United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted July 30, 2018*

Decided August 2, 2018

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge

No. 18-1587

CARL REYNOLDS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

VILLAGE OF EVERGREEN PARK,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States 

District Court for the Northern District 

of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 17 C 8809

Joan B. Gottschall,

Judge.

O R D E R

Carl Reynolds sued the Village of Evergreen Park, Illinois, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 

almost five years after a Village police officer arrested him, allegedly without probable 

cause. The district judge observed that Reynolds’s lawsuit was barred by the 

two-year statute of limitations. She twice invited him to explain if the statute of 

limitations should be tolled. Reynolds never gave any reason to excuse his untimeliness,

 

* The defendant was not served with process in the district court and is not 

participating in this appeal. We have agreed to decide this case without oral argument 

because the appeal is frivolous. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(A).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 18-1587 Page 2

and the judge dismissed the suit. The judge’s reasoning is sound, and so we affirm the 

judgment.

Reynolds filed suit in December 2017. His allegations have remained largely the 

same across his three complaints, and we briefly recount the assertions in the latest 

version. A Village police officer arrested him on June 23, 2013, for driving on a 

suspended license. He alleges that the officer lacked probable cause for the arrest and 

search of his car because his driving privileges had been restored. Reynolds also 

maintains that, during the arrest, the officer used undue force: he grabbed Reynolds by 

his arms and put him on the fiberglass floor of the police car, producing “extreme pain” 

and later causing several medical conditions, including a brain aneurysm.

The district judge screened Reynolds’s first complaint, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2),

and saw the timeliness problem. She observed that his section 1983 claims accrued at 

the time of his arrest in June 2013, see Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 388 (2007), and that

Illinois’s two-year statute of limitations for personal-injury claims governed, 

see 735 ILCS 5/13-202, so Reynolds’s suit was untimely because he filed it more than 

two years after his arrest. Nonetheless, the judge gave him a chance to amend and to tell 

her of “any reason he believes he is entitled to tolling of the statute of limitations.” 

Reynolds’s first amended complaint did not provide an explanation for the late filing. 

The judge again said that she thought the action was time-barred and gave him a “final 

opportunity to tell the court any reason why this case should not be dismissed.” 

Although Reynolds again amended his complaint, he still did not supply any reason to 

excuse or explain his untimeliness. The judge therefore dismissed the suit.

On appeal Reynolds challenges the dismissal on only one ground—that the 

judge applied the incorrect statute of limitations to his claims. He relies on a law-review 

article from 1986 (attached to his notice of appeal), which references Shorters v. 

City of Chicago, 617 F. Supp. 661 (N.D. Ill. 1985). In Shorters, the district judge decided 

that Illinois’s five-year statute of limitations for “all civil actions not otherwise provided 

for,” 735 ILCS 5/13-205, applied to section 1983 claims, instead of the state’s 

two-year statute of limitations for personal-injury claims, 735 ILCS 5/13-202. 

See 617 F. Supp. at 666. Reynolds argues that, just as in Shorters, the five-year statute of 

limitations governs his section 1983 claims.

Because Reynolds never made this argument to the district court—despite 

having two chances to do so—we may not review it now. See Wheeler v. Hronopoulos, 

891 F.3d 1072, 1073 (7th Cir. 2018). But even if we could, we would conclude that it is 
No. 18-1587 Page 3

frivolous. Although the issue in Shorters was seemingly unresolved decades ago, it is 

now well settled that section 1983 claims arising in Illinois are subject to its

two-year limitations period for personal-injury claims. See Owens v. Evans, 878 F.3d 559, 

563 (7th Cir. 2017); Ashafa v. City of Chicago, 146 F.3d 459, 462 (7th Cir. 1998)

(abrogating Shorters).

The district court properly invoked the two-year statute and dismissed

Reynolds’s lawsuit (filed in 2017) because its untimeliness was apparent from the face 

of the complaint (suing over events in 2013). “[W]hen a complaint reveals that the 

action is untimely, the court can dismiss it.” Cannon v. Newport, 850 F.3d 303, 306 

(7th Cir. 2017), cert. denied, 138 S. Ct. 320 (2017); see also Limestone Dev. Corp. v. 

Vill. of Lemont, Ill., 520 F.3d 797, 802 (7th Cir. 2008). Given the apparent untimeliness of 

the suit, the district court permissibly ordered Reynolds to supply a reason to keep it 

alive. By not adequately responding to that order, Reynolds gave the court further 

reason to dismiss the suit. See Chapman v. Yellowcab Coop., 875 F.3d 846, 849 (7th Cir. 

2017). We therefore AFFIRM the judgment.