Civil Procedure — equitable tolling

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Civil

Civil Procedure — equitable tolling

Where the district court gave only a cursory explanation for rejecting a plaintiff’s argument that the statute of limitations should be tolled, the dismissal is reversed.

“The district judge’s explanation for refusing to allow the late filing of the suit was cursory. He did not suggest (nor does the government) that the government had been prejudiced by the plaintiff’s delay in suing. And upon being re-leased from prison the plaintiff was likely to have found it more rather than, as the district judge said, less difficult to advise the court of changes of address. As a prisoner the plaintiff could ask a fellow prisoner or a member of the prison staff to mail a letter for him; upon release he was a blind ex-con struggling to keep his head above water, and the struggle must have intensified when he was expelled, allegedly without notice and for reasons unexplained in the papers in this case, from the halfway house that was his first home after he completed his prison sentence. There is no indication in the record that he had a family to help him cope with the difficult situation in which he found himself.”

Reversed and Remanded.

14-1428 Hill v. U.S.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Gilbert, J., Posner, J.