In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 14-1936 

RONALD ROBINSON, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

ED SWEENY, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 12 C 6609 — Joan H. Lefkow, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED JUNE 18, 2015 — DECIDED JULY 23, 2015 

____________________ 

Before POSNER, MANION, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. This odd and confused case underscores the pitfalls that await prisoners who file federal suits 

against corrections officers to enforce constitutional rights. 

See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Attacked by a fellow prisoner while being transported back from a court hearing to his cell in an 

Illinois jail, plaintiff Robinson, proceeding pro se, claims that 

guards and supervisory personnel were deliberately indifferent to his safety in failing to protect him from his assail-
2 No. 14-1936 

ant. After the district court granted summary judgment in 

favor of the defendants and so entered a final judgment 

dismissing the suit, Robinson filed a motion asking the district judge to extend the 28-day deadline for filing a motion 

under Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e) to alter or amend the judgment. 

The motion for an extension of time was filed on December 

30, 26 days after the entry of the final judgment. Because 

Rule 6(b)(2) prohibits extending the time for filing a Rule 

59(e) motion, Blue v. International Brotherhood of Electrical 

Workers Local Union 159, 676 F.3d 579, 582 (7th Cir. 2012), 

Robinson had only two days in which to file his Rule 59(e) 

motion. He missed the deadline. But a month later the district judge issued an order construing the motion for an extension of time as a Rule 59(e) motion and also gave him another 30 days within which to supplement it, since the motion stated no grounds for relief but just asked for more time. 

On March 13, two weeks after the 30-day deadline had 

passed, the judge denied the motion that she had construed 

as a Rule 59(e) motion. 

The procedure was irregular, but what is clear and vital 

is that Robinson missed the 28-day deadline for making a 

genuine Rule 59(e) motion and therefore could obtain no relief under that rule. When twelve days after the judge’s ruling Robinson filed another such motion, the judge construed 

it as a Rule 60(b) motion because the deadline for filing a 

Rule 59(e) motion had passed. See Blue v. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 159, supra, 676 F.3d at 

583. 

Rule 60(b) lists six grounds for relief from a judgment, 

the last one being open-ended—“any other reason.” But the 

judge denied Robinson’s Rule 60(b) motion; and on the same 
No. 14-1936 3 

day (April 24) Robinson filed a notice of appeal from both 

the final judgment, which had denied his substantive claim 

for relief (his section 1983 claim), and the denial of his Rule 

59(e) motion. That motion, however (the motion filed on December 30), had not been a genuine Rule 59(e) motion, 

though treated as one by the district judge. For all it had 

sought was an extension of time for filing a proper Rule 

59(e) motion—a motion that would state grounds for relief 

from the adverse judgment on the merits. A proper and 

timely Rule 59(e) motion freezes the time for appeal until the 

judge decides the motion. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(4). But since 

the December 30 motion was not proper and the second Rule 

59(e) motion was not timely, the time for appeal ran from 

December 4, Blue v. International Brotherhood of Electrical 

Workers Local Union 159, supra, 676 F.3d at 582; Elustra v. 

Mineo, 595 F.3d 699, 707-08 (7th Cir. 2010), and thus expired 

long before April 24 when the notice of appeal was filed. We 

therefore lack appellate jurisdiction to review the grant of 

summary judgment in favor of the defendants. 

Robinson’s mistake was fiddling with Rule 59(e) rather 

than appealing from the final judgment in his suit. For it appears that despite diligent efforts by him both to obtain his 

legal mail and to obtain access to the jail library, he could 

not, within the 28 days that are all that are allowed for preparing and filing a Rule 59(e) motion, have composed an articulate statement of grounds for the motion. A notice of appeal, in contrast to a Rule 59(e) motion, requires very little in 

the way of content, and thus essentially no research. See Fed. 

R. App. P. 3(c). And the 30-day deadline for filing such a notice, Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(A), can be extended if excusable 

neglect or good cause is shown. Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(5)(A), 

(C). Robinson should have been so advised, but was not. He 
4 No. 14-1936 

should also have been informed that he could not extend the 

time for filing a Rule 59(e) motion; for he was unlikely to notice this on his own, since he would have had to go to Rule 

6(b)(2) to discover that the time for filing such a motion cannot be extended. 

The Supreme Court has denied having ever “suggested 

that procedural rules in ordinary civil litigation be interpreted so as to excuse mistakes by those who proceed without 

counsel,” for “’in the long run, experience teaches that strict 

adherence to the procedural requirements specified by the 

legislature is the best guarantee of evenhanded administration of the law.’” McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 113 

(1993) (citations and footnote omitted). The first clause in the 

quoted passage hedges (“in ordinary civil litigation”) and the 

second is more conjecture than observation. If the courts intend not to excuse procedural mistakes by pro se litigants, 

the spirit of legal justice would seem to require that someone 

inform those litigants of the rudiments of federal procedure 

in order to prevent the kind of pitfall into which Robinson 

tumbled, tripped up by procedural rules likely to be unintelligible to a lay person, and as a result disabled us from deciding the merits of his case. 

To avoid this result in future cases, consideration should 

be given to requiring district judges to accompany their 

judgments in pro se cases with a statement of the options 

and associated deadlines for reconsideration or appeal of the 

judgment. But, as there is no relief that we can provide to 

plaintiff Robinson, his appeal must be, and it is, 

DISMISSED.