In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 18-1266

JOHN VERGARA, et al.,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

CITY OF CHICAGO, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 15-cv-02407 — Andrea R. Wood, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED APRIL 17, 2019 — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

____________________

Before MANION, SYKES, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

SYKES, Circuit Judge. John Vergara, Carlos Ruiz, and Jose 

Garcia filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the City of Chicago

and Chicago Police Officers John Dal Ponte, Boonserm

Srisuch, and Perry Nigro. The defendants moved to dismiss 

the suit as untimely. The plaintiffs asked the district judge to 

equitably estop the defendants from raising the limitations 

defense, claiming that the officers intimidated them into 

silence. 
2 No. 18-1266

The judge dismissed the suit in a minute order saying she 

would later file an opinion explaining her reasons. The 

promised opinion came almost two years later, and the 

plaintiffs then appealed. Under the Rules of Appellate 

Procedure, however, entry of judgment for appeal purposes 

occurred 150 days after the judge’s minute order, see FED. R.

APP. P. 4(a)(7)(A), and the 30-day time to file a notice of 

appeal ran from that date, see Walker v. Weatherspoon, 

900 F.3d 354, 356 (7th Cir. 2018). The appeal was therefore 

woefully late.

The defendants noted the untimeliness problem in their

docketing statement, but this filing too was quite late. Our 

circuit’s rules require the appellee to identify errors in the 

appellant’s docketing statement within 14 days. 7TH CIR.

R. 3(c)(1); see Hamer v. Neighborhood Hous. Servs. of Chi., 

897 F.3d 835, 839 (7th Cir. 2018). The defendants missed that 

deadline by about six months.

After disentangling this procedural web, we decline to 

dismiss the appeal. The defendants’ objection to the Rule 4(a) 

violation came too late under Circuit Rule 3(c)(1). But the 

suit is untimely, and our precedent forecloses the plaintiffs’

equitable estoppel theory. We affirm.

I. Background

This case comes to us from a dismissal on the pleadings, 

so we accept the following facts from the plaintiffs’ complaint as true. See Price v. City of Chicago, 915 F.3d 1107, 1109 

(7th Cir. 2019). In September 2011 Chicago Police Officers

Dal Ponte, Srisuch, and Nigro stopped and searched the 

plaintiffs without justification and took them to Homan 

Square, a notorious police warehouse that was later exposed 
No. 18-1266 3

as a den of police misconduct. There the officers interrogated 

the plaintiffs for eight or nine hours, omitting Miranda 

warnings and ignoring their repeated requests for an attorney. The plaintiffs were denied food, water, and access to a 

bathroom, and the officers tried to coerce false confessions

from them. The officers also threatened to file false charges

against the plaintiffs if they told anyone about their mistreatment at Homan Square.

The plaintiffs were released only after they agreed to 

keep quiet about what had happened. Over the next two 

weeks, the officers told the plaintiffs they “were watching” 

them. Fearing for their safety, the plaintiffs did not seek legal 

redress for this police misconduct.

In early 2015 the Guardian newspaper ran an exposé on 

Homan Square, and at that point the plaintiffs felt secure 

enough to speak to an attorney. In March they sued the City 

and the three officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging a raft of 

constitutional violations. But the suit came three and a half 

years after their detention, so the defendants moved to 

dismiss it as untimely under the applicable two-year statute 

of limitations.

On March 31, 2016, the district judge issued a minute order dismissing the suit “[f]or the reasons stated in the Memorandum Opinion and Order to follow.” The judge issued 

her opinion almost two years later, on January 31, 2018, 

together with a Rule 58 judgment. See FED. R. CIV. P. 58(a). On 

February 6, 2018, the plaintiffs filed their notice of appeal 

and docketing statement.

By then, however, the time to appeal had long since expired. A notice of appeal is due 30 days after entry of the 
4 No. 18-1266

judgment or order appealed from, but when the district 

court omits a separate Rule 58 judgment, “entry” occurs 

150 days after the judgment or order is entered on the court 

docket. See FED. R. APP. P. 4(a)(7)(A). Here the judge dismissed the case by minute order entered on March 31, 2016. 

By operation of Rule 4(a)(7)(A), that order was deemed 

“entered” for appeal purposes 150 days later, and the time to 

file a notice of appeal expired 30 days after that.

On August 17, 2018, the defendants filed their docketing 

statement noting the untimeliness problem and moved to 

dismiss the appeal. We directed the parties to brief the 

dismissal motion with the merits. 

II. Discussion

We begin by untangling the procedural snarl. Under 

Rule 4(a) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, the 

plaintiffs had to file a notice of appeal within “30 days after 

entry of the judgment or order appealed from.” FED. R. APP. 

P. 4(a)(1)(A). Rule 4(a) also specifies how to calculate the 

date of “entry.” For most civil judgments, including this one,

the date of entry is the earlier of (1) the day “the judgment ... 

is set forth on a separate document” in accordance with 

Rule 58(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, or 

(2) “150 days ... from entry of the judgment or order in the 

civil docket.” FED. R. APP. P. 4(a)(7)(A). 

The February 6, 2018 notice of appeal was clearly untimely under these rules. The judge dismissed the case by minute 

order on March 31, 2016. Her opinion explaining her reasons 

came two years later—on January 31, 2018—along with a 

Rule 58 judgment. Because of this unusual gap, the dismissal 

order’s date of entry was 150 days after March 31, 2016—or 
No. 18-1266 5

August 29, 2016. The plaintiffs had 30 days from that date to 

appeal. The notice of appeal came a year and a half later.

The question is whether the plaintiffs’ procedural misstep 

requires dismissal of the appeal. Rule 4(a) is not jurisdictional, but it is a mandatory claim-processing rule, see Walker, 

900 F.3d at 356, which means that it “must be enforced” if it 

is “properly invoked,” Hamer v. Neighborhood Hous. Servs. of 

Chi., 138 S. Ct. 13, 17 (2017). Still, we have emphasized that 

“[t]he ‘properly invoked’ qualifier is important, for a litigant 

may ... forfeit the benefit of these rules.” Walker, 900 F.3d at 

356.

That’s exactly what the plaintiffs accuse the defendants of 

doing. The plaintiffs argue that the defendants forfeited their 

objection by failing to comply with our circuit rules. Circuit 

Rule 3(c)(1) requires that if an appellant’s docketing statement “is not complete and correct, the appellee must provide a complete one to the court of appeals clerk within 

14 days after the date of the filing of the appellant’s docketing statement.” The defendants didn’t comply with this 

deadline. They delayed filing their corrective docketing 

statement until August 17, 2018—six months after the plaintiffs filed theirs—only then drawing our attention to the 

untimeliness problem.

We think the plaintiffs have a good point about forfeiture. Cf. Walker, 900 F.3d at 357 (holding that parties can 

waive arguments through docketing statements); Hamer, 

897 F.3d at 840 (holding the same). As a “time limitation 

found in a procedural rule,” Circuit Rule 3(c)(1) is a claimprocessing rule. In re Wade, 926 F.3d 447, 449 (7th Cir. 2019) 

(quotation marks and alteration omitted). We may enforce 

our rules through waiver and forfeiture doctrine. See Walker, 
6 No. 18-1266

900 F.3d at 357 (“Enforcing waivers and forfeitures gives 

litigants incentives to explore issues themselves rather than 

wait for the court to do the work. It is best to have defects 

detected in time to dismiss the appeal without the need for 

briefs and argument.”).

The defendants forfeited their Rule 4(a) objection by 

missing the deadline specified in Circuit Rule 3(c)(1). The

rule gave them 14 days to correct the record if the plaintiffs’ 

docketing statement wasn’t “complete and correct.” And the 

plaintiffs’ docketing statement wasn’t correct. A docketing 

statement must include “[t]he date of entry of the judgment ... sought to be reviewed.” 7TH CIR. R. 28(a)(2)(i). The 

plaintiffs incorrectly reported the date of entry as January 31, 

2018. As we’ve explained, the correct date of entry is 

August 29, 2016. Under Circuit Rule 3(c)(1), the defendants 

had to correct the record within 14 days. They waited six 

months. That’s enough for forfeiture. 

To be sure, we can suspend our rules for “good cause.” 

7TH CIR. R. 2. So Circuit Rule 3(c)(1) isn’t a mandatory claimprocessing rule like Rule 4(a). See Nutraceutical Corp. v. 

Lambert, 139 S. Ct. 710, 714 (2019) (stating that whether a 

claim-processing rule is mandatory turns “on whether the 

text of the rule leaves room for ... flexibility”). But the 

defendants haven’t given us good cause to suspend the rule. 

Disrupting an otherwise orderly appeal with an untimely 

objection in the middle of briefing is a proper ground to 

enforce forfeiture. By not following our rules, the defendants’ objection “just complicated the appeal.” Walker, 

900 F.3d at 357. We deny the motion to dismiss the appeal.

That brings up the merits. We review a dismissal order 

de novo. Ochoa v. State Farm Life Ins. Co., 910 F.3d 992, 994 
No. 18-1266 7

(7th Cir. 2018). “[A] motion to dismiss based on failure to 

comply with the statute of limitations should be granted 

only where the allegations of the complaint itself set forth 

everything necessary to satisfy the affirmative defense.” Chi. 

Bldg. Design, P.C. v. Mongolian House, Inc., 770 F.3d 610, 613–

14 (7th Cir. 2014) (quotation marks omitted).

The plaintiffs’ complaint fits that description. Indeed, the 

plaintiffs don’t dispute that their lawsuit is untimely. They 

instead invoke equitable estoppel, which bars a limitations 

defense if “the defendant took active steps to prevent the 

plaintiff from suing in time, such as by hiding evidence or

promising not to plead the statute of limitations.” Lucas v. 

Chi. Transit Auth., 367 F.3d 714, 721 (7th Cir. 2004) (quotation 

marks and alteration omitted). To raise equitable estoppel, 

the plaintiff must actually and reasonably rely on the other 

party’s actions. Rager v. Dade Behring, Inc., 210 F.3d 776, 779 

(7th Cir. 2000).

The plaintiffs contend that police intimidation can justify

equitable estoppel. We have repeatedly disagreed: “[A]

threat to retaliate is not a basis for equitable estoppel.” Beckel 

v. Wal-Mart Assocs., Inc., 301 F.3d 621, 624 (7th Cir. 2002);

accord Shanoff v. Ill. Dep't of Human Servs., 258 F.3d 696, 702 

(7th Cir. 2001). “To allow the use of retaliation as a basis for 

extending the statute of limitations would ... distort the 

doctrine of equitable estoppel.” Beckel, 301 F.3d at 624.

The plaintiffs’ theory—that the officers’ threats intimidated them into silence until the Guardian’s exposé provided “a 

newfound sense of security”—suffers from the same deficiencies as other retaliation claims. Most importantly, it

would significantly expand our equitable-estoppel doctrine 

without a limiting principle. It allows retaliatory threats to
8 No. 18-1266

indefinitely extend the time to sue. But the protection offered 

by equitable estoppel ends when “the circumstance giving 

rise to the estoppel is removed.” Shropshear v. Corp. Counsel of 

Chi., 275 F.3d 593, 597 (7th Cir. 2001). The problem with the 

plaintiffs’ argument is readily apparent: They contend that 

the officers’ threats, which stopped two weeks after the 

alleged constitutional violations, tolled the limitations 

period for the next three and a half years.

Statutes of limitations “serve the important purpose of 

encouraging the prompt filing of claims and by doing so of 

enhancing the likelihood of accurate determinations and 

removing debilitating uncertainty about legal liabilities.” 

Shanoff, 258 F.3d at 703 (quotation marks omitted). Extending 

equitable estoppel to this case would permit plaintiffs to 

avoid the limitations period for § 1983 claims indefinitely by 

alleging an episode of official intimidation. We cannot 

endorse such an expansion of the doctrine. See id. at 702 

(“[T]he Supreme Court has emphasized that we must seriously recognize and apply statutes of limitations.”).

In short, the suit is untimely, equitable estoppel does not 

apply, and the judge was right to dismiss the case.

AFFIRMED