Civil Procedure — intervention

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Civil Procedure — intervention

A district court properly denied intervention in a case that had been pending for 14 years, after final judgment was entered.

“The intervenors acknowledge knowing about the litigation no later than 2005. In 2007 the district court devised a remedy that gave them (and other persons hired between 2002 and 2006) no relief. The intervenors say that no one told them about this—but then no one had to. The district court invoked Rule 23(b)(2), which covers situations in which “the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds that apply generally to the class, so that final injunctive relief or corresponding declaratory relief is appropriate respecting the class as a whole”. Rule 23(b)(2) does not require notice, because no one can opt out of a (b)(2) class. Nor does Rule 23 require notice when a class action is resolved on the merits. Although members of a (b)(3) class must be notified of a settlement, see Rule 23(e)(4), no one is entitled to notice of the final decision in a suit fought to the finish, as this one was. Members of a (b)(2) class can monitor the litigation, and these intervenors did just that when attending oral arguments in the Supreme Court and this court. They could have asked to see the judgments entered in 2007 and 2011 but did not. During the argument held in this court in 2011, counsel representing the class stated that persons who had been hired between 2002 and 2006 would not receive any relief; that did not prompt the intervenors to act, and the district judge was entitled to conclude that persons who had let all of these opportunities slide by were not entitled to intervene in 2012.”

Affirmed.

12-2845 Lewis v. City of Chicago

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Gottschall, J., Easterbrook, J.