Sy-Bron L. Pinkston v. SCOTT SANDERSON and JOSHUA GARAMATER

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted June 14, 2024*
Decided July 17, 2024
Before
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
JOSHUA P. KOLAR, Circuit Judge
No. 22-3213
SY-BRON L. PINKSTON,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
SCOTT SANDERSON and JOSHUA
GARAMATER,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Indiana, Fort Wayne Division.
No. 1:19-CV-358 DRL
Damon R. Leichty,
Judge.
O R D E R
Sy-Bron Pinkston sued officers at Indiana’s Allen County Jail for unconstitutional
excessive force. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Well into the litigation, Pinkston missed two
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C). A note about the briefs: Pinkston
requested permission to file a corrected brief to comply with the Federal Rules of
Appellate Procedure. After granting his request, we reviewed his new filings.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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No. 22-3213 Page 2
hearings and failed to file a status report and respond to a show-cause order. The
district court dismissed his suit for want of prosecution. Five months later, Pinkston
filed a postjudgment motion insisting that he had tried to attend the second hearing and
had not timely received court orders. The district court denied this motion. We affirm.
This suit began in summer 2019. Over two and a half years, the docket reflects
that the defendants were served, the complaint was amended, and the parties traded
discovery. For the most part, Pinkston was an active participant. But things got off-track
in 2022 when Pinkston missed four deadlines.
First, at a scheduled telephone status hearing in January 2022, the court could not
reach Pinkston. (Because Pinkston has not obtained transcripts of any hearings, we rely
on descriptions in the district court’s docket entries.) Soon after the missed hearing, the
case was reassigned to another district judge. That new judge ordered the parties to file
status reports by late March. The defendants did—but Pinkston did not, thus marking
his second missed deadline. The third misstep involved a Zoom conference set for
11:00 a.m. on April 5, 2022. The judge ended the conference at 11:15, reporting on the
docket that Pinkston had not joined the meeting, that the judge had discussed the
matter with the defendants, and that a show-cause order was forthcoming.
That same day (April 5), Pinkston filed a motion for additional discovery and a
telephone court hearing. Without elaboration, he attached to the motion a screenshot of
the judge’s Zoom waiting room, captured at 11:40 a.m. (40 minutes after the scheduled
start), which included this message: “Waiting for the host to start this meeting.”
The next day, the court issued its show-cause order. The court said Pinkston
seemed to have “abandoned this case” by missing two consecutive hearings. (At this
time, the court did not mention the missing status report.) The court directed Pinkston
to explain himself, warning that if he did not respond by April 27, his case would be
dismissed. Pinkston did not respond.
So, in May 2022, the court dismissed the case and entered judgment. In doing so,
the court denied Pinkston’s April 5 motion, which did not explain his failure to appear
at the Zoom hearing at the scheduled time and, of course, was not a response to the
April 6 show-cause order. The 28-day deadline to seek reconsideration under
Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure lapsed, as did the 30-day deadline to
appeal. To the district court and the defendants, it seemed the case was over.

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No. 22-3213 Page 3
But in October 2022—five months after the dismissal and four months after the
deadline to appeal—Pinkston submitted a postjudgment motion asking to reopen the
case. He now said he had never received the show-cause and dismissal orders, learning
about them only when he asked the clerk’s office for a status update in September 2022.
He then disputed his failure to prosecute. First, he said his motion for further discovery
on April 5 expressed his continued interest in litigating the case. Second, he insisted that
he had tried to attend the Zoom hearing: he was there from 11:00 until 11:40 a.m., which
is why he attached the screenshot of the waiting room to his April motion for a
telephone hearing. The postjudgment motion did not explain Pinkston’s failure to
attend the first telephone hearing in January 2022. And although the motion was
accompanied by a change-of-address form, it did not explain when Pinkston had
moved, or whether previously unreported address changes might have caused him to
miss court orders. (The docket did not reflect any mailings returned undelivered.)
The court denied the motion under Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure, concluding that Pinkston had not shown the kind of mistake, inadvertence,
or excusable neglect that would warrant reinstating the case. See F ED. R. C IV. P. 60(b).
This time, Pinkston appealed. We review the denial of a Rule 60(b) motion for an abuse
of discretion. Harrington v. City of Chicago, 433 F.3d 542, 546 (7th Cir. 2006).
The district court was within its discretion to deny Pinkston’s motion to
reconsider its dismissal. As the court explained, the show-cause order was mailed to the
address where Pinkston received other filings; so was the dismissal order; and Pinkston
did not suggest to the court that his address had changed before those orders were sent.
Likewise, the court was within its discretion to reject Pinkston’s argument that
his April 5 motion and Zoom screenshot precluded dismissal for failure to prosecute.
The screenshot did not establish that Pinkston had been in the waiting room when the
hearing started, and the motion was not a clear substitute for a response to the show-
cause order. Had Pinkston timely responded to the show-cause order, he might have
placed his April 5 motion and this missed hearing (as well as the first missed hearing) in
context, but he did not. His belated explanation is not so compelling that the district
judge was required to accept it in a postjudgment motion months later. Cf. Sroga v.
Huberman, 722 F.3d 980, 983 (7th Cir. 2013) (reversing when—as reflected partly in
record items not highlighted in the Sroga opinion—plaintiff moved to reconsider within
one month; judgment had not yet been entered in separate document; and plaintiff gave
district court robust explanation for missed mail under penalty of perjury).

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No. 22-3213 Page 4
Still, Pinkston argues that dismissal was premature because the defendants did
not move to dismiss, the court did not discuss sanctions short of dismissal, and (in his
view) he displayed no pattern of neglect. But district courts possess “inherent power” to
dismiss for lack of prosecution even if no party moves for that sanction. Harrington,
433 F.3d at 548. And the court was not required to impose graduated sanctions before
ordering dismissal. See Shaffer v. Lashbrook, 962 F.3d 313, 316 (7th Cir. 2020). We have
upheld similar dismissals when, as here, a plaintiff fails to appear or file something
multiple times rather than just once. See McInnis v. Duncan, 697 F.3d 661, 664 (7th Cir.
2012) (collecting cases). Several missed deadlines needed a full explanation from
Pinkston. And unlike in other cases where we have overturned a dismissal, here the
defendants had been served with process and completed discovery—so further delays
were more prejudicial. See, e.g., Thomas v. Wardell, 951 F.3d 854, 862–63 (7th Cir. 2020)
(stressing that defendants had not been served and that only one or two deadlines had
been missed); Sroga, 722 F.3d at 983 (emphasizing that defendants had not been served).
We see that concern as especially weighty here because Pinkston’s postjudgment
motion came months after the dismissal.
Pinkston reiterates that he attempted to attend the Zoom hearing and could not
timely respond to the show-cause order because he did not receive it. But again, the
court was within its discretion to discredit Pinkston’s assertions that he could not have
been expected to learn of the dismissal for five months. See Shaffer, 962 F.3d at 317.
Pinkston now adds that he was waiting for the court’s call at the first telephone hearing
and the court somehow failed to reach him through no fault of his own; that he
intended to explain his missed status report, which he forgot to mail, at the April 5
hearing; and that he had previously received court updates through email (not by mail
as the district court suggested in its final order). But Pinkston did not explain these
circumstances to the district court in his Rule 60(b) motion, and so they form no basis to
conclude that the district court erred in its denial of his motion. See McInnis, 697 F.3d at
664–65.
AFFIRMED

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