Terri Griffiths v. LORIN EGGEMEYER and SANDRA EGGEMEYER

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted September 18, 2024
Decided May 29, 2025
Before
KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge
CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge
JOSHUA P. KOLAR, Circuit Judge
Nos. 23-3253 & 24-1098
TERRI GRIFFITHS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
LORIN EGGEMEYER and SANDRA
EGGEMEYER,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeals from the United States District
Court for the Southern District of
Illinois.
No. 3:21-cv-01747
Stephen P. McGlynn,
Judge.
O R D E R
Plaintiff-Appellant Terri Griffiths bought property from Defendants-Appellees Lorin
and Sandra Eggemeyer and contracted with them and their construction company to
build a house. After the home construction did not go as planned, Griffiths sued in federal
court, alleging that the Eggemeyers breached an oral contract. The defendants, for their
part, attempted to diligently defend the action. Griffiths, however, failed to cooperate in
discovery, ignored court-ordered deadlines, and failed to appear for multiple hearings.
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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Nos. 23-3253 & 24-1098 Page 2
In 2024, the district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case for want of
prosecution. We affirm.
The allegations in the underlying lawsuit do not determine the outcome of this appeal.
The history of the litigation, however, is critical to our decision. Griffiths, an attorney
licensed to practice in the U.S. Virgin Islands, filed this suit for breach of contract on
December 23, 2021. On August 11, 2022, following two amended complaints, the district
court entered a scheduling order. In relevant part, this order required that the parties take
Griffiths’s and the defendants’ depositions by December 16, 2022, and complete all
discovery by mid-June 2023. The district court scheduled a final pretrial conference for
October 23, 2023, and set a presumptive trial date of November 2023.
On October 28, 2022, the defendants served Griffiths with requests for production. On
November 9, the parties discussed during a telephone conference the outstanding
discovery as well as potential dates for Griffiths’s and the defendants’ depositions, which
needed to be completed by December 16. Griffiths told the defendants she would follow
up with potential dates, but she did not. On November 28, the defendants again
requested deposition dates. Griffiths did not respond. On December 9—seven days
before the deposition deadline—the defendants requested deposition dates for the third
time and informed Griffiths that her response to the requests for production was overdue.
Yet again, Griffiths did not answer the defendants.
Things continued in this manner for nearly a year. The parties met in January 2023;
Griffiths refused to provide dates for her deposition or substantive responses to the
discovery requests. The situation remained the same three months later. Over the
summer, the defendants requested that Griffiths prepare a motion to extend the deadlines
given that nearly every deadline had already passed. Griffiths never prepared the motion.
She did, however, request a status conference, which the court set for October 4, 2023.
So, in October 2023, Griffiths had still not appeared for a deposition or substantively
responded to the requests for production issued nearly a year earlier. When the October
4 status conference came around, Griffiths did not appear. After the hearing, the district
court converted the October 23 final pretrial conference—which had been scheduled for
well over a year—into a motions hearing. Prior to that hearing, the defendants filed a
motion to compel and a motion to dismiss the suit for lack of prosecution. These
documents and the hearing notice were sent to the email address that Griffiths provided
to the clerk’s office when she agreed to electronic service. But Griffiths did not appear at
the October 23 motions hearing, either. The district court granted the motion for want of
prosecution from the bench and entered judgment against Griffiths.

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Nos. 23-3253 & 24-1098 Page 3
Griffiths filed a motion for relief from the judgment under Rule 60. In her motion, she
described being trampled by a Clydesdale horse and said that she lost consciousness. In
her motion, she wrote that “[a]s per the doctor, for every week a person spends immobile,
it requires a month to regain physical strength.” Griffiths said she needed roughly eight
months to physically recover from her injuries.
The district court requested documentation of Griffiths’s accident. In response,
Griffiths filed declarations from three laypeople, including a “therapeutic farrier” who
witnessed the horse trampling incident, a legal client of Griffiths who averred that she
had filed continuances in other cases due to her injury, and Griffiths’s caretaker. Griffiths
did not submit any medical records with her response.
The district court again requested medical documentation, such as a doctor’s note or
treatment plan. Griffiths responded that she had not sought medical treatment because
she did not trust doctors in southern Illinois. After Griffiths filed her response, the district
court denied the motion for reconsideration and Griffiths appealed.
On appeal, Griffiths contends that the district court abused its discretion in this case
twice: first when it granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of prosecution, and
second when it denied her Rule 60 motion for relief from the judgment.
We start with the district court’s decision to grant the defendants’ motion to dismiss.
Rule 41(b) provides that “[i]f the plaintiff fails to prosecute or to comply with ... a court
order, a defendant may move to dismiss the action or any claim against it.” Fed. R. Civ.
P. 41(b). We review a district court’s decision to dismiss pursuant to Rule 41(b) for abuse
of discretion, meaning that we will affirm unless the district court failed to consider an
essential factor or if “the decision strikes us as fundamentally wrong.” McMahan v.
Deutsche Bank AG, 892 F.3d 926, 931 (7th Cir. 2018). While the decision to dismiss
“depends on the circumstances of the case,” id. at 932, we have requested that district
courts consider several factors, including the frequency and magnitude of the plaintiff’s
failures to comply with deadlines, who bears the responsibility for those failures,
potential prejudice to the defendants, and disruptions to the calendar of the district court.
Ball v. City of Chicago, 2 F.3d 752, 759–60 (7th Cir. 1993).
Here, we are certain that the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting the
defendants’ motion to dismiss. Griffiths ignored court-ordered deadlines, refused to
cooperate with opposing counsel on scheduling, became virtually unreachable, and failed
to appear for two hearings (including one that she requested). And Griffiths chose to
represent herself in this action. She alone bears responsibility for her failure to prosecute.

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Nos. 23-3253 & 24-1098 Page 4
Griffiths also wasted judicial resources. If the litigation had proceeded, Griffiths’s
dilatory conduct would have required substantial alterations to the court’s schedule to
accommodate new deadlines for dispositive motions, pretrial conferences, and any
potential trial. Her actions also prejudiced the defendants, who pursued discovery
unsuccessfully for almost a year. Counsel engaged in pointless conference calls, sent
numerous discovery deficiency letters, and ultimately filed motions that would have been
unnecessary if Griffiths had simply participated in discovery.
Finally, while we typically prefer that district courts warn litigants before dismissing
a case in these circumstances, the defendants’ filing of the motion was enough to put
Griffiths on notice that the case could be dismissed. See, e.g., Fischer v. Cingular Wireless
LLC, 446 F.3d 663, 665 (7th Cir. 2006). We cannot fault the district court for dismissing this
case.
We next address Griffiths’s contention that the district court abused its discretion in
denying relief under Rule 60. Rule 60(b)(1) allows a court to relieve a party from a final
judgment for “excusable neglect.” See Robb v. Norfolk & W. R.R. Co., 122 F.3d 354, 355 (7th
Cir. 1997). We review a district court’s denial of a Rule 60 motion for abuse of discretion
only. Brandon v. Chicago Bd. of Educ., 143 F.3d 293, 295 (7th Cir. 1998). The determination
of what constitutes “excusable neglect” is “at bottom an equitable one, taking account of
all the relevant circumstances surrounding the party’s omission.” Robb, 122 F.3d at 359
(quoting Pioneer Inv. Servs. Co. v. Brunswick Assocs. Ltd. P’ship, 507 U.S. 380, 395 (1993)).
Griffiths argues her lack of diligence is excusable because of her injury in June 2023.
Yet, as the district court noted, her injury cannot explain the roughly seven months of
delay that preceded it, nor can it explain her failure to appear at the October 2023
hearings. Nonetheless, the district court took Griffiths’s injury allegations seriously and
provided her with multiple opportunities to submit medical documentation. But Griffiths
submitted declarations from laypeople instead of medical professionals and ultimately
admitted that she never sought medical attention for her injuries.
Griffiths also argues that she never received notice of the October 2023 hearings. But
Griffiths consented to email service and provided the clerk’s office with an email where
she could receive filings and notices. She did not request to change her email address on
file until after the district court denied her motion. Even if Griffiths somehow did not
receive email notice for the hearings, she should have been monitoring the docket to
ensure compliance with court orders. Snyder v. Barry Realty Inc., 60 F. App’x 613, 615 (7th
Cir. 2003) (advising that litigants have “a duty to monitor their case by regularly checking
the court's docket”); Easley v. Kirmsee, 382 F.3d 693, 698 (7th Cir. 2004) (“[A]ttorney

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Nos. 23-3253 & 24-1098 Page 5
inattentiveness to litigation is not excusable.”). And the pretrial conference had been on
the docket over a year.
Based on the above, the district court reasonably concluded that Griffiths had not met
her burden of “production or persuasion” in requesting Rule 60(b) relief. In re Canopy
Financial Inc., 708 F.3d 934, 937 (7th Cir. 2013). The district court needed to do nothing
more in this case.
AFFIRMED

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