Opinion ID: 5128872
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Claims Arising from Litigation

Text: As a point worth discussing separately, Count IV (negligent failure to maintain and release accurate and complete No. 20-2163 25 medical records), part of Count V (negligent failure to hire, train, supervise, and retain employees to ensure compliance with record disclosure obligations), and Count VI (VA misrepresentation)—those claims implicating alleged wrongdoing arising during the course of the Scholz I litigation—fare no better in undercutting the district court’s claim splitting analysis. With respect to Counts IV and V, the Scholz I district court already grappled with alleged discovery violations over the course of the extensive proceedings. 4 Illustrating this claim’s duplicity, Scholz’s October 26, 2020, motion for sanctions— filed during the Scholz I lawsuit—goes so far as to reference and incorporate discovery failure arguments advanced in Scholz II. The district court denied Scholz’s motion for sanctions. Regardless, these Scholz I discovery issues cannot now form the basis of a separate lawsuit. Furthermore, turning to Count VI, Scholz’s surprise that Scholz I’s mental health treatment claims were deemed untimely is unpersuasive. By Scholz’s formulation, “[t]he gravamen of Count VI is simple—the [government] failed to warn Scholz of changes in their administrative claims procedures 4 Attacking defendant’s alleged discovery misconduct in Scholz I under yet another theory, Scholz argues that defendant should not have been entitled to their claim-splitting defense because they had “unclean hands” for allegedly failing to provide Scholz with her requested outpatient pharmacy records until just two days before the discovery deadline in Scholz I, which prevented Scholz from effectively litigating those issues in Scholz I. As the district court in Scholz II made clear, however, Scholz “offer[ed] no evidence that Defendants have engaged in any misconduct,” and has not made any such showing on appeal either. Even if she had, the district court correctly stated that the appropriate remedy would have been sanctions in Scholz I, not a new lawsuit. 26 No. 20-2163 that included adopting Wisconsin statute of limitations that conflicted with the federal statute of limitations and VA claims procedures.” But the administrative denials did include specific warnings that state law may impact the timeliness of FTCA claims, disclaimers present in Scholz I and subsequently incorporated by Scholz into the Scholz II administrative complaint. See Wenke v. Gehl Co., 682 N.W.2d 405, 42526 (Wis. 2004) (“[M]ost jurisdictions recognize the running of a statute of limitation as being procedural …, while some others, including Wisconsin, treat the running of a statute of limitation as substantive.”). Beyond these warnings, the district court also indicated that Scholz was on-notice that her claim might be time-barred more than a year before the case was dismissed. At summary judgment, Scholz had the opportunity to raise all issues relevant to timeliness, including equitable arguments relating to the alleged misrepresentations—an opportunity she did not take. We presently find no reason to disagree with the district court’s determination that Counts IV, V, and VI were reasonably wrapped into the same identity of the causes of action covering the broad set of interactions between Scholz and the VA. See Brzostowski v. Laidlaw Waste Sys., Inc., 49 F.3d 337, 33839 (7th Cir. 1995) (finding identity of causes of action when “claims … clearly arise out of the same core of operative facts and are based on the same factual allegations,” even when “the legal elements of each claim may be different”).