In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 01-3169

Frank Thomas,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

General Motors Acceptance Corp., et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 00 C 8015--James H. Alesia, Judge.

Submitted December 18, 2001--Decided April 30, 2002

 Before Posner, Manion, and Rovner, Circuit

Judges.

 Posner, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff in

this ERISA suit for additional severance

pay appeals from the dismissal of the

suit with prejudice as a sanction for his

having misrepresented his financial

condition in his application to be

permitted to proceed in forma pauperis.

In response to the question on the

application whether he was expecting to

receive any money in the future, he

failed to state that he had just nine

days earlier directed the defendant to

distribute to him the $73,714 in his

vested company retirement account in a

lump sum minus applicable taxes. The

defendant sent him a check for $58,990,

the amount in the account minus taxes due

on it, three weeks after he filed the

suit and the application for leave to

proceed without paying the $150 filing

fee. He did not update his application.

 Because the allegation of poverty was

false, the suit had to be dismissed; the

judge had no choice. 28 U.S.C. sec.

1915(e)(2)(A). The only question is

whether the judge abused his discretion

in making the dismissal with prejudice.

By doing this, he made dismissal a

sanction for the filing of a false

application. His authority to impose such

a sanction in an appropriate case is
beyond question. E.g., Mathis v. New York

Life Ins. Co., 133 F.3d 546, 547-48 (7th

Cir. 1997) (per curiam); Attwood v.

Singletary, 105 F.3d 610 (11th Cir. 1998)

(per curiam); Romesburg v. Trickey, 908

F.2d 258, 260 (8th Cir. 1990); Thompson

v. Carlson, 705 F.2d 868 (6th Cir. 1983)

(per curiam). Dismissal with prejudice

may have been the only feasible sanction

for this perjury designed to defraud the

government. Dismissal without prejudice

would have been no sanction at all,

unless perchance the statute of

limitations had run in the interim, which

it must not have done or the plaintiff

would not be complaining about the fact

that his suit was dismissed with

prejudice. And a monetary sanction would

probably be difficult to collect from a

litigant assiduous in concealing assets.

Even dismissal without prejudice wouldn’t

be much of a sanction unless the

plaintiff’s suit was a winner, or at

least had some settlement value, which it

may not have had.

 But before concluding that the district

court should be affirmed, we should

consider what the standard of appellate

review is of dismissals with prejudice

under section 1915(e)(2)(A), an issue

left open in our previous cases. See

Hrobowski v. Commonwealth Edison Co., 203

F.3d 445, 448 (7th Cir. 2000); Mathis v.

New York Life Ins. Co., supra, 133 F.3d

at 547. We cannot find any cases in other

circuits addressing the issue.

 The proper standard of review depends on

the character of the ruling sought to be

reviewed. If it is a ruling on a pure

question of law, review is plenary

because it is intolerable to have the law

differ from district judge to district

judge. Cook v. City of Chicago, 192 F.3d

693, 697 (7th Cir. 1999). If it is a pure

question of fact--a "who did what where

when and to whom" kind of question,

"pure" in the sense that no legal

knowledge or instruction is necessary to

answer it--then the correct standard is

clear error. E.g., Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a);

Malachinski v. Commissioner, 268 F.3d

497, 505 (7th Cir. 2001); D’Alessio v.

N.Y. Stock Exchange, Inc., 258 F.3d 93,

98 (2d Cir. 2001).

 If it is a "mixed" question of law and

fact or, the same thing under a different

label, an "ultimate" question of fact--
that is, if it is the application of a

legal standard (such as negligence) to

the pure facts (what the defendant did)

to yield a legal conclusion (the

defendant was or was not negligent)--

then, again, except in those few, mainly

constitutional cases in which the Supreme

Court has decreed plenary review of such

determinations, e.g., Cooper Industries,

Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., 532

U.S. 424, 431-36 (2001); Ornelas v.

United States, 517 U.S. 690, 697-99

(1996); United States v. Meyer, 157 F.3d

1067, 1074 (7th Cir. 1998); United States

v. D.F., 115 F.3d 413, 417-18 (7th Cir.

1997), the clear-error standard governs.

E.g., Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp.,

496 U.S. 384, 401-05 (1990); Icicle

Seafoods, Inc. v. Washington, 475 U.S.

709 (1986); McCallister v. United States,

348 U.S. 19, 20-22 (1954); Malachinski v.

Commissioner, supra, 268 F.3d at 507-08;

United States v. Frederick, 182 F.3d 496,

499 (7th Cir. 1999); Mars Steel Corp. v.

Continental Bank N.A., 880 F.2d 928, 933

(7th Cir. 1989) (en banc); Houston

Exploration Co. v. Halliburton Energy

Services, Inc., 269 F.3d 528, 531 (5th

Cir. 2001); Ogden v. Commissioner, 244

F.3d 970 (5th Cir. 2001) (per curiam);

Catalina Cruises, Inc. v. Luna, 137 F.3d

1422, 1425 (9th Cir. 1998); contra,

Consolidated Mfg. v. Commissioner, 249

F.3d 1231, 1236 (10th Cir. 2001). The

application of a legal rule or standard

to the particular facts of particular

cases will yield different outcomes from

case to case depending on the facts of

the individual case. So uniformity of

outcome is unattainable; and as divergent

applications of law to fact do not

unsettle the law--doctrine is unaffected-

-a heavy appellate hand in these cases is

unnecessary to assure the law’s clarity

and coherence.

 Then too the court that finds the facts

will know them better than the reviewing

court will, and so its application of the

law to the facts is likely to be more

accurate. And in many cases the

determination of a "mixed" question of

fact and law reduces to a series of

purely factual determinations--for

example, in a negligence case, to a

determination of the burden of

precautions, the magnitude of the injury,

the likelihood that the injury would

occur if the defendant failed to take the

precautions, and the relation among these
variables, all of which are factual, and

their relation to each other likewise.

See, e.g., United States v. Halek, 178

F.3d 481, 484 (7th Cir. 1999); Guardian

Life Insurance Co. v. Weisman Associates,

223 F.3d 229, 234 (3d Cir. 2000); United

States v. Carroll Towing Co., 159 F.2d

169, 173 (2d Cir. 1947) (L. Hand, J.).

One might suppose Rule 52(a) all by

itself compelled application of the

clear-error standard to an "ultimate"

finding of fact that was in truth merely

a composite of pure factfindings and thus

not a "mixed" question of fact and law at

all.

 Finally, if the ruling under review is

judgmental, managerial, or otherwise

discretionary, rather than being either

legal or factual in character, such as

the choice of a sanction that will be

appropriate in light of the gravity of a

litigant’s or a lawyer’s misconduct,

review is for abuse of discretion, again

and for obvious reasons a deferential

standard. E.g., Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx

Corp., supra, 496 U.S. at 404; Weibrecht

v. Southern Illinois Transfer, Inc., 241

F.3d 875, 883 (7th Cir. 2000); Kruger v.

Apfel, 214 F.3d 784, 786 (7th Cir. 2000)

(per curiam); Silvestri v. General Motors

Corp., 271 F.3d 583, 590 (4th Cir. 2001);

Webb v. District of Columbia, 146 F.3d

964, 971 (D.C. Cir. 1998).

 To summarize, whereas review of rulings

on pure questions of law is plenary,

review of pure factfindings, of

applications of a legal standard to pure

facts, and of judgmental rulings is

deferential. All three of the deference

categories involve case-specific rulings,

which, even if they do not compose a

consistent pattern across similar cases

(the possibility inherent in deferential

appellate review-- deference implying

that the appellate court might well have

affirmed an opposite ruling by the

district court), do not unsettle the law

because the rulings set forth no general

propositions of law.

 More than one of the four types of

ruling may be found combined, as this

case illustrates. The judge found that

the plaintiff had lied on the application

for leave to proceed in forma pauperis.

That was a finding of pure fact. But the

judge went on to find that the

plaintiff’s lie was so egregious that the
sanction of dismissal with prejudice was

appropriate. That was a classic

judgmental ruling. Our review of the

first finding is for clear error, and of

the second for abuse of discretion--the

normal standard for appellate review of

sanctions, as we have noted. Both are

deferential standards of review and, as a

practical matter, similar or even

identical in the amount of leeway they

give the district judge. United States v.

Hill, 196 F.3d 806, 808 (7th Cir. 1999);

Cook v. City of Chicago, supra, 192 F.3d

at 696; Johnson v. Trigg, 28 F.3d 639,

643-44 (7th Cir. 1994). As there was no

clear error and no abuse of discretion,

the judgment of the district court is

Affirmed.