10-1867 Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters v. Village of Schaumburg

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Civil Procedure
Complaint

A complaint filed before the only actionable incident must be dismissed.

“[T]he district court correctly granted summary judgment. Normally, a complaint can seek relief only for events that have already occurred. Grain Traders, Inc. v. Citibank, N.A., 160 F.3d 97, 105 (2d Cir. 1998). (A person seeking injunctive relief must show a likelihood of substantial and immediate irreparable injury and the inadequacy of a remedy at law. See City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 103 (1983) (citing O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 502 (1974)). But the plaintiff must still ground its right to relief on events described in the complaint, not on matters that arise later.) Before the complaint may be broadened to encompass subsequent events, the plaintiff must move to supplement it. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(d) provides a mechanism for doing just that: ‘[o]n motion and reasonable notice, the court may, on just terms, permit a party to serve a supplemental pleading setting out any transaction, occurrence, or event that happened after the date of the pleading to be supplemented.’ FED. R. CIV. P. 15(d). It is worth underscoring, however, that there is no absolute right to expand the case in this way; the district court has substantial discretion either to permit or to deny such a motion. In this case, the Union filed its complaint on September 2, 2009, but the only event that it now is complaining about occurred in November 2009, two months later. It did not ask the district court to accept a supplemental pleading until after the court had denied its motion for summary judgment. The court was well within its rights to conclude that this was too little, too late.”

Affirmed.

10-1867 Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters v. Village of Schaumburg

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Lindberg, J., Wood, J.

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