# United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted December 7, 2018 * Decided December 12, 2018

Before

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

AMY C. BARRETT, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge

No. 18-2222

SCOTT JENKINS, Plaintiff-Appellant

,

v

.

BRUCE BURKEY, et al., Defendants-Appellees

. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 16-cv-792-JPG-SCW

J . Phil Gilbert, J udge

.

O R D E R

This lawsuit is the latest stage in a bi tter dispute over a family business. Scott Jenkins, a Missouri citizen, created and managed a Nevada limited-liability company. He gave his two daughters, Illinois citize ns, majority shares. When the daughters tried to remove Jenkins from management, he sued them in Nevada, and they hired lawyers from Nevada and Illinois to represent th em. After settling his suit, Jenkins brought this diversity-based suit against his daughters’ lawyers for torts he says they committed in

* We have agreed to decide the case wi thout oral argument because the briefs and record adequately present the facts and le gal arguments, and oral argument would not significantly aid the court. F ED

. R. A PP

. P. 34(a)(2)(C). NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION To be cited onl y in accordance with Fed. R. A pp . P. 32.1No. 18-2222 Page 2

the Nevada suit. The district court dismissed the case. Because it correctly reasoned that it had no personal jurisdiction over the Nevada lawyers, and the settlement agreement from the Nevada suit barred Jenkins’s claims against the Illinois lawyers, we affirm.

Fearful that Jenkins was mismanaging th e company, Jenkins’s daughters hired two sets of lawyers. First, they hired Bruc e Burkey, an Illinois attorney. Burkey filed a document with the Nevada Secretary of Stat e to remove Jenkins as manager. That filing spurred Jenkins to start litigation to dete rmine who owned the company. The daughters then retained two Nevada-licensed lawyers to represent them in court.

The Nevada suit eventually settled. Jenk ins, represented by counsel, and his daughters tried to settle in 2014, but could not. A year later, the parties reconvened. Jenkins was unrepresented this time, but they nonetheless reached and signed an agreement in May 2015. The agreement includ ed mutual releases. Under the releases, Jenkins, his daughters, and the company rele ased each other and their “agents” from all claims “arising out of or relating to” the Nevada lawsuit.

Following the settlement, Jenkins brought this action. He accuses his daughters’ lawyers and their law firms of tortious cond uct in Nevada. The district court dismissed Jenkins’s claims against the Nevada lawyers for lack of personal jurisdiction because they performed all their work in Nevada and had no relevant contacts with Illinois. The judge also entered summary judgment in favo r of Burkey (the Illinois lawyer) and his firm because the Nevada suit’s settlemen t agreement barred claims against them.

On appeal, Jenkins first challenges the di strict judge’s dismissal of his claims against the Nevada lawyers for lack of pers onal jurisdiction. He argues that they developed minimum contacts with Illinois by deposing him in Illinois during this suit (not the Nevada suit) and revealing the conf idential Nevada settlement. This argument has several flaws. First, Jenkins has forfeited it because he did not timely raise it in the district court. See United States v. Hamad , 809 F.3d 898, 904 (7th Cir. 2016). Second, only the events that Jenkins seeks to litigate in this suit are rele vant to personal jurisdiction, and they all occurred in Nevada, not Illinois. See Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A.
v. Brown , 564 U.S. 915, 919 (2011) (“[S]pecific [persona l] jurisdiction is confined to the adjudication of issues deriving from ... the very controversy that establishes jurisdiction.” (internal quotations omitted)); Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Ct. of Cal., San Francisco Cty. , 137 S.Ct. 1773, 1780 (2017). Third, only the forum contacts that the defendant initiates are relevant for personal jurisdiction. See Walden v. Fiore , 571No. 18-2222 Page 3

U.S. 277, 284, 286 (2014); Brook v. McCormley , 873 F.3d 549, 552–53 (7th Cir. 2017). Yet Jenkins, by filing this suit, initiated the lawyers’ appearance in Illinois.

Next, Jenkins challenges the district co urt’s dismissal of his claims against Burkey. He argues that the settlement agr eement released his daughters and their agents, but not Burkey, from his claims beca use, he asserts, Burkey represented the company. The district judge, however, foun d that Burkey represented the daughters, and on this record that finding is not clearl y erroneous. In any case, the releases covered all parties—Jenkins, the daughters and th e company—plus their agents, so Jenkins released Burkey regardless of whom Burkey represented. Jenkins responds that he is not bound by the mutual releases because he was not represented by counsel in their negotiations and did not realize that the mutual releases extended to the parties’ agents. Courts, however, will enforce freely entered contracts as long as “they are not unconscionable.” St. Mary v. Damon , 309 P.3d 1027, 1035 (Nev. 2013) (quoting Rivero v. Rivero , 216 P.3d 213, 226–27 (Nev. 2009)). Jenkins’s lack of representation and his failure to read the contract do not reach this threshold. See U.S. Home Corp. v. Michael Ballesteros Trust , 415 P.3d 32, 40–41 (Nev. 2018). AFFIRMED