### In the 

# United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

____________________ No. 14

- 2601

L OIS M ARIE T RASK , Plaintiff

- Appellant
,

v.

E DGAR R ODRIGUEZ , et al
., Defendants

- Appellees

.

____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for th e

Northern District of Indiana
, Hammond Division

. No. 2:13

- cv

- 0000 1

- RL

- PRC

— Rudy Lozano
, Judge

.

____________________
S UBMITTED M ARCH 27, 2017

— D ECIDED A PRIL 27 , 2017

____________________

Before P OSNER , S YKES , and H AMILTON , Circuit Judges

. P OSNER , Circuit Judge

. Lois Trask was gambling at the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, when she pick ed up a $20 bill from the casino floor. Casino personnel dete rmined from security videos that another patron had dropped the cash, and for more than an hour Trask was d e-2 No. 14

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tained and accused of being a thief. Claiming that the dete ntion 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 ep isode . A man leaving a change machine dro pped 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, ho w ever, whether Trask saw him drop the $20 bill or even knew that he’d bee n standing behind her. At some point the man realized that he was out $20 and

con tacted casino management. H e thought the change m achine had short

- changed him , but casino staff after vie w ing the s e curity videos realized that Trask had picked up the $20 bil l. By then s everal hours had passed, but she was still at the casino, so the secur i ty 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 a gents employed by the Indiana Ga ming Commission. They said that Trask could be seen on vi deo p ocketing the $20 bill, but she repeated that she’d th ought it her own money.
With the supervisor and the two agents watching , Trask began calling friends who migh t be able to bring her $20 to give the agents to get them off her back . A f ter ten minutes, however
, before any friends had arrived, one of the agents asked her to put away her cell phone and follow him to the security office. When she i g nored him, he grabbe d the phone and pulled Trask by her coat sleeve until she started wal king , then led her to the office, s om e times plac ing a hand on her arm or shoulder to guide her.No. 14

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She was taken to an interview room where the same agents asked that she look in her purse for her driver’s l icense. 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 age nts 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 confi s cated. She was then returned to the security office, where she was told she was banned from the casino and would be a rrest ed 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 ye ar later she filed this pro se lawsuit against the c a sino, the casino’s security supervisor , and the two agents. She

a l leged that the agen ts had detained her without cause, had used e x cessive force in taking her phone and marching her to the security offic e, and had searched her purse, coat, and car without authorization, all in violation of the Fourth Amendment. She also alleged that they’d co m mitted state

law torts, including false arrest, battery, and intentional i nfliction of emotional dis tress. A magis trate judge de clined to recruit pro bono counsel for Trask and also ruled on other pretrial matters, including discovery disputes and her objection , which the judge r e jected, to being deposed in the presence of a paralegal e mployed by defense counsel. The day after that dep o sition, Trask c ontacted the lawyer for the casino and the security4 No. 14

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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 la ter r ejected in a voicemail to the lawyer , who responded by offe r ing 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. A ccording to my knowledge any agreement can be legally u n done within 3 days.”

T he defendants asked the district court to enforce the se ttlement. At an evidentiary hearing Trask denied having made a deal and insisted she’d only promised to co n sider, 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 se ttlement en forced and her claims against the casino and the security supervisor dismiss ed

. Her notarized letter to the c asino’s lawyer had included an unamb i guous admission that she’d agreed to accept $100 in satisfaction of her claims against these defendants. H er belief that she could agree but then back out is “unfounded in the law.” Pohl v. United Ai rlines, 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 b e fore 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. Jac kson , 790 N.E.2d 448, 453 (Ind. 2003).
The agents moved for summary judgment , arguing that Trask’s detention had been supported by reasonable susp icion and had lasted no longer than necessary to invest igate the alleged theft, obtain identification, and recover whatNo. 14

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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 nece ssary to tug on Tra sk’s coat and take her by the arm or shou lder while guid ing her to the security office , and that they hadn’t search ed her purse or car

— she ’d conducted those searches herself , the agents insisted , and furthermore had

co n sented to the pat down of her coat

. A nd finally her state

law 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 Co mmission, as required by the Indiana Tort Claims Act
, Ind. Code § 34

- 13

- 3

- 8. The agents served Trask by mail and included the i nstructions 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 o ppose it) , and a l most a month later sought leave to dismiss her claims against the agents on condition that she be a llowed to reinstate the suit within two years. The a gents o pposed this u n usual request, and the d istrict court denied it and warned that she must respond to the motion for su mmary judgment if she wanted to keep her case alive

. A l though the warning was mailed to Trask, she never did r espond to the motion.
A month later t he district court granted summar y jud gment in favor of the agents, agreeing with their interpret ation of the evidence. T his decision got Trask’s attention, and she moved to set it aside on the ground that she’d never r eceived the agents’ motion for summary judgment

. The di s-6 No. 14

- 2601

trict court , u nimpressed, r e sponded 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 di s missal. As an original matter we might question whether th e e vidence presented by the defendants in support of their m otion for summary judgment

— despite being undisputed

— would require a jury to find that the agents had acted re a sonably in detaining Trask on a thin thread of evidence of petty theft and in holding her for more than an hour , oste n sibly to ide n tify 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 re a son s 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 pro ceeding after she said she’d never received the motion for summary judg ment. The judge was unpersuaded, no t ing that several items mailed to Trask, including the judge’s o rder denying her motion to dismiss the case, should have alerted her to the pending motion for summary judgment

. And she co n cedes that she di d receive the order denying her motion for voluntary dismis sal

— an order that explicitly warned her that she had to respond to the motion for su mmary jud g ment . If as she claims (though without support in the record) she didn’t have a copy of the agents’ mot ion, she sh ould have called defense counsel and asked for a n other copy . She didn’t

.No. 14

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Trask further contends that the district court erred in e nforcing her settlement with the casino and its employee

— but the court’s choice to believe the testimony of the cas ino’s lawyer is unassailable. She also contends that the magi s trate judge assigned to the case (as di s tinct from the district judge, who decided all the substantive and procedural i s sues ) should not have ruled on pretrial disputes , since she never

co n sente d 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 nondispos itive pretrial issues without consent , though subject to ove rsight by the di s trict court. 2 8 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 ev idence 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).
O ne 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

a gents. She had asked the defe n dants during discovery for all surveillance video in their possession, and they had r eplied 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
A FFIRMED

.