NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted June 14, 2017*
Decided June 15, 2017
Before
JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge
ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge
ANN CLAIRE WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge
No. 17‐1305
GREGORY DABBS, Appeal from the United States District
Plaintiff‐Appellant, Court for the Central District of Illinois.
v. No. 16‐CV‐1463
PEORIA COUNTY, ILLINOIS, et al., Joe Billy McDade,
Defendants‐Appellees. Judge.
O R D E R
Gregory Dabbs, an Army veteran, appeals the dismissal of his civil‐rights suit
against Peoria County and two county officials for constitutional violations arising out
of (1) the denial of his application for state veterans’ benefits and (2) a subsequent
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the brief and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). The defendants were not served
with process in the district court and are not participating in this appeal.
No. 17‐1305 Page 2
altercation that resulted in his arrest. The district court concluded that his complaint did
not state a claim upon which relief could be granted and dismissed it. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii). We agree that his allegations do not state a claim and affirm.
As he set forth in his amended complaint, Dabbs, through an Illinois veterans
program, requested payment from Peoria County for a utility bill. The defendants, he
alleges, unlawfully denied his request, and as a result he was without utilities for more
than a month. Dabbs also alleges that days after he was denied payment, he was
unlawfully arrested for “petty disorderly conduct” and involuntarily committed to a
local hospital. Roughly one year later Dabbs brought this lawsuit and, in his amended
complaint, asserts that his constitutional rights were violated. He does not, however,
identify the particular defendants or misconduct that caused these violations.
The district court screened the amended complaint under § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii) and
dismissed it with prejudice for failure to state a claim. Dabbs, the court explained, did
not “provide more than wholesale recitations of legal conclusions, which are devoid of
facts upon which a claim of relief can be granted,” nor did he give the defendants
proper notice of the particular claims he meant to assert.
Dabbs’s brief on appeal does not develop any argument, see FED. R. APP. P.
28(a)(8)(A), but we can discern at least one issue for review—whether the district court
wrongly determined that the defendants “would not understand what they were being
sued for.” But even if we, as did the district court, give Dabbs’s amended complaint the
lenient reading that pro se pleadings deserve, his conclusory assertions of constitutional
violations do not specify which defendants were responsible for which allegedly
unlawful acts. To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must give defendants “fair
notice of what the . . . claim is and the grounds upon which it rests,” Bell Atl. Corp. v.
Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Because Dabbs’s amended complaint does not meet this requirement, the judgment is
AFFIRMED.