Opinion ID: 3001508
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Source of fiduciary duty

Text: The defendants next argue that the indictment and the jury instructions impermissibly stated that the Shakman consent decree was one of the sources creating a fiduciary duty between the defendants and the citizenry. We review this challenge de novo. There are actually two Shakman decrees, one entered in 1972 and one in 1983, and both are the result of litigation by Michael Shakman, an independent candidate for the Illinois Constitutional Convention who felt locked out of the campaign process because of the City of Chicago’s patronage hiring system. See generally O’Sullivan v. City of Chicago, 396 F.3d 843, 847-50 (7th Cir. 2005). Somewhat simplified, the decrees forbid the city from basing its hiring decisions for civil servants on political factors. Nos. 06-4251, 06-4252, 06-4253 & 06-4254 17 Both the indictment and the jury instructions in this case describe the Shakman decrees alongside other sources of local and state law as potential sources of the fiduciary duty running between the defendants as public servants and the people of Chicago. Those sources include a state law and a local ordinance criminalizing false entries by local government officials intending to defraud, 720 ILCS 5/33E-15; Chicago, Ill. Code § 2-74-090(B), and a local ordinance mandating the selection of civil servants based on merit, Chicago, Ill. Code § 2-74-050(3). On appeal the defendants do not contest that they violated these legal provisions. The defendants nevertheless contend that the Shakman decrees are an impermissible source of a fiduciary duty, and that since the jury did not indicate which source it relied upon, the verdict must be overturned. But we have never held that only state law can supply a fiduciary duty between public official and public or between employee and employer in honest services cases. See Bush, 522 F.2d at 646 n.6. Indeed, our case law, and the case law of the vast majority of circuits, shows that other sources can create a fiduciary obligation. E.g., George, 477 F.2d at 514 n.7 (employee handbook); United States v. Williams, 441 F.3d 716, 723-24 (9th Cir. 2006) (power of attorney agreement). It may well be that merely by virtue of being public officials the defendants inherently owed the public a fiduciary duty to discharge their offices in the public’s best interest. See United States v. DeVegter, 198 F.3d 1324, 1328 (11th Cir. 1999). The defendants invite us to adopt the minority “state law limiting principle” shared by the Third and Fifth Circuits, Murphy, 323 F.3d at 116-17; Brumley, 116 F.3d at 734, but we have already declined to add this limiting 18 Nos. 06-4251, 06-4252, 06-4253 & 06-4254 principle to the private gain requirement that stems from McNally. See Bloom, 149 F.3d at 654-55. Moreover, although in United States v. Martin we remained open to an argument on this front in the future, we also stated that “[a] litigant who wants us to overrule our previous decisions must do more than cite a recent decision of another court (unless the Supreme Court!) that is to the contrary.” 195 F.3d 961, 967 (7th Cir. 1999). That is essentially all that the defendants have done here. Given this fact, and the other sources of a fiduciary duty, we decline to overturn the verdict on this basis.