Civil Procedure — summary judgment

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Civil Procedure — summary judgment

The district court did not err in refusing to accept a filing in response to summary judgment on the day of the hearing.

“Clearly, the court did not draft its well-reasoned, eleven-page Opinion and the accompanying judgment in the twenty-three minutes after Keeton filed her motion. The court had already gone through the effort of analyzing the case and drafting its summary judgment Opinion before Keeton’s lawyer attempted to file a late response. The court had allowed Keeton more than two months to respond to the motion, and had given counsel a generous second chance to comply with the court’s deadline. Counsel had already failed to appear at a status hearing and also failed to complete discovery within the allotted time. Instead, after Morningstar moved for summary judgment and more than a month after the close of discovery, counsel moved to reopen discovery and readjust all deadlines. District courts have considerable discretion to manage their dockets and to require compliance with deadlines. Gonzalez v. Ingersoll Milling Mach. Co., 133 F.3d 1025, 1030 (7th Cir. 1998); Reales v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 84 F.3d 993, 996 (7th Cir. 1996). Under the circumstances, the court was well within its discretion to refuse to allow Keeton’s late filing of her response to Morningstar’s motion for summary judgment.”

Affirmed.

11-2298 Keeton v. Morningstar, Inc.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, St. Eve, J., Rovner, J.