Opinion ID: 2807928
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The District Court’s Summary

Text: Judgment Determination The district court entered summary judgment in favor of the School District and IHSA defendants on each of Friend’s six claims: First Amendment retaliation, equal protection (class of one), substantive due process, unconstitutional policy or custom (Monell), § 1983 conspiracy to violate his constitutional 6 No. 13-3307 rights, and indemnification under the Illinois Tort Immunity Act, 745 ILCS 10/9-102. We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, construing all facts and reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to Friend, the nonmoving party. Summary judgment is appropriate when there is “no genuine issue as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(8)(A) states that the argument section of a brief must contain “citations to the authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant relies[.]” But Friend’s brief, over the course of eighteen pages, provides precisely six citations for factual assertions. These citations, which principally refer to deposition testimony, do not designate the specific page number(s) from the record or cited deposition transcript where the asserted facts may be found. Nor does Friend provide citations on a fact-by-fact basis. Instead, he affixes citations to the end of paragraphs, each of which contain numerous factual assertions. Further complicating things, all but one of Friend’s six citations reference multiple depositions, preceded by the introductory signal “See” (the other citation in Friend’s brief is to a fifty-six page deposition). For example, page fifteen of Friend’s brief contains a citation that reads “See Dkt. 133-1, 137-1, 138-1, 139- 1”—the four documents referred to in this citation are depositions, which range from 101 to 169 pages long. We are not required to scour through hundreds of pages of deposition transcript in order to verify an assortment of facts, each of which could be located anywhere within the multiple depositions cited. As we have cautioned time and again, “[j]udges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in [the record].” United No. 13-3307 7 Sates v. Dunkel, 927 F.2d 955, 956 (7th Cir. 1991); see also Corely v. Rosewood Care Ctr., Inc. of Peoria, 388 F.3d 990, 1001 (7th Cir. 2004) (“[W]e will not root through the hundreds of documents and thousands of pages that make up the record here to make his case for him.”). The situation would not be so bleak if we could refer back to Friend’s statement of facts in order to verify the factual assertions that he makes in his argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(6) (requiring appellant’s opening brief contain “a concise statement of the case; setting out the facts relevant to the issues submitted for review … with appropriate references to the record”). But Friend does not provide a statement of facts compliant with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 28(a)(6). Instead, he merely directs our attention, “for the ease of analysis,” to his Rule 56.1 statement—the same statement of facts that the district court found, and we confirmed, to suffer from want of citation to evidentiary support. See Gross v. Town of Cicero, Ill., 619 F.3d 697, 702 (7th Cir. 2010) (“the [Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure] require litigants to cite directly to the record, as opposed to something like a Rule 56.1 statement”). Appellate briefs must contain an argument consisting of more than a generalized assertion of error. Fed. R. App. P. 28(a); Correa v. White, 518 F.3d 516, 517 (7th Cir. 2008) (stating the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure require that an appellant “explain adequately why [he or] she believes the district court erred in granting summary judgment”); Jones v. InfoCure Corp., 310 F.3d 529, 534 (7th Cir. 2002); Anderson v. Handman, 241 F.3d 544, 545 (7th Cir. 2001). But, excepting his First Amendment retaliation claim, Friend does not inform us 8 No. 13-3307 why the district court erred in granting summary judgment. In fact, the sections of Friend’s brief dedicated to his equal protection, substantive due process, Monell, and § 1983 conspiracy claims all fail to reference the district court judgment whatsoever.2 Nor could these sections respond to the district court’s decision, since each section is directly copied and pasted, essentially word for word from Friend’s response to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Because Friend violated Rule 28, we strike all portions of his argument section that rely on unsupported facts or fail to identify a specific error in the district court’s decision. As a result, the only issue remaining for our review concerns Friend’s First Amendment retaliation claim. Friend’s First Amendment retaliation claim can be briefly summarized as follows: the School District and IHSA defendants singled Friend out for residency investigations, which rendered him ineligible to participate in high school basketball for approximately ten days, because his mother lodged complaints with the School District. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants, holding that Friend’s First Amendment retaliation claim failed because: (1) the speech underlying his claim was not his own, but that of his mother, and (2) the defendants’ allegedly retaliatory actions, investigating Friend’s residency, were prompted by third-party complaints that he was violating the School District’s residency rules. 2 Friend’s appellate brief does not mention his Illinois Tort Immunity Act claim whatsoever. As a result, this point is forfeited. Milligan v. Bd. of Trs. of S. Ill. Univ., 686 F.3d 378 (7th Cir. 2012). No. 13-3307 9 Friend challenges the first ground on which the district court entered summary judgment against him; he does not contest the second. This is fatal to his appeal, since each ground constitutes an adequate and independent basis for entering summary judgment against him on his First Amendment retaliation claim. See Springer v. Durflinger, 518 F.3d 479, 483 (7th Cir. 2008) (“To prevail on their § 1983 retaliation claim, the parents need to prove (1) that they were engaged in constitutionally protected speech; (2) that public officials took adverse actions against them; and (3) that the adverse actions were motivated at least in part as a response to the plaintiffs’ protected speech”). Indeed, Friend does not direct our attention to any facts tending to show that the School District’s residency investigation was instigated by his mother’s complaints, as opposed to those of third parties. And, as far as we can tell from our own review of the record, the undisputed facts support the district court’s determination. Therefore, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment to the defendants on Friend’s First Amendment retaliation claim.