In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 16‐4076
R. ALEXANDER ACOSTA, Secretary of Labor,
Plaintiff‐Appellee,
v.
DT & C GLOBAL MANAGEMENT, LLC, d/b/a TOWN & COUNTRY
LIMOUSINE, and JOHN JANSEN, and WILLIAM LYNCH,
Defendants‐Appellants.
____________________
No. 16‐4077
MARK KRANTZ, et al.,
Plaintiff‐Appellees,
v.
DT & C GLOBAL MANAGEMENT, LLC, and JOHN JANSEN,
Defendants‐Appellants.
____________________
Appeals from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:15‐cv‐02010 — Virginia M. Kendall, Judge.
No. 1:14‐cv‐00998 — Milton I. Shadur, Judge.
____________________
ARGUED OCTOBER 3, 2017 — DECIDED OCTOBER 25, 2017
____________________
2 Nos. 16‐4076 & 16‐4077
Before KANNE, ROVNER, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM. DT & C Global Management operated a
ground transportation company in Chicago. The company
and two of its owners were sued by former employees and the
government for violating state and federal wage‐payment
laws. After the defendants ignored court orders, the district
judges entered default judgments for the plaintiffs. Eleven
months later, the defendants moved to vacate both judg‐
ments. See FED. R. CIV. P. 60(b). Deeming their excuses too lit‐
tle, too late, the judges denied the motions, precipitating this
appeal. Because the defendants did not show good cause for
the default, did not act quickly in filing motions to vacate, and
failed to articulate any meritorious defenses, we conclude that
the district judges did not abuse their discretion. We affirm
the judgments.
I. BACKGROUND
This appeal consolidates two lawsuits. In the first, drivers
sued their former employer, DT & C Global Management,
LLC, and John Jansen, an owner, for wage‐payment viola‐
tions. In the second, the Secretary of Labor sued the company,
Jansen, and William Lynch, another owner, for the same vio‐
lations.
The Employees’ Case
Mark Krantz and William Dunne, two former drivers for
the company, alleged that the defendants failed to pay over‐
time rates, a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29
U.S.C. § 201, and the Illinois Minimum Wage Act, 820 ILCS
105/1. The plaintiffs also contended that defendants took un‐
authorized wage deductions in violation of Illinois’s Wage
Payment and Collection Act, 820 ILCS 115/9.
Nos. 16‐4076 & 16‐4077 3
The case proceeded to discovery, but ended with a default
judgment. When the defendants didn’t respond to discovery
requests, the plaintiffs filed a motion to compel, which the
judge granted. About a year later, in late 2015, the plaintiffs
moved for sanctions because the defendants had not com‐
plied with the discovery order. After the defendants’ counsel
responded that they couldn’t reach the defendants, the judge
allowed counsel to withdraw. Because the company could not
represent itself without counsel, the judge ordered Jansen to
appear for a hearing. When Jansen didn’t show up, the judge
entered sanctions: he struck the defendants’ answer, awarded
the plaintiffs their attorneys’ fees, and entered a default. The
plaintiffs then moved for a default judgment, which the judge
granted in November 2015.
Eleven months later, the defendants moved to vacate that
judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(1). Jan‐
sen offered two excuses. He first asserted that he had received
no notices during the last few months of the case. He said he
didn’t get notice of counsel’s motion to withdraw or the
judge’s order directing him to appear because his company
closed its business in September 2015 and no longer received
mail at their office address. Jansen didn’t get any mail sent to
his home or e‐mail addresses, he thinks, because he had
moved to Indiana and his emails were “forwarded to another
company.” As a result, he was unaware of the default judg‐
ment against him until “summer 2016.” Second he said he
could not keep in contact with his lawyers because of his poor
health. He explained that surgeries in 2011 and 2014, ongoing
medication, and a hospitalization in April 2016 for “unspeci‐
fied neurological issues” created “difficulty attending to busi‐
ness affairs.” He acknowledged, however, that in the summer
of 2015 he met with Attorney James E. Gorman several times
4 Nos. 16‐4076 & 16‐4077
in Chicago. After hiring Gorman, Jansen had no further con‐
tact with Gorman’s office until around “late March, early
April” 2016, when Jansen learned that Gorman had died.
The judge denied the motion. He ruled that the default
was the result of “inattention to the litigation” rather than ill‐
ness, and the defendants had not shown that they had a legit‐
imate defense.
The Department of Labor Case
The Secretary of Labor alleged the same Fair Labor Stand‐
ards Act violations in its suit against DT & C, Jansen, and also
William Lynch (minority owner and president of DT & C).
Discovery disputes arose here, too. The Secretary moved
to compel defendants to respond to discovery requests. De‐
fendants’ counsel—the same as in the employees’ case—
moved to withdraw, again citing an inability to reach defend‐
ants. The following month the Secretary asked the court to en‐
ter a default for failure to defend. When defendants didn’t re‐
spond, the judge entered the default and default judgment.
As with the employees’ case, eleven months passed before
the defendants moved to vacate the judgment. This motion
was almost identical to the other one, but adds two points.
First, Lynch swore that he relied on Jansen to keep him ap‐
prised of the case. Second, Lynch and Jansen admitted seeing
a press release from the Department of Labor announcing the
default judgment in January 2016. They both thought after
reading it that they weren’t individually liable, and they
Nos. 16‐4076 & 16‐4077 5
weren’t worried about the company’s judgment because they
had closed the business.1
The judge denied the motion to vacate. She explained that
Jansen’s surgeries, which occurred before the litigation
started, did not excuse the default or Jansen’s failure to learn
about the default judgment. She also found that defendants
had failed to show a meritorious defense.
II. ANALYSIS
On appeal, the defendants argue that the district judges
abused their discretion by denying the motions to vacate.
They repeat that because Jansen did not receive notice of the
judgments and suffered from bad health, their neglect of the
cases is excusable. See FED. R. CIV. P. 60(b)(1). For a court to set
aside a default judgment under Rule 60(b)(1), the movant
must show good cause, quick action to respond to the default,
and a meritorious defense to the underlying allegations. See
Wehrs v. Wells, 688 F.3d 886, 890 (7th Cir. 2012). In most cases,
a party is bound to the actions of its attorney even when those
actions are errors or omissions. See Link v. Wabash R.R. Co., 370
U.S. 626 (1962), Moje v. Fed. Hockey League, LLC, 792 F.3d 756
(7th Cir. 2015). We review the denial of a Rule 60(b) motion
for abuse of discretion. See Cent. Ill. Carpenters Health & Welfare
Tr. Fund v. Con‐Tech Carpentry, LLC, 806 F3.d 935, 937 (7th Cir.
2015).
1 The press release contains a hyperlink to the judgment, which named
Jansen and Lynch as individual defendants. See U.S. Dep’t of Labor, Fed‐
eral judge orders Chicago limo company to pay more than $381K in back
wages damages (2016), https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/re‐
leases/whd/whd20160121.)
6 Nos. 16‐4076 & 16‐4077
The district judges reasonably concluded that the defend‐
ants didn’t establish good cause for their default. The defend‐
ants first point to Jansen’s health problems, but it was within
the district judges’ discretion to reject this excuse given the
timeline and lack of corroborating information. Jansen’s sur‐
geries were in 2011 and 2014, yet he remained inattentive to
the cases for all of 2015, well after these surgeries. Jansen re‐
plies that he remained on various medications, but he offers
no medical opinion suggesting that they impaired his ability
to handle his affairs. To the contrary, Jansen said that he was
able to conduct business when he wanted. He met with Gor‐
man in Chicago many times in the summer of 2015, during
the same time that he was ignoring the courts’ discovery or‐
ders.
The defendants respond with their second excuse: Jan‐
sen’s move to Indiana in 2015, combined with problems of
mail and email forwarding, also show good cause for losing
contact with his lawyers and the court, and the resulting de‐
fault. The district judges reasonably found this excuse defi‐
cient. When Jansen moved away and closed the business, he
should have notified the court of his new address. See Soliman
v. Johanns, 412 F.3d 920, 922 (8th Cir. 2005); Carey v. King, 856
F.2d 1439, 1441 (9th Cir. 1988). This step was especially im‐
portant because Jansen was considering hiring Gorman to re‐
place his original attorneys with whom he apparently had a
breakdown in communication. Gorman may have later let
Jansen down by not doing anything to defend the suit, but
Jansen had a duty, which he ignored, to check and see if his
lawyer was doing something to represent him. See Moje, 792
F.3d at 759. If Jansen had simply looked at the docket or called
his lawyer once after fall 2015, he would have learned that his
Nos. 16‐4076 & 16‐4077 7
former lawyers had withdrawn, that Gorman didn’t even en‐
ter and appearance in the case, and that Jansen needed to act
promptly. See id. And even those simple steps would have
been unnecessary if Jansen had merely notified the court of
his new address in the summer of 2015.
The district judges also reasonably decided that the de‐
fendants did not respond quickly after learning about the de‐
fault judgment. The defendants argue that they waited only
“two, three months” between when Jansen learned of the de‐
fault judgment in “summer 2016” and when they filed the
Rule 60(b) motion in October. (Appellants’ Br. App. at A‐12,
A‐27.) They also point to Jansen’s undocumented hospitaliza‐
tion for “unspecified neurological issues” in April 2016.
The defendants’ account does not reflect quick action.
First, they don’t explain how Jansen’s hospital stay in April
disabled him from filing a motion to vacate until six months
later, in October. Second, the defendants’ “two, three months”
delay after “summer 2016” was not quick. In Jones v. Phipps,
this court decided that an appellant failed to show quick ac‐
tion when she moved to vacate five weeks after she knew
about the judgment and was capable of getting help from a
lawyer. 39 F.3d 158, 165 (7th Cir. 1994); see also C.K.S. Eng’rs
Inc. v. White Mountain Gypsum Co., 726 F.2d 1202, 1208 (7th
Cir. 1984) (stating movant’s two‐month delay before moving
to vacate default judgment was not quick action). Finally, the
two to three months that the defendants calculate ignores the
January 2016 press release that both Jansen and Lynch read
shortly after it was published. Despite reading this notice,
they didn’t take the easy and prudent step of checking the link
8 Nos. 16‐4076 & 16‐4077
in the article to see if the judgment applied to them. Instead
they let more than nine months pass before going to court.
Defendants also failed to proffer a meritorious defense to
the complaint. The defense doesn’t need to be a clearly victo‐
rious argument, but it must contain more than “bare legal
conclusions.” Parker v. Scheck Mech. Corp., 772 F.3d 502, 505
(7th Cir. 2014). Yet that is all that the defendants offered. In
their motion to vacate, the defendants said that Jansen has
“defenses of good faith and that the amounts awarded are ex‐
cessive and he has not received all credits he and other de‐
fendants should have with respect to the judgment amount.”
(R. 71 at 5.) The defendants don’t elaborate on these defenses,
nor do they provide any support for them. Although some
courts will look to other pleadings to flesh out a possible de‐
fense, in this circuit district courts may reasonably demand
that the defenses be included and developed in the motion to
vacate. See Jones v. Phipps, 39 F.3d 158, 166 (7th Cir. 1994) (re‐
marking that district court didn’t abuse its discretion in con‐
cluding defense with “unsatisfactory” explanation was mer‐
itless). But the defendants did not provide anything else,
thereby dooming their motion.
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district courts’
grants of Appellees’ motions to dismiss.
R. Alexander Acosta v. DT & C Global Management LLC
Combined Opinion