### In the 

# United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

____________________ No. 16

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R OBERT L ANCE W ILSON , Plaintiff

- Appellant
,

v.

I LLINOIS D EPARTMENT OF F INANCIAL AND P ROFESSIONAL R EGULATION , et al

. , Defendants

- Appellees

.

____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 14 C 10521

— Rebecca R. Pallmeyer
, Judge

.

____________________
A RGUED F EBRUARY 15, 2017

— D ECIDED S EPTEMBER 7, 2017

____________________

Before B AUER , E ASTERBROOK , and H AMILTON , Circuit Judges

. E ASTERBROOK , Circuit Judge

. In September 1998 one of Dr. Robert Lance Wilson’s terminally ill patients was within hours of death. He was in pain (morphine no longer worked for him) and suffocating but had refuse d to have a breathing tube inserted. Wilson concluded that the only possible pall iation was unconsciousness. As Wilson was injecting a drug2 No. 16

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to achieve that objective, the patient’s heart stopped. Wi lson’s travails then began.
The coroner classified the pat ient’s death as murder, and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regul ation summarily suspended Wilson’s medical license. He r eplied that his treatment was medically appropriate and d emanded a hearing. According to Wilson, whose account we must accept for current purposes, the Department’s top a dministrators were unconcerned about the propriety of the treatment, unwilling to learn about that subject, and perso nally offended when Wilson wanted a hearing. Wilson su bmits that they decided to k ick him out of the profession without regard to the evidence. It took the Department until March 2000 to hold any kind of hearing. By then the coroner’s finding of homicide had been withdrawn and a criminal prosecutor h ad decided not to charge Wilson . But, according to Wilson, the Depar tment’s hearing was a farce with a foreordained outcome. His license was suspended for five years, retroactive to October 1998. He contested this result on two fronts: suits in both state and federal court.
The federal suit b egan in October 1999, before the D epartment held a hearing. T he Depart ment asked the federal judge to dismiss the suit, and the judge abstained under the doctrine of Younger v. Harris
, 401 U.S. 37 (1971) , which the Supreme Court has applied to state civil and administrative proceedings in which units of state government attempt to implement state policies. Trainor v. Hernandez , 431 U.S. 434 (1977) . The Department wanted the federal judge to dismiss Wilson’s suit rather than stay it pending the outcome of the state litiga tion; the federal judge obliged.No. 16

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The Department did not fare so well in state court. Four times a state judge vacated the Department’s decision. After each of the first three, the Department reinstated its decision and the litigation continued. The Department’s decision after the March 2000 hearing was set aside in April 2002, on two procedural grounds, by the Circuit Court of Cook County. The Appellate Court affirmed with respect to one of th ose grounds. Wilson v. Department of Professional Regulation , 344 Ill. App. 3d 897 (2003). Wilson remained subject to the su mmary suspension of 1998. Without offering Wilson a new hearing, a state administrative law judge made new findings in November 2006 , and the Department entered a new five

year suspension in July 2007. It did not explain why the five years hadn’t already expired.
In May 2008 the Circuit Court set aside this new suspe nsion, again on grounds of procedural irregularity. The D epartment did not appeal, but at the new hearing the ALJ struck some testimony that had previously been allowed. The Department’s third decision, dated July 2009, again su spended Wilson for five years, without credit for the 11 years that he had already been suspended. This third decision was set aside in July 2011; the Circuit Court found, for a third time, that procedural irregularities vitiated the decision. The Department did not appeal but entered a fourth suspension decision in April 2013, yet again for five extra years. Wi lson’s renewed contest in state court led to a definitive dec ision in his favor. The Circuit Court held in May 2014 that the evidence did not support suspension

— that Wilson should not have been suspended for even one day , let alone more than 15 y ears

. Indeed, in 2002 the deceased patient’s estate had abandoned a civil suit filed against Wilson, so he was4 No. 16

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not determined to have committed malpractice, let alone murder. The Department did not appeal. Thus ended the state litigation. But the Departmen t did not reinstate Wilson’s license to practice medicine. In Jan uary 20 16 it sent him a letter stating that, because by then he had not practiced during the last 17 years , he must complete a “graduate medical education program of at least 3 years in lengt h ” (emphasis added) before submitting to tests to d etermine whether he is fit to practice. In other words, the D epartment has taken the view that the Circuit Court’s decision did not restore Wilson to practice, and that
, even though he should not have been suspended , he must go back to school pret ty much as if he had never had a medical education in the first place.

Late in 2014 Wilson returned to federal court , seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. §1983 for suspension without a hearing and the ensuing lengthy i nability to practice his pr ofession . Because state disciplinary proceedings and litigation have ended, Younger no longer requires abstention. But Wi lson’s second federal suit followed his first out the door. In 1999 a district judge ruled that Wilson had commenced suit too soon and must wait for the end of the state’s administr ative proceedings. In 2016 a different district judge ruled that Wilson had commenced suit too late

— that the two

- year statute of limitations applicable to §1983 suits in Illinois had been running since fall 1998 (when Wilson’s license was suspended without a hearing) and had expired in 2000. 2016 U.S. Dist. L EXIS 35092 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 18, 2016). The district court failed to enter a proper final decision, but its order is appealable un der the rationale of Otis v. Chicago , 29 F.3d 1159 (7th Cir. 1994) (en banc).No. 16

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Aggrieved at being told that no suit, whenever filed, is permissible, Wilson’s appellate lawyer contends that the doctrine of Heck v. Humphrey
, 512 U.S. 477 (1994) , comes to his rescue. Heck holds that a prisoner cannot use §1983 to challenge the validity of his conviction or to obtain other r elief that necessarily implies the conviction’s invalidity. I nstead, the Court stated, any §1983 litigation must be deferred until the convi cti on has been set aside by appeal, collateral review, or p ardo n. The Court added that as long as the cu stody lasts, the statute of limitations does not run : “a §1983 cause of action for damages attributable to an unconstit utional conviction or sentence do es not accrue until the co nviction or sentence has been invalidated. ” 512 U.S. at 489

– 90. Heck was extended to prison disciplinary proceedings in E dwards v. Balisok
, 520 U.S. 641 (1997) . Wilson contends that we should further extend Heck to professional di sciplinary pr oceedings. The problem with that proposal lies in the rationale of Heck . The Court based its analysis on the doctrine that da mages actions cannot be used to contest custody. When the writ of habeas corpus (or a statutory substitute such as 28 U.S.C. §§ 2254 and 2255) is available, it is also exclusive. Preiser v. Rodriguez , 411 U.S. 475 (1973). Mo re: State p risoners who want collateral relief in federal court must exhaust their state remedies. 28 U.S.C. §2254(b)(1); Rose v. Lundy
, 455 U.S. 509 (1982)

. But a federal challenge to a decision by a state’s administrative agency is not subject to the requirement that collateral remedies are exclusive or to an ex haustion

- of

remedies rule. Non prisoners need not exhaust state rem edies before suing under §1983. Patsy v. Board of Regents , 457 U.S. 496 (1982) . Given the nature of its rationale, Heck cannot be extended to Wilson’s situation

. A litigant need not have a6 No. 16

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state’s administrative decision set aside in state court before invoking §1983. Still, just as we asked why Heck blocks §1983 suits by pe rsons contesting the fact or duration of their custody, so we must ask why the Court concluded its opinion in Heck by announcing that the §1983 claim does not accrue until the conviction has been set aside. Accr ual is deferred, the Court stated, by analogy to the rule that “ a cause of action for m alicious prosecution does not accrue until the criminal pr oceedings have termi nated in the plaintiff ’s favor”. 512 U.S. at 489. See also Manuel v. Joliet , 137 S. Ct. 911 , 921 (2017). And that doctrine is not limited to malici ous

- prosecution suits. It instantiates the more fundamental rule that a claim never accrues until the would

- be plaintiff “ has a comple te and pr esent cause of action ”

. Wallace v. Kato , 549 U.S. 384, 38 8 ( 2007) ( cita tions and internal quotation marks omitted). That is a rule of federal law

— and Wallace adds tha t the accrual of a §1983 claim is governed by federal law. Ibid

. Put the accrual doctrine of Wallace together with the di strict court’s holding in 1999 that Wilson was forbidden to litigate in federal court while state proceedings were ong oing , and it follows that his §1983 claim for damages did not accrue until May 2014, when the state litigation ended. D efendants do not con tend that Wilson could have joined a §1983 claim seeking damages with his administrative

- review claim in state court; damages just were off the table until he finally prevailed in the administrative

- review action. It fo llows that u ntil May 2014 Wilson did not have a “complete and present cause of action” under federal law in either state or federal court

. Wilson’s current §1983 suit therefore is timely.No. 16

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Wilson could have curtailed the duration of his Younger problem by not litigating in state court after th e Department entered i ts post

- hearing decision. W ith neither administr ative nor judicial proceedings pending in Illinois, Wilson could have pursued a §1983 suit seeking damages. If he had avoided state litigation
, the §1983 claim would have ac crued in Marc h 2000 and he would have had until March 2002 to sue in federal court . But the Department has not contended that this strategy was compulsory as a matter of either state or federal law. Wilson was entitled to ask a state court to v acate the Department’s de cision under Illinois law

— and as long as that suit was pending he was locked out of federal court. It took much longer than Wilson could have anticipa ted to vindicate his rights , but the Department’s doggedness in reinstating his suspension despite its mul tiple losses in state court does not supply a good reason to prevent §1983 litigation when at last it became possible. The district judge who handled Wilson’s first federal suit could, and probably should, have avoided the current co ntretemps by staying that suit rather than dismissing it. See Quackenbush v. Allstate Insurance Co ., 517 U.S. 706 , 721 (1996) (“ while we have held that federal courts may stay actions for damages based on abstention principles, we have not held that those p rinciples support th e outright dismissal ... of damages actions ”); Deakins v. Monaghan , 484 U.S. 193, 202 (1988 ); Gakuba v. O’Brien , 711 F.3d 751, 753 (7th Cir. 2013) ; Simpson v. Rowan , 73 F.3d 134, 138

– 39 (7th Cir. 1995 ) . By as king the district judge to dismiss the first suit

— and thus to set a potential trap for Wilson under the statute of limitations

— the defendants brought into play a second doctrine: equit able estoppel. But we need not decide whether the defen dants’ motion to dismiss Wilson’s first suit estops them from8 No. 16

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pleading the statute of limitations once federal litigation r esumed . It is enough to conclude that Wilson did not have a complete federal claim under §1983 until May 2014, when proceedings in state court ended
, so as a matter of federal l aw his federal claim did not accrue until then. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.