Angela Flowers v. Kia Motors Finance

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-2270
A NGELA FLOWERS ,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
KIA MOTORS FINANCE ,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Western District of Wisconsin.
No. 21-cv-411-wmc — William M. Conley, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED FEBRUARY 16, 2024 — D ECIDED J UNE 26, 2024
____________________
Before R IPPLE , BRENNAN, and J ACKSON-A KIWUMI, Circuit
Judges.
BRENNAN, Circuit Judge. Early one morning, Angela Flow-
ers saw a truck parked across the street from her apartment
building in Lodi, Wisconsin. She and her son got into her car,
a Kia Forte, to drive to work. The truck parked behind them,
preventing them from backing out of their parking space. So,
they drove through their backyard, onto the street, and later

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2 No. 23-2270
the highway, the truck following close behind. Eventually,
they lost the truck.
The next day Flowers contacted Kia Motors Finance
(“Kia”), with whom she had a car loan. The company con-
firmed that she was behind on her payments and that her ve-
hicle was subject to repossession. Kia had repossessed her car
a year earlier, so Flowers suspected that the previous day’s
events were another repossession attempt.
Flowers sued Kia, alleging unlawful collection practices.
But she unduly delayed her attempt to include the earlier re-
possession in her amended complaint. And she cannot point
to any evidence from which a reasonable jury could find that
Kia was involved in the events she describes. The district
court granted Kia summary judgment, which we affirm.
I. Background
A. Factual
Summary judgment was granted to Kia, so we construe all
facts and draw all reasonable inferences in a light most favor-
able to the non-movant, Flowers. Biggs v. Chicago Bd. of Educ.,
82 F.4th 554, 559 (7th Cir. 2023).
Flowers purchased a Kia Forte compact sedan in 2017. Kia
financed a loan for her to buy the car. In 2019, Flowers fell
behind on her loan payments. Kia gave her notice that she was
in default and the Forte was repossessed in September 2019.
Flowers paid the amounts she owed, and the next month re-
gained possession of the car.
In the summer of 2020, Flowers again failed to make the
scheduled loan payments, and Kia gave her notice that she
was in default and that the vehicle may be repossessed.

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No. 23-2270 3
Flowers spoke to a Kia representative and was told she would
be sent some paperwork to try to resolve the default, but she
alleged she never received it.
In November 2020, Flowers and her son would drive to
work together early in the morning. One morning before 3:00
a.m. she went outside and noticed a truck parked across from
her apartment building. She did not hear its engine running,
nor could she recognize the make or model of the truck. She
could see that its driver was a man wearing a beanie, but his
clothing did not display any identifying information. The
only other cars she saw in the parking lot that morning were
her mother’s and possibly a neighbor’s. Flowers knew her
neighbor’s car had been paid off for some time.
That same morning at 3:30 a.m. Flowers and her son left
their apartment, walked across the parking lot toward Flow-
ers’s vehicle, and saw the truck still parked across the street.
As they walked toward the Forte, the truck drove backwards
and stopped behind and perpendicular to Flowers’s car. She
estimated a four-to-five-foot gap between the rear of her car
and the truck.
Before Flowers entered her car, she looked at the truck.
She could not see any signs, numbering, lettering, or license
plate. Neither she nor her son communicated with the driver,
who remained in the truck.
Flowers and her son then got into her car. They sat for
about a minute with the truck parked behind the Forte. This
prevented her son, who was driving, from backing out of the
parking space. So, he drove the car across the grassy backyard
of the apartment building, through a small driveway, and
onto a city street and eventually the highway. The truck

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4 No. 23-2270
followed them through town, “right on [her] bumper,” only a
foot or 18 inches behind her car. Rather than Flowers directing
her son to take them to work, she told him to “go, go, go.”
The truck followed them onto the interstate. Instead of
traveling their usual route south, Flowers’s son drove north.
The truck pursued them, staying “a bumper distance away”
from their car. Flowers’s son left the interstate, traveled
through a truck stop parking lot, and then returned to the
highway heading in the opposite direction. Only after travel-
ing through the truck stop did Flowers and her son lose sight
of the truck.
The next day, Flowers called Kia to ask if her car was sub-
ject to repossession. The representative initially said it was
not, but later admitted it was. While Flowers had her loan
with Kia, the company used repossession companies in Wis-
consin, including in the area where she lived. The Forte was
not repossessed in 2020 or thereafter.
B. Procedural
In June 2021, Flowers sued Kia alleging that blocking her
car in and chasing her were an unlawful attempt to repossess
the Forte. She claimed this violated the Fair Debt Collection
Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq., and the Wisconsin Con-
sumer Act, Wisconsin Statutes ch. 421 to ch. 427.
The district court held a pretrial conference and issued a
scheduling order. The deadline to amend pleadings was set
for July 29, 2022, after which “Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
15 applies, and the later a party seeks leave of the court to
amend, the less likely it is that justice will require the amend-
ment.”

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No. 23-2270 5
Four days before that deadline, the parties filed a stipula-
tion about Flowers amending her complaint. The July 25, 2022
stipulation read: “Plaintiff shall have leave to amend the
Complaint by and through the date seven (7) days after Plain-
tiff deposes [Kia Motor Finance]’s 30(b)(6) corporate repre-
sentative, which the parties expect to complete in August
2022.”
Due to scheduling conflicts, the deposition did not occur.
Instead, Flowers’s counsel suggested several potential dates,
including August 30 and 31. Kia’s counsel responded on July
28 that either date would work. Without filing an amended
complaint, Flowers’s counsel did not follow up with Kia
about potential deposition dates until August 29. Then, on
September 9, Flowers’s counsel noticed the Kia corporate rep-
resentative deposition for October 11.
On September 28, 2022, before that deposition, Kia moved
for judgment on the pleadings. After Kia filed this motion, the
district court accepted the parties’ July 25, 2022 stipulation
nunc pro tunc. Flowers then requested an extension of her
deadline to respond to Kia’s motion for judgment on the
pleadings. She also said she intended to request leave to file
an amended complaint.
The district court distributed a text only order to the par-
ties on October 26, 2022, which read:
Plaintiff’s stated intent to seek leave to file an
amended complaint that adds two new parties
is a non sequitur. In any event, the deadline to
amend without leave of court passed three
months ago, and the court cautioned the parties
in May, 2022 that the later they sought leave to

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6 No. 23-2270
amend, the less likely it was that justice would
require the amendment. R. [23] at 2. (To the ex-
tent the parties have stipulated to a future
amendment, see R. [39], the court remains the
gatekeeper whether to allow an amended com-
plaint at this juncture regardless of the parties'
stipulation).
Flowers received her requested extension to respond to
Kia’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. In her response,
filed November 2, 2022, Flowers abandoned three of the four
claims in her original complaint. She did preserve her claim
that by the November 2020 events, Kia violated WIS . STAT .
§ 427.104, which governs unlawful debt collection practices.
The same day, Flowers moved for leave to file an amended
complaint. In that proposed pleading, she sought to add alle-
gations about the 2019 repossession. Emails between the par-
ties’ counsel later filed with the district court showed that by
March 10, 2022, Flowers knew all the facts related to the 2019
default and repossession, the 2020 default, and those under-
lying any potential claims.
Kia opposed Flowers’s motion to amend the complaint.
Discovery closed, and on the deadline for dispositive mo-
tions, Kia moved for summary judgment on Flowers’s re-
maining claim.
On June 1, 2023, the district court ruled on the pending
motions. Kia’s motion for judgment on the pleadings was
granted as to three of the four counts in Flowers’s original
complaint. Her motion to amend her complaint was denied
on grounds of undue delay and futility. The district court also
granted Kia’s summary judgment motion on Flowers’s

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No. 23-2270 7
remaining claim of unlawful debt collection under W IS . STAT .
§ 427.104, concluding that she had failed to present any evi-
dence linking Kia to the unidentified truck and driver. The
district court entered judgment in Kia’s favor, and Flowers
appeals.1
II. Amendment of the Complaint
Flowers first contends that under the parties’ July 25, 2022
stipulation, she did not need the district court’s approval to
file an amended complaint. Kia consented in writing to the
amendment, Flowers argues, so the district court could not
deny her motion. We “generally review denial of leave to
amend for abuse of discretion.” O'Boyle v. Real Time Resols.,
Inc., 910 F.3d 338, 347 (7th Cir. 2018).
Undue delay was one ground on which the district court
denied Flowers leave to file an amended complaint. She fails
to address that ground on appeal, so she has waived any ar-
gument that the proposed amended complaint was filed with-
out undue delay. Bradley v. Vill. of Univ. Park, Illinois, 59 F.4th
887, 897 (7th Cir. 2023) (appellant may waive issue or argu-
ment by failing to raise it in the party's appeal).
Even if we examine the merits of this argument, the dis-
trict court was within its discretion to deny amendment of
Flowers’s original complaint. The parties’ July 25, 2022 stipu-
lation, which the court approved, did not trump that court’s
1 The district court had federal question subject matter jurisdiction
under 28 U.S.C. § 1331, and supplementary jurisdiction over the Wiscon-
sin state law claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367. This appeal is taken from
a final judgment of the district court, so this court has appellate jurisdic-
tion under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

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8 No. 23-2270
scheduling order. That stipulation memorializes the under-
standing that after the Kia corporate representative deposi-
tion occurred, Flowers may need to amend her complaint.
That agreement was based on a contingent event that did not
take place. Stipulation or not, the district court always re-
tained its authority to control the litigation, including the
pleadings, as it reminded the parties on October 26, 2022.
Flowers’s motion was filed after the scheduling order
deadline, so the district court could have applied the “good
cause” standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(b)(4).
See Allen v. Brown Advisory, LLC, 41 F.4th 843, 852–53 (7th Cir.
2022). Instead, the court applied the more lenient standard of
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a)(2): “[t]he court should
freely give leave [to amend] when justice so requires.” As that
rule states, amendment is generally favored. See Foman v. Da-
vis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962). Nevertheless, a district court may
deny leave to amend when it has “good reason” for doing so,
one example of which is undue delay. L. Offs. of David Freydin,
P.C. v. Chamara, 24 F.4th 1122, 1133 (7th Cir. 2022); Liebhart v.
SPX Corp., 917 F.3d 952, 964 (7th Cir. 2019).
The district court properly found that Flowers “proposed
an amendment seeking to add a new claim regarding an en-
tirely different incident than was the focus of her original
complaint.” She “suggest[ed] without explanation that she
could not have pleaded the new claim until she had deposed
Kia’s representative.” But Flowers “conced[ed] that she was
already aware of the facts and legal basis for her new claim,
and even had the evidence in her possession by at least March
10, 2022.” She never explained why she proposed her
amended complaint eight months after having all the neces-
sary information about the 2019 repossession. Without a

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No. 23-2270 9
sound excuse for the undue delay, the district court did not
abuse its discretion when it denied Flowers leave to amend
her complaint. Given this evaluation, we need not address
whether Flowers’s motion to amend her complaint was futile.
III. Summary Judgment
We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment
to Kia de novo. Pierner-Lytge v. Hobbs, 60 F.4th 1039, 1043 (7th
Cir. 2023). Summary judgment is appropriate if “there is no
genuine dispute of material fact” and the moving party “is
entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” FED. R. C IV. P. 56(a).
In applying this standard, we read the facts and draw all rea-
sonable inferences in the light most favorable to the non-mov-
ing party. Pierner-Lytge, 60 F.4th at 1043.
Flowers alleges that Kia violated two provisions of WIS .
STAT . § 427.104. Subsection (1)(a) provides that a debt collec-
tor may not “[u]se or threaten force or violence to cause phys-
ical harm to the customer or the customer’s dependents or
property.” And Subsection (1)(h) prohibits a debt collector
from “[e]ngag[ing] in other conduct which can reasonably be
expected to threaten or harass the customer or a person re-
lated to the customer.”
Flowers contends that circumstantial evidence would per-
mit a reasonable jury to find that Kia was legally responsible
for the unidentified truck driver’s actions in November 2020.
Viewing the facts in favor of Flowers, a truck blocked in her
vehicle within the parking lot adjacent to her home, and the
only other parked cars were not susceptible to repossession.
The truck then chased the Forte sedan for miles, at highway
speeds and close range. The next day, Flowers confirmed with
Kia that her car was subject to repossession. Discovery

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10 No. 23-2270
yielded that in November 2020 Kia worked with a reposses-
sion company in her area of Wisconsin. Moreover, Kia previ-
ously had her Forte repossessed in 2019 by a company Kia
had hired.2
There is no way, according to Flowers, that the events on
November 2020 could be entirely coincidental. Any other ex-
planation for the truck’s actions pales next to the conclusion
that Kia tried to repossess her car. To Flowers, only a jury
could resolve this question.
Flowers incorrectly asserts that the type of evidence she
points to—circumstantial—indicates whether a genuine issue
of material facts exists on her claim. As this court has noted in
its pattern civil jury instructions, “[t]he law makes no distinc-
tion between the weight to be given to either direct or circum-
stantial evidence.” FEDERAL C IVIL J URY INSTRUCTIONS OF THE
SEVENTH C IRCUIT , 1.12 (2017 rev.). Either type of evidence can
prove a fact. See, e.g., United States v. Godinez, 7 F.4th 628, 639
(7th Cir. 2021) (collecting cases providing that circumstantial
evidence is not weaker than direct evidence). The type of evi-
dence Flowers relies on to support her claim does not dictate
whether a genuine issue of material fact exists requiring a jury
trial.
This court has recognized “that circumstantial evidence
may be enough to survive summary judgment if that evi-
dence could allow a jury to draw a reasonable inference in
support of the non-moving party.” Jones v. Van Lanen, 27 F.4th
2 Flowers submitted this evidence about the 2019 repossession in her
additional proposed findings of fact in March 2023, Dist. Ct. DE 63, nos.
2–4, unrelated to her previous motion to amend her complaint to include
the 2019 repossession.

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No. 23-2270 11
1280, 1286–87 (7th Cir. 2022). But an inference that “veers too
far into speculation [fails] to survive summary judgment.” Id.
at 1286. Flowers offers only speculation in support of her re-
maining claim.
There is no dispute that Flowers cannot identify the truck
involved in the events that early morning in November 2020,
other than to say it was “dark blue or black.” She could not
see any markings on the truck. And she “did not know why
the unidentified truck was in the parking lot or what actually
was going on.”
Flowers could not describe the truck’s driver, other than
to say he was a “male wearing a beanie.” She did not identify
any markings on the driver’s clothing that might indicate who
he was or for whom he may have been working. She had no
contact or communication, directly or indirectly, with the
truck driver.
She has not advanced evidence about who owned the
truck; who the driver worked for; whether the driver was act-
ing under the instructions of any other individual or com-
pany; what those potential instructions may have been; why
the truck was at Flowers’s apartment; why the driver fol-
lowed Flowers and her son; and ultimately, if Kia or any com-
pany with which it contracted was involved in any of the
events underlying her claim.
There is no evidence that Kia intended to use or threaten,
or in fact used or threatened, force or violence directed at her
to cause physical harm to her or her property in violation of
W IS . STAT . § 427.104(1)(a). Flowers has no evidence of physical
damage to herself or her property, and she did not identify
any experts who may opine on that topic.

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12 No. 23-2270
Just so, Flowers cannot demonstrate that Kia engaged in
any conduct which could be reasonably expected to threaten
or harass a customer, or a person related to a customer, in vi-
olation of WIS . STAT . § 427.104(1)(h). There is no question that
Flowers and her son were harassed that morning. But she has
not shown that the unidentified truck and its driver who did
the harassing was connected to Kia in any way.
Simply put, there is no evidence from which a reasonable
jury could find that Kia was involved in the November 2020
events, let alone that Kia violated Flowers’s rights. As the dis-
trict court correctly ruled, “speculation [] is insufficient to de-
feat a summary judgment motion.”
Flowers’s theory of liability is that her car was susceptible
to repossession, her Forte was previously repossessed by a
company hired by Kia, so that company (or another Kia con-
tracted with) must be connected to the events in November
2020. But that theory is conjecture. Which company (if any)
hired the truck and driver? At whose direction was the driver
acting? And for what reason? Speculation cannot create a gen-
uine issue of fact that defeats summary judgment. Circle City
Broad. I, LLC v. AT&T Servs., Inc., 99 F.4th 378, 384 (7th Cir.
2024) (citing White v. City of Chicago, 829 F.3d 837, 841 (7th Cir.
2016)). And speculation is insufficient to defeat a summary
judgment motion. See Herzog v. Graphic Packaging Int’l, Inc.,
742 F.3d 802, 806 (7th Cir. 2014) (nonmovant “is entitled … to
all reasonable inferences in her favor, ‘inferences that are sup-
ported by only speculation or conjecture will not defeat a
summary judgment motion.’”) (citing Tubergen v. St. Vincent
Hosp. & Health Care Ctr., Inc., 517 F.3d 470, 473 (7th Cir. 2008)).
Put directly, there must be some evidence connecting Kia to
the actions of the unidentified truck and driver. There is none.

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No. 23-2270 13
Flowers offers inferential leaps: Who else would it be?
Why else would he be there? But courts deal in proof, and the
leaps Flowers offers cannot be used to defeat summary judg-
ment. Making all reasonable inferences for Flowers, no evi-
dence connects a repossession company hired by Kia with the
unidentified truck and driver. No evidence connects Kia to
the November 2020 events—circumstantial or otherwise.
To Flowers, Kia suggests that the only way she could
prove her case is by direct admission—from Kia, or a repos-
session company with which Kia contracts—that they di-
rected or authorized the truck driver to chase Flowers. But
that is not correct. Evidence on any of the topics or questions
identified above could create a genuine issue of material fact.
But no such evidence has been produced.
Flowers submits that Kia itself provided that evidence in
its initial disclosures under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
26. She points to those disclosures as information linking Kia
to the events about which she complains. Specifically, Kia dis-
closed that it “dealt with” a national repossession manage-
ment company, Primeritus Financial Services, on the account
for Flowers’s vehicle. Kia stated Primeritus subcontracted
with towing companies like Statewide Recovery Specialists,
including for the incident “forming the basis of [Flowers’s]
claims.” To Flowers, Kia’s identification of this discoverable
information constituted a judicial admission to its involve-
ment in the November 2020 incident, and that Kia’s disclosure
that entities may have or should have certain information is
evidence sufficient to defeat summary judgment.
But Rule 26 initial disclosures do not play the role that
Flowers contends. Judicial admissions are “formal conces-
sions in the pleadings, or stipulations by a party or its counsel,

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14 No. 23-2270
that are binding upon the party making them.” Keller v. United
States, 58 F.3d 1194, 1198 n.8 (7th Cir.1995). And initial disclo-
sures fail to meet any of those criteria. Flowers does not cite
any statute, rule, or precedent that states otherwise.
Initial disclosures are neither pleadings to the court nor
sworn statements of parties. Rather, they provide information
early in the proceedings to allow the parties to pursue discov-
ery, collect evidence, and take necessary depositions. They re-
lay the identity “of each individual likely to have discoverable
information—along with the subjects of that information—
that the disclosing party may use to support its claims or de-
fenses … .” FED. R. C IV. P. 26(a)(1)(A)(i). As the district court
correctly explained, “[t]he purpose of the disclosures is to al-
low the parties to begin collecting evidence and engaging in
discovery; they do not excuse a party from confirming infor-
mation in the disclosures or from translating the disclosures
into admissible evidence.”
Thus, although Kia’s disclosures contained information
attempting to link Kia and the truck driver, Flowers did not
develop that information into evidence a court could weigh at
summary judgment. So, Kia’s initial disclosures do not defeat
its motion for summary judgment on Flowers’s claims.
Flowers’s final argument is that the truck driver was act-
ing as Kia’s agent when it harassed and scared her. But, again,
she has not developed evidence to suggest that a Kia agent,
such as a repossession company with which Kia contracted,
was involved in any way on the events in November 2020. At
summary judgment there is no evidence that Kia gave ap-
proval or permission for, or had control over, any attempted
repossession. Without evidence as to what company the truck

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No. 23-2270 15
driver may have worked for, there is no evidence that he was
acting as an agent of Kia. So, this theory fails.
IV. Conclusion
For these reasons, we A FFIRM the district court’s decisions.

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