attaching to his complaint a charge of discrimination, filed 

with the EEOC in April 2013, but mismatched to a 

right-to-sue letter dated March 2014 that addressed a different EEOC charge. 

Secrease had filed three charges of discrimination with 

the EEOC. He filed his first charge in March 2013 alleging 

age and sex discrimination. He repeated those allegations in 

a second charge, the one from April 2013 that he attached to 

his complaint. The EEOC assigned the same charge number 

to both the March and April 2013 charges and issued Secrease a right-to-sue letter, which Secrease omitted from his 

complaint, for both charges on June 25, 2013. Secrease filed a 

third charge in November 2013 that again repeated the sex 

and age allegations and added that the company had fired 

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No. 15-1328 3

him in retaliation for the earlier charges. In March 2014, the 

EEOC issued Secrease a second right-to-sue letter, for the 

November 2013 charge, which he attached to his complaint. 

The company argued that because Secrease had alleged 

similar claims in each of his three charges, his time to sue 

started after he received his first right-to-sue letter in June 

2013 and lapsed about nine months before he filed suit. Finally, as to the state-law claims, the company argued that 

Secrease failed to state a claim. 

Secrease asked the court to deny the motion to dismiss. 

Instead of answering Western & Southern’s arguments or 

seeking to dismiss his suit voluntarily (if he had no response), he asked the court for different relief: an order to 

resolve the dispute in arbitration. He submitted a document, 

signed by him, that he said was his employment contract. It 

contained a mandatory arbitration clause. 

Western & Southern replied that Secrease was trying to 

defraud the court because his actual employment contract 

did not contain an arbitration clause. According to Western & Southern, Secrease furnished the first and last pages of 

his own employment contract, both of which he signed in 

October 2006. But the remaining, interior pages of Secrease’s 

submission containing an arbitration clause were from an 

employment contract that the company did not use until 

2008, two years after Secrease had signed his employment 

contract. Although that later contract form did include mandatory arbitration, Secrease and the company never entered 

into such an agreement. The document identification numbers confirmed the company’s explanation. The signed pages 

produced by Secrease were labeled 2-0603 (06 representing 

the year 2006 and 03 representing March) and the remaining 

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pages of the document bore the label 2-0901 (09 for 2009 and 

01 for January). Having already experienced Secrease’s effort 

to mismatch his EEOC charges and right-to-sue letters, 

Western & Southern asked the district judge to dismiss 

Secrease’s claims with prejudice as a sanction for his fraud 

on the court. 

Before getting to the issue of fraud, the district judge 

agreed with Western & Southern that all of Secrease’s statelaw claims failed to state a claim. The judge also dismissed 

as untimely all claims under Title VII, except the claim that 

his employer fired him in retaliation for filing the first two 

EEOC charges. The judge reasoned correctly that Secrease 

had received, nearly a year before he sued, a right-to-sue letter on the sex and age charges, so his suit on those charges 

was untimely. But because Secrease raised the retaliation 

charge for the first time in his third EEOC charge and had 

sued within 90 days of the corresponding right-to-sue letter, 

the retaliation claim was timely. 

Judge Magnus-Stinson then held a hearing on whether 

Secrease had deliberately submitted a falsified contract in an 

effort to compel Western & Southern to arbitrate the claims, 

as the company had alleged. Western & Southern’s personnel 

manager testified that Secrease’s personnel file contained only one employment contract, signed in 2006, and it did not 

contain an arbitration clause. She added that the pages Secrease had furnished came from a 2009 contract to which he 

and the company were not parties. 

Secrease’s reply just dug a deeper hole of deception. He 

said that a fellow employee who had the 2009 form of employment contract helped him prepare his court filing. When 

Secrease could not find the inside pages of his own employCase: 15-1328 Document: 27 Filed: 09/01/2015 Pages: 8
No. 15-1328 5

ment contract, he claimed, he used the other employee’s contract as an example. He said he intended them to be separate 

exhibits, but the exhibits accidentally got combined. When 

he discovered that he had combined them, he claimed further, he called the clerk or the judge to correct the misfiling. 

(Secrease’s telephone records, however, reflected no calls to 

the clerk’s office or to the judge’s chambers.) Secrease also 

claimed that he had signed another employment contract 

after 2008 that did contain an arbitration clause. When 

pressed, he admitted that he had no copy, but he clung to his 

story by accusing the company of destroying its copy. 

After considering the evidence, the district judge dismissed Secrease’s suit with prejudice as a sanction for seeking relief based on falsified evidence. By sandwiching pages 

from a different contract between the first and last pages of 

his own contract, the judge explained, Secrease had tried to 

deceive the court into thinking the document was a single 

contract that required arbitration. The judge found implausible Secrease’s contention that he had retained the first and 

last pages but not the inside pages of his own contract. 

The judge also did not believe Secrease’s claims that he 

had combined the pages into one exhibit accidentally or that 

he had called the court to try to fix his error. The details of 

his story were inconsistent, and he could not substantiate 

that he had called the court. 

The judge recognized that dismissal with prejudice 

would be a harsh sanction. She determined that the sanction 

was appropriate because Secrease had tried, willfully and in 

bad faith, to deceive the court and then, when questioned 

about it, gave dishonest and implausible explanations. 

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On appeal Secrease argues that he did not intend to defraud the court. He repeats that he submitted the inside 

pages of someone else’s contract only to illustrate the general 

type of contract he had signed, not to mislead the court 

about arbitration. Because he did not intend to defraud, he 

continues, the sanction of dismissal was too harsh. 

A district court has inherent power to sanction a party 

who “has willfully abused the judicial process or otherwise 

conducted litigation in bad faith.” Salmeron v. Enterprise Recovery Systems, Inc., 579 F.3d 787, 793 (7th Cir. 2009); 

see Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., 501 U.S. 32, 48–49 (1991); 

Greviskes v. Universities Research Ass’n, 417 F.3d 752, 758–59 

(7th Cir. 2005). Dismissal can be appropriate when the plaintiff has abused the judicial process by seeking relief based on 

information that the plaintiff knows is false. See Salmeron, 

579 F.3d at 793; Greviskes, 417 F.3d at 759; Thomas v. General 

Motors Acceptance Corp., 288 F.3d 305, 306, 308 (7th Cir. 2002) 

(holding that court did not abuse discretion in dismissing 

suit with prejudice where plaintiff knowingly filed false application to proceed in forma pauperis). 

These powers, which are essential to a court’s ability to 

preserve the integrity of its proceedings, are symmetrical. 

They apply to default judgments against defendants as well 

as to dismissals against plaintiffs. See, e.g., Philips Medical 

Systems Int’l, B.V. v. Bruetman, 982 F.2d 211, 214 (7th Cir. 

1992) (affirming default judgment as sanction for defendant’s 

bad faith failure to comply with discovery order and deception of court); Profile Gear Corp. v. Foundry Allied Industries, 

Inc., 937 F.2d 351, 353–54 (7th Cir. 1991) (same); Hal Commodity Cycles Mgmt. Co. v. Kirsh, 825 F.2d 1136, 1138–39 (7th Cir. 

1987) (affirming default judgment against defendant for willCase: 15-1328 Document: 27 Filed: 09/01/2015 Pages: 8
No. 15-1328 7

ful delays and dishonesty); Quela v. Payco-General American 

Creditas, Inc., 2000 WL 656681, at *8 (N.D. Ill. May 18, 2000) 

(relying on inherent power of court, entering default judgment against defendant who coerced employee to lie in deposition on central issue in case). We review a district court’s 

findings of fact for clear error, and we review for an abuse of 

discretion the court’s selection of dismissal or default as a 

sanction for serious misconduct. Salmeron, 579 F.3d at 793. 

We find no error in the district court’s factual finding of 

attempted fraud. The district judge reasonably concluded 

that Secrease intended to mislead the court into granting his 

request to compel arbitration. His actual 2006 contract did 

not contain the arbitration clause, and Secrease admitted that 

the inside pages of the contract that he submitted were from 

a different employee’s contract. He could not substantiate his 

assertions that he combined the documents only accidentally, that he tried to call the court to correct his mistake, and 

that he had signed another contract containing an arbitration 

clause. The district court’s findings that Secrease had falsified evidence in bad faith and lied about it were amply supported by the evidence and certainly were not clearly erroneous. 

The court also exercised its sound discretion in deciding 

to dismiss the suit with prejudice. While dismissal with 

prejudice, like a default judgment against a defendant, is a 

severe sanction, it was a reasonable sanction here. 

First, falsifying evidence to secure a court victory undermines the most basic foundations of our judicial system. 

If successful, the effort produces an unjust result. Even if it is 

not successful, the effort imposes unjust burdens on the opposing party, the judiciary, and honest litigants who count 

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on the courts to decide their cases promptly and fairly. 

See Rivera v. Drake, 767 F.3d 685, 686–87 (7th Cir. 2014) (affirming sanction of dismissing with prejudice prisoner’s suit 

when inmate perjured himself in an attempt to circumvent 

an exhaustion defense); Thomas, 288 F.3d at 306, 308 (affirming dismissal with prejudice when plaintiff lied about financial status when seeking waiver of filing fees). 

Second, courts generally have an interest in both punishing a party’s dishonesty and deterring others who might 

consider similar misconduct. See Greviskes, 417 F.3d at 759. 

The district court also could reasonably conclude that lesser 

sanctions were not likely to be either sufficient or effective. 

They would not have been sufficient because the wrongdoing was so egregious and repeated. They would not have 

been effective because Secrease said in a petition to appeal in 

forma pauperis that he could not afford the filing fee, so the 

threat of a monetary sanction would probably not influence 

his behavior. See Rivera, 767 F.3d at 687. And to the extent 

that his retaliation claim would depend on his own testimony, the lesser sanction of barring Secrease from testifying on 

that claim, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b), would have been the 

functional equivalent of a dismissal, see Rivera, 767 F.3d at 

687. 

The district court acted within its discretion by exercising 

its inherent power to dismiss Secrease’s suit with prejudice 

based on his deliberate efforts to defraud the court. 

AFFIRMED. 

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