* After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral argument is

unnecessary. Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record. See FED. R. APP. P.

34(a)(2)(C).

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois  60604

Submitted November 4, 2010*

Decided November 9, 2010

Before

RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge

No. 09‐2866

LARRY D. WILSON,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

COLIN S. BRUCE, et al.,

Defendants‐Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Central District of Illinois.

No. 09‐2010

Harold A. Baker,

Judge.

O R D E R

In January 2009, Larry Wilson, a federal prisoner, filed a nine‐count complaint

relating to various incidents that allegedly took place during his pretrial detention at two

different Illinois prisons between August 2007 and January 2008. The district court twice

struck Wilson’s complaint for violating Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20(a)(2), ruling that

he was joining unrelated claims against different defendants in one lawsuit; each time, it

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 09‐2866 Page 2

instructed Wilson to file an amended complaint that complied with the rule or face

dismissal of his lawsuit. The first time, Wilson responded by bifurcating his initial nine‐

count lawsuit and refiling six of the nine counts in a separate lawsuit (not at issue here) and

by amending his complaint in this case to include the remaining three counts. Upon review

of the amended complaint in this case, the district court again concluded that it violated

Rule 20(a), struck it for misjoinder, and instructed Wilson to file a proper amended

complaint within 21 days. This time, Wilson failed to file a timely amended complaint.

Instead, he filed a petition for mandamus in this court (which we later denied). The district

court then notified Wilson of his failure to comply with the order, and a month later (when

Wilson had still failed to comply), dismissed Wilson’s suit for failure to prosecute. Wilson

appeals, and we affirm the judgment.

Wilson’s primary argument on appeal is that the district court erred in dismissing

his case because Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 21 provides that “misjoinder of parties is

not a ground for dismissing an action.” We confine our analysis to Wilson’s amended

complaint because Wilson chose to prosecute the remainder of the claims from his original

complaint in a separate suit. Wilson v. Walker, No. 09‐2059 (C.D. Ill. filed Mar. 4, 2009). To

address Wilson’s argument, we first assess whether the district court permissibly concluded

that Wilson’s amended complaint misjoined several unrelated claims in violation of Rule

20(a)(2), Chavez v. Ill. State Police, 251 F.3d 612, 632 (7th Cir. 2001).

The district court properly ruled that Wilson misjoined claims because no single

transaction or occurrence, however generously defined, connects all named defendants. See

FED. R. CIV. P. 20(a)(2); George v. Smith, 507 F.3d 605, 607 (7th Cir. 2007); Chavez, 251 F.3d at

632. Instead, Wilson’s amended complaint straddles the following three separate categories

of claims: (1) retaliation claims against overlapping (but different) sets of persons for his

work during pretrial detention as a “jailhouse lawyer”; (2) due process and equal protection

claims against the United States for failure to ensure that he was permitted access to all

discovery materials in his criminal case; and (3) a deliberate‐indifference claim against the

U.S. Marshal Service. Though all are based on events that allegedly took place during

Wilson’s detention, the three categories of claims otherwise share no common questions of

law or fact. We can find no fault with the district court’s conclusion that these three

categories bore insufficient relation to each other to join all the defendants in the same suit.

Wilson next argues that the district court improperly “cured” the misjoinder by

dismissing his case. Generally, if a district court finds that a plaintiff has misjoined parties,

the court should sever those parties or claims, allowing those grievances to continue in spin‐

off actions, rather than dismiss them, see FED. R. CIV. P. 21; Elmore v. Henderson, 227 F.3d

1009, 1012 (7th Cir. 2000). Severance preserves rights that depend on the date that the

complaint was filed, such as defenses to applicable statutes of limitation. Elmore, 227 F.3d at
No. 09‐2866 Page 3

1012. But the district court dismissed his action, not because he had misjoined unrelated

claims, but because Wilson ignored the court’s order requiring him to remedy the

misjoinder by shedding the disparate claims. District courts generally have broad authority

to dismiss actions for failure to prosecute, and this includes failure to comply with valid

orders, see Link v. Wabash R.R. Co., 370 U.S. 626, 630‐31 (1962); Williams v. Chi. Bd. of Educ.,

155 F.3d 853, 857 (7th Cir. 1998).

The question, then, is whether the court could validly condition Wilson’s right to

proceed in this case on his willingness to drop the misjoined claims. But even if, as Wilson

suggests, the district court’s condition for proceeding effectively amounted to an

impermissible dismissal for misjoinder, we would not reverse because any error was

harmless. Wilson has not asserted here that the district court’s order to drop from this

lawsuit his misjoined claims put any of those claims at risk of a statute‐of‐limitations or

similar defense. Absent any contention that he could not pursue his claims in newly filed

suits, he gives us no reason to disturb the district court’s judgment. See FED. R. CIV. P. 61;

Happel v. Walmart Stores, Inc., 602 F.3d 820, 826 (7th Cir. 2010) (requiring a showing of

prejudice to set aside a district court determination); In re Bartle, 560 F.3d 724, 730 (7th Cir.

2009) (“Rule 61 instructs us to disregard any error that did not affect a party’s substantial

rights.”). Specifically, had Wilson been concerned about statute‐of‐limitations issues, he

could have raised them with the district court and asked it to sever his claims into different

proceedings that all bore the filing date of the original suit, see Elmore, 227 F.3d at 1012; and

had the district court ignored that request, he could have pressed the issue with us. He has

done neither. To the contrary, Wilson is currently prosecuting in another case several claims

that he removed from his initial complaint, and he gives no suggestion on appeal that

statute‐of‐limitations concerns motivated his refusal to comply with the district court’s

order in this case that he remove the remaining, unrelated claims. Under these

circumstances, the district court’s decision was not reversible error.

Last, Wilson contends that the district court’s order requiring him to amend failed to

accommodate him as a pro se litigant, see Kaba v. Stepp, 458 F.3d 678, 687 (7th Cir. 2006)

(citing Donald v. Cook Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 95 F.3d 548, 555 (7th Cir. 1996)), but the record

reflects otherwise. In both of its orders striking his complaints, the district court made

explicit what it expected of Wilson and afforded him ample time to amend, twice extending

the deadlines it imposed on his amended‐complaint filing. Notably, the district court chose

to strike his complaint and amended complaint without dismissing the action. See Abcarian

v. McDonald, 617 F.3d 931, 943 (7th Cir. 2010) (stating that dismissal of a complaint does not

by itself terminate litigation); Benjamin v. United States, 833 F.2d 669, 671 (7th Cir. 1987)

(same); Car Carriers, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 745 F.2d 1101, 1111 (7th Cir. 1984) (same). It also

took the additional step of warning Wilson that he had missed by over a month the

deadline to file the amended complaint, giving him one last chance to amend before it
No. 09‐2866 Page 4

ultimately dismissed Wilson’s case for failure to prosecute. Whatever benefits Wilson may

seek as a pro se litigant, they do not include license to disregard the court’s orders. See

Anderson v. Hardman, 241 F.3d 544, 545‐46 (7th Cir. 2001); Downs v. Westphal, 78 F.3d 1252,

1257 (7th Cir. 1996).

AFFIRMED.