Lloyd Sellers v. MILWAUKEE COUNTY and DAVID CLARK

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted March 28, 2025*
Decided March 31, 2025
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
No. 22-3151
LLOYD SELLERS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
MILWAUKEE COUNTY and DAVID
CLARK,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the for the Western District of
Wisconsin.
No. 20-cv-214
James D. Peterson,
Chief Judge.
* The appellees were not served with process and are not participating in this
appeal. 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. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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No. 22-3151 Page 2
O R D E R
Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Lloyd Sellers sued Milwaukee County and its sheriff
in 2020, alleging that they violated Sellers’ constitutional rights over 25 years earlier, in
1994. He accuses them of implementing a practice of detaining people arrested without
a warrant, like him, for more than 48 hours before taking the arrestees to a judge for a
probable-cause hearing. Because Sellers filed this suit long past the expiration of the
statute of limitations, the district court correctly dismissed it. We thus affirm.
We recount the facts alleged in the complaint and accept as true the well-pleaded
allegations. See Esco v. City of Chicago, 107 F.4th 673, 678 (7th Cir. 2024). Sellers was
arrested without a warrant on October 31, 1994, during a murder investigation. Under a
practice of Milwaukee County, the sheriff did not bring Sellers to a magistrate judge for
over three days, until November 3, at which time a judge ordered him detained for trial.
A jury later convicted him of homicide, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Over 25 years later, Sellers sued Milwaukee County and its sheriff over the
County’s alleged practice of keeping warrantless arrestees in jail without a
probable-cause hearing occurring within 48 hours of arrest. See Monell v. Department of
Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978). This practice, Sellers says, violated his rights to due
process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment based on the Supreme
Court’s decision in County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44 (1991).
The district court screened Sellers’ complaint, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, and notified
Sellers that, among other defects, his suit was likely barred by the affirmative defense of
the statute of limitations. It ordered him to show cause why it should not dismiss his
suit, and after Sellers failed to persuade the court, it dismissed the case. We review a
dismissal at screening de novo. See Balle v. Kennedy, 73 F.4th 545, 557 (7th Cir. 2023).
Dismissal was correct. A plaintiff need not anticipate or rebut a statute-of-
limitations defense in his complaint. See Sabo v. Erickson, 128 F.4th 836, 842 (7th Cir.
2025) (en banc). But dismissal is appropriate if, as here, the allegations in the complaint
make the statute of limitations an impenetrable bar to recovery. Milchtein v. Milwaukee
Cnty., 42 F.4th 814, 822 (7th Cir. 2022). Federal law determines when a § 1983 claim
accrues. See Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 387 (2007). Under federal law, Sellers’s claim
accrued when he knew or should have known that the defendants violated his
constitutional rights. Milchtein, 42 F.4th at 822. The claim thus accrued (and the
limitations period began to run), at the latest, on November 3, 1994—when Sellers
received his probable-cause hearing more than 48 hours after his warrantless arrest. For

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No. 22-3151 Page 3
§ 1983 claims, federal courts borrow the forum state’s statute of limitations for personal-
injury claims. See Wallace, 549 U.S. at 387. (The forum state here is Wisconsin.) Under
Wisconsin’s law in effect in 1994, Sellers had six years to sue once his claim accrued.
W IS . S TAT. § 893.53 (1994). (The statute of limitations was shortened in 2018 to three
years. See Cielak v. Nicolet Union High Sch. Dist., 112 F.4th 472, 477 (7th Cir. 2024).) So, the
six-year limitations period expired in November 2000—nearly 20 years before he sued.
Sellers offers two arguments on appeal; neither one persuades us. First, he
maintains that his claim did not accrue until February 2020, when he initially learned
about County of Riverside v. McLaughlin and believed that Milwaukee’s practice in 1994
contravenes Riverside’s holding. This argument misses the mark. Whether Sellers knew
of a particular legal principle when his injury occurred does not affect accrual; only
Sellers’s knowledge of his injury—which occurred in 1994—matters. See Tobey v.
Chibucos, 890 F.3d 634, 646 (7th Cir. 2018).
Alternatively, for the first time on appeal, Sellers invokes equitable tolling to
avoid the bar of the statute of limitations. Under Wisconsin law, whose equitable-tolling
rules govern here, Wallace, 549 U.S. at 394, equitable tolling may apply if Sellers alleges
that his failure to meet the filing deadline was out of his control, see State ex rel. Davis v.
Cir. Ct. for Dane Cnty., 4 N.W.3d 273, 280 (Wis. 2024); State ex rel. Griffin v. Smith, 677
N.W.2d 259, 269 (Wis. 2004). Sellers appears to suggest that Milwaukee County had
concealed its practice of delaying probable-cause hearings of arrestees for more than
48 hours. This argument is unavailing for two reasons. First, when the district court
gave Sellers an opportunity to explain why the limitations bar did not apply, he had to
develop a contention about concealment then, if he wanted to preserve it for appeal.
See O'Gorman v. City of Chicago, 777 F.3d 885, 890 (7th Cir. 2015). Sellers did not do so.
Instead, he limited his argument to his assertion that he had just recently learned about
Riverside. In any event, once he knew in 1994 that the County had delayed his hearing,
he was on notice of the County’s possible practice. As a result, for a court to consider
applying equitable tolling based on the alleged concealment, Sellers had to argue that it
was beyond his control to investigate the possible practice. See Davis, 4 N.W.3d at 280.
But even on appeal he does not contend that, during the two decades after 1994, he tried
to investigate and the County shut him down or an investigation was otherwise beyond
his control. Equitable tolling thus cannot save his belated claim.
AFFIRMED

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