In the

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 20-3057 

MELVIN D. REED, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

PF OF MILWAUKEE MIDTOWN, LLC, doing business as Planet 

Fitness, 

Defendant-Appellee. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 19-cv-1609 — Lynn Adelman, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED OCTOBER 5, 2021 — DECIDED OCTOBER 28, 2021 

____________________ 

Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. 

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Melvin Reed applied for a job 

at Planet Fitness of Milwaukee. When it did not hire him, he 

filed with the EEOC a charge of age discrimination. After the 

agency found a lack of support for that charge, Reed sued under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. 

§§ 621–34. 
2 No. 20-3057 

The clerk of court returned Reed’s complaint, unfiled. In 

2012 the district court had issued a litigation-bar order based 

on Reed’s history of frivolous suits. Reed v. Lincare, Inc., No. 

11-C-221 (E.D. Wis. Nov. 21, 2012). The judge concluded that 

Reed sent off many employment applications every year. If 

hired, he worked for a short time before giving the employer 

cause to fire him, then asserted discrimination. If not hired, he 

asserted that this, too, was discriminatory. After suing, Reed 

made sealement demands based on the cost to defendants of 

defending the suit rather than a plausible estimate of the likelihood that he would prevail. The judge directed Reed to pay 

a sanction of $5,000 and enforced it by preventing further litigation in federal court until the money had been paid. We affirmed both the order dismissing the suit and the sanction.

Reed v. Lincare, Inc., No. 12-3782 (7th Cir. July 30, 2013) (nonprecedential disposition). An earlier decision of this court tallied at least 16 of Reed’s frivolous suits. Reed v. Ewald Automotive Group, Inc., No. 10-3186 (7th Cir. May 11, 2011) (nonprecedential disposition). Less-extensive records of abusive litigation have led to bar orders. See, e.g., Support Systems International, Inc. v. Mack, 45 F.3d 185 (7th Cir. 1995). 

The bar order entered in Lincare, modeled on the one in

Mack, provided that the court would entertain an application 

to lift it after two years. Instead of doing that, however, Reed 

tried to file this suit as if the bar order did not exist. He cannot 

have been surprised when the clerk returned the papers. At 

this point the clock to sue had been ticking for weeks—and it 

was a fast-running clock. The EEOC’s right-to-sue leaer 

started a 90-day period for filing a timely action. On day 46 of 

this period Reed asked the district court to vacate the bar order. He gave a single reason: that Judge Randa, who entered 

the bar order, had been biased against him. This request was 
No. 20-3057 3 

frivolous, because an assertion that Judge Randa had been biased was advanced on appeal in 2013 and rejected. Just as 

Reed initially ignored the bar order, his motion to vacate the 

bar order ignored the fact that it had been affirmed and that 

the bias argument had failed. This exemplifies the paaern of 

frivolous acts and contentions that led to the bar order in the 

first place. Predictably, Reed’s motion to vacate the bar order 

was denied—this time by Judge Adelman, who had been assigned both to Reed’s new suit and to replace Judge Randa in 

Lincare after the laaer’s death. 

Reed soon filed another motion to vacate, and in response 

Judge Adelman observed that such orders should not last forever and that sustained inability to pay might support relief. 

He invited Reed to file an affidavit detailing the state of his 

finances since 2012, when the bar order was entered. Unfortunately, the clerk of court sent this order to an outdated address from the Lincare case rather than Reed’s current address. 

The order was dated and mailed on September 16, 2019, but 

not received until October 16. By then the 90-day period for 

suit had expired. (The deadline was October 7.) 

Two days after receiving the September 16 order, Reed 

filed an affidavit of indigence. The district judge accepted the 

affidavit in Lincare and vacated the filing bar, but in Planet Fitness (filed on November 1, after the bar was lifted) the judge 

denied Reed’s request for equitable tolling and dismissed the 

suit as untimely. Reed v. PF of Milwaukee Midtown, 2020 U.S. 

Dist. LEXIS 177370 (E.D. Wis. Sept. 25, 2020). The judge observed that tolling requires both some extrinsic obstacle and 

diligence to surmount it. Yet the obstacle—the bar order—was 

of Reed’s own making, the result of tactics lasting more than 

a decade, and his efforts to avoid the order cannot be called 
4 No. 20-3057 

diligent. Even if the judiciary were to ignore all time between 

2012 and 2019, Reed defied the bar order rather than asking 

for vacatur. And when, halfway through the 90 days, Reed 

asked for vacatur, he advanced only a frivolous argument 

(Judge Randa’s supposed bias). Meanwhile he bypassed a 

self-help remedy: suit in state court, to which the bar order 

did not apply. Both state and federal courts entertain ADEA 

suits. Judge Adelman observed that Reed’s professed greater 

familiarity with federal court does not justify adding time to 

the statutory 90 days; many a would-be litigant must spend a 

liale effort to learn how to file suit in state court. 

The clerk’s use of an outdated address on September 16 

was unfortunate, but by then the 90 days was almost gone—

and Reed had friaered away most of the period with misbegoaen acts (ignoring the bar order) and arguments (judicial 

bias), making it impossible for him to demonstrate diligence. 

It is a litigant’s responsibility to act diligently throughout a period of limitations, in order to avoid the risk that a clerical error will eat up the last few days or weeks. See, e.g., Simms v. 

Acevedo, 595 F.3d 774, 781 (7th Cir. 2010); Johnson v. 

McCaughtry, 265 F.3d 559, 565–66 (7th Cir. 2001). We agree 

with the district court and need not add to its analysis of these 

subjects. 

An amicus curiae contends that the litigation-control order 

entered in Lincare is invalid and could be ignored (rendering 

the initial complaint timely) because Judge Randa did not tell 

Reed that indigence will lead to the order’s vacatur. That’s 

wrong for two reasons. 

First, it is an argument that could have been raised on appeal in 2013 but was not. Our decision affirming the bar order 

is not subject to collateral aaack. 
No. 20-3057 5 

Second, the argument is mistaken on the merits. Indigent 

persons are not entitled to file an endless string of frivolous 

suits. A court may halt the abuse of the judicial process, which 

imposes substantial costs on people and businesses that have 

done no wrong. Everyone has a duty to avoid frivolous suits 

and arguments, and a person who cannot or will not abide by 

that rule must be stopped. If a need to pay money won’t work 

as a deterrent (and it won’t for indigent litigants), then some 

form of bar order becomes essential. 

When administering Mack orders, this court does not automatically vacate a bar after two years. We require two 

demonstrations. (1) The litigant must have paid what he or 

she could, even if not the whole amount. (2) The litigant must 

demonstrate that he or she will desist from frivolous suits and 

contentions. See In re Chicago, 500 F.3d 582, 585–86 (7th Cir. 

2007). Reed did not satisfy either requirement. We accept his 

assertion that he was unable to pay the whole $5,000. But he 

did not pay, say, $10 a week for several years and then ask for 

relief. He paid nothing for seven years. He was working during some of this time; surely he was able to afford more than 

$0. But instead of making a good-faith effort to satisfy as much 

of his obligation as he could, he thumbed his nose at the judicial system. And then, far from demonstrating a resolve to 

avoid frivolous litigation, Reed made a frivolous aaack on the

Lincare order itself. The district court’s willingness to vacate 

the Lincare order under these circumstances is surprising. 

Reed must understand that continued frivolous suits and 

contentions will lead to a new bar order. In the meantime, we 

conclude that his history of frivolous litigation—including 

frivolous arguments in this very suit—justifies an order that 

he prepay all fees to file new suits in the district court and 
6 No. 20-3057 

appeals to this court. In other words, by a sustained course of 

conduct, Reed has forfeited the privilege of litigating in forma 

pauperis under 28 U.S.C. §1915. 

AFFIRMED