In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-2601

LOIS MARIE TRASK,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

EDGAR RODRIGUEZ, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division.

No. 2:13-cv-00001-RL-PRC — Rudy Lozano, Judge.

____________________

SUBMITTED MARCH 27, 2017 — DECIDED APRIL 27, 2017

____________________

Before POSNER, SYKES, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. Lois Trask was gambling at the 

Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, when she picked 

up a $20 bill from the casino floor. Casino personnel determined from security videos that another patron had 

dropped the cash, and for more than an hour Trask was de-
2 No. 14-2601

tained and accused of being a thief. Claiming that the detention had violated her rights, she filed this suit under both 42 

U.S.C. § 1983 and Indiana tort law.

The casino’s security cameras captured the entire episode. A man leaving a change machine dropped the $20 bill, 

and Trask, who was standing nearby with her back to him, 

turned around and picked up his money after he had 

walked away. It’s impossible to tell from the videos, however, whether Trask saw him drop the $20 bill or even knew 

that he’d been standing behind her.

At some point the man realized that he was out $20 and 

contacted casino management. He thought the change machine had short-changed him, but casino staff after viewing

the security videos realized that Trask had picked up the $20 

bill. By then several hours had passed, but she was still at 

the casino, so the security supervisor confronted her. Trask

said she’d picked up the money thinking it was hers—that 

she dropped it. She and the supervisor soon were joined by 

two law-enforcement agents employed by the Indiana Gaming Commission. They said that Trask could be seen on video pocketing the $20 bill, but she repeated that she’d thought 

it her own money.

With the supervisor and the two agents watching, Trask 

began calling friends who might be able to bring her $20 to 

give the agents to get them off her back. After ten minutes, 

however, before any friends had arrived, one of the agents

asked her to put away her cellphone and follow him to the 

security office. When she ignored him, he grabbed the phone

and pulled Trask by her coat sleeve until she started walking, then led her to the office, sometimes placing a hand on 

her arm or shoulder to guide her. 
No. 14-2601 3

She was taken to an interview room where the same 

agents asked that she look in her purse for her driver’s license. She dumped the contents onto a table, and agreed to 

be patted down; she was not frisked, and one of the agents 

returned her cellphone so that she could resume soliciting 

money from friends.

There was $8 in the purse, which the agents seized. And 

because she couldn’t find her driver’s license (and the agents 

were unable to find her name in a casino database), the

agents escorted her outside to look in her car. There she

found the license and $5, both of which the agents confiscated. She was then returned to the security office, where she 

was told she was banned from the casino and would be arrested if she tried to return. She was then released—after 

nearly seventy minutes—but the agents kept the $13 that 

they had taken from her.

A year later she filed this pro se lawsuit against the casino, the casino’s security supervisor, and the two agents. She

alleged that the agents had detained her without cause, had 

used excessive force in taking her phone and marching her 

to the security office, and had searched her purse, coat, and 

car without authorization, all in violation of the Fourth 

Amendment. She also alleged that they’d committed statelaw torts, including false arrest, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

A magistrate judge declined to recruit pro bono counsel 

for Trask and also ruled on other pretrial matters, including

discovery disputes and her objection, which the judge rejected, to being deposed in the presence of a paralegal employed by defense counsel. The day after that deposition, 

Trask contacted the lawyer for the casino and the security 
4 No. 14-2601

supervisor to propose settling her case. Trask wanted meal 

vouchers and access to the casino; the casino lawyer offered 

her $100, which she accepted over the phone but later rejected in a voicemail to the lawyer, who responded by offering 

her an extra $150 (on top of the $100 offered earlier) if she 

would settle. She refused, on the ground that “We both 

agreed and I had a change of heart and I called you within 

24 hours. According to my knowledge any agreement can be 

legally undone within 3 days.”

The defendants asked the district court to enforce the settlement. At an evidentiary hearing Trask denied having 

made a deal and insisted she’d only promised to consider, 

and had later rejected, the casino lawyer’s $100 offer. The 

lawyer reminded her that she’d agreed by phone to accept 

$100 to settle the case; the court agreed and ordered the settlement enforced and her claims against the casino and the 

security supervisor dismissed. Her notarized letter to the casino’s lawyer had included an unambiguous admission that 

she’d agreed to accept $100 in satisfaction of her claims 

against these defendants. Her belief that she could agree but 

then back out is “unfounded in the law.” Pohl v. United Airlines, Inc., 213 F.3d 336, 337 (7th Cir. 2000). Indiana law 

(which governs her state-law claim) does not (as Trask 

thinks) provide a three-day “cooling off” period before an 

oral settlement can be enforced. Jonas v. State Farm Life Ins. 

Co., 52 N.E.3d 861, 868 (Ind. Ct. App. 2016); Georgos v. Jackson, 790 N.E.2d 448, 453 (Ind. 2003).

The agents moved for summary judgment, arguing that

Trask’s detention had been supported by reasonable suspicion and had lasted no longer than necessary to investigate 

the alleged theft, obtain identification, and recover what 
No. 14-2601 5

money they could. Temporarily confiscating her phone was, 

they added, a reasonable step, because she wouldn’t hang 

up when told to. They further added that it had been necessary to tug on Trask’s coat and take her by the arm or shoulder while guiding her to the security office, and that they 

hadn’t searched her purse or car—she’d conducted those 

searches herself, the agents insisted, and furthermore had 

consented to the pat down of her coat. And finally her statelaw claims were barred, they said, because she hadn’t filed 

notice of them with the Indiana Gaming Commission and 

the Indiana Political Subdivision Risk Management Commission, as required by the Indiana Tort Claims Act, Ind. 

Code § 34-13-3-8.

The agents served Trask by mail and included the instructions routinely given to pro se litigants, explaining how 

to oppose a motion for summary judgment. See N.D. Ind. 

L.R. 56-1(f); Timms v. Frank, 953 F.2d 281, 285 (7th Cir. 1992).

She failed to respond to the motion (thereby failing to oppose it), and almost a month later sought leave to dismiss 

her claims against the agents on condition that she be allowed to reinstate the suit within two years. The agents opposed this unusual request, and the district court denied it

and warned that she must respond to the motion for summary judgment if she wanted to keep her case alive. Although the warning was mailed to Trask, she never did respond to the motion.

A month later the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the agents, agreeing with their interpretation of the evidence. This decision got Trask’s attention, and 

she moved to set it aside on the ground that she’d never received the agents’ motion for summary judgment. The dis-
6 No. 14-2601

trict court, unimpressed, responded that Trask must have

known about the pending motion because it had been

mailed to her and mentioned in other documents, including 

the order denying her motion for voluntary dismissal.

As an original matter we might question whether the evidence presented by the defendants in support of their motion for summary judgment—despite being undisputed—

would require a jury to find that the agents had acted reasonably in detaining Trask on a thin thread of evidence of petty 

theft and in holding her for more than an hour, ostensibly to 

identify her but quite possibly just to obtain $20 to give to 

the casino patron who had claimed to lose the money. But 

Trask doesn’t challenge the district court’s reasons for granting summary judgment, and has thus waived any claim of 

error.

She does advance a procedural objection to the grant of 

summary judgment—that the district judge should have 

granted a Rule 60(b) motion that she filed, and reopened the 

proceeding after she said she’d never received the motion 

for summary judgment. The judge was unpersuaded, noting 

that several items mailed to Trask, including the judge’s order denying her motion to dismiss the case, should have 

alerted her to the pending motion for summary judgment. 

And she concedes that she did receive the order denying her 

motion for voluntary dismissal—an order that explicitly 

warned her that she had to respond to the motion for summary judgment. If as she claims (though without support in 

the record) she didn’t have a copy of the agents’ motion, she 

should have called defense counsel and asked for another 

copy. She didn’t.
No. 14-2601 7

Trask further contends that the district court erred in enforcing her settlement with the casino and its employee—but

the court’s choice to believe the testimony of the casino’s 

lawyer is unassailable. She also contends that the magistrate 

judge assigned to the case (as distinct from the district judge, 

who decided all the substantive and procedural issues) 

should not have ruled on pretrial disputes, since she never 

consented to his ruling on them and, she surmises, he must 

have been biased because he ruled against her repeatedly. 

But magistrate judges are authorized to decide nondispositive pretrial issues without consent, though subject to oversight by the district court. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(A); N.D. Ind. 

L.R. 72-1(b); Schur v. L.A. Weight Loss Centers Inc., 577 F.3d 

752, 760 (7th Cir. 2009). And adverse rulings are not evidence of judicial bias. See Litecky v. United States, 510 U.S. 

540, 555 (1994); Thomas v. Reese, 787 F.3d 845, 849 (7th Cir. 

2015).

One matter remains to be considered: during briefing,

Trask asked this court to order the defendants to produce 

“an unedited copy of the security tape,” which, she says, 

would show more of the encounter between her and the 

agents. She had asked the defendants during discovery for 

all surveillance video in their possession, and they had replied that they had complied with this demand. She never 

asked the district court to compel disclosure, so she will not 

be heard to complain about his failure to do so.

The judgment of the district court is

AFFIRMED.