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, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

This lawsuit is the latest stage in a bitter dispute over a family business. Scott 

Jenkins, a Missouri citizen, created and managed a Nevada limited-liability company. 

He gave his two daughters, Illinois citizens, 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 them. 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 without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 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 the company, Jenkins’s daughters hired 

two sets of lawyers. First, they hired Bruce Burkey, an Illinois attorney. Burkey filed a 

document with the Nevada Secretary of State to remove Jenkins as manager. That filing 

spurred Jenkins to start litigation to determine who owned the company. The daughters 

then retained two Nevada-licensed lawyers to represent them in court. 

The Nevada suit eventually settled. Jenkins, 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 included mutual releases. Under the releases, 

Jenkins, his daughters, and the company released 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 conduct 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 favor of Burkey (the Illinois lawyer) and his 

firm because the Nevada suit’s settlement agreement barred claims against them. 

On appeal, Jenkins first challenges the district judge’s dismissal of his claims 

against the Nevada lawyers for lack of personal 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 confidential 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 relevant 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 [personal] 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, 571 
No. 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 court’s dismissal of his claims against 

Burkey. He argues that the settlement agreement released his daughters and their 

agents, but not Burkey, from his claims because, he asserts, Burkey represented the 

company. The district judge, however, found that Burkey represented the daughters, 

and on this record that finding is not clearly erroneous. In any case, the releases covered 

all parties—Jenkins, the daughters and the 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