Meredith D. Dawson v. GREAT LAKES EDUCATIONAL LOAN SERVICES, INC. and GREAT LAKES HIGHER EDUCATION CORPORATION

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Argued January 18, 2023
Decided March 13, 2025
Before
DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge
CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
No. 22-2189
MEREDITH D. DAWSON,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
GREAT LAKES EDUCATIONAL
LOAN SERVICES, INC. and GREAT
LAKES HIGHER EDUCATION
CORPORATION,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Western District of
Wisconsin.
No. 3:15-cv-00475
James D. Peterson,
Chief Judge.
O R D E R
Meredith Dawson brought this class action against Great Lakes Educational Loan
Services, Inc. and Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation (collectively, “Great
Lakes”), alleging that Great Lakes had improperly capitalized interest on student loans
after certain forbearance periods, thereby increasing the loan balances. This, she asserts,
violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), see
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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18 U.S.C. § 1962, and constituted actionable negligence under Wisconsin tort law.1 The
district court granted summary judgment in favor of Great Lakes, concluding that
Dawson had failed to present any evidence of a RICO violation and that Great Lakes
had already redressed any damages resulting from its purportedly tortious activity. We
affirm.
I.
A. Great Lakes
Great Lakes is a loan servicer that provides administrative services to lenders of
student loans. As part of its duties, Great Lakes places a borrower’s loan in forbearance
when the circumstances warrant. This suspends the borrower’s obligation to make
payments on the loan but does not stop interest on the loan from accruing. When Great
Lakes places a loan into or out of forbearance, it notes the status change in its computer-
automated loan servicing system.
One of Great Lakes’s customers is the United States Department of Education
(DOE), which owns most of the student loans in the country. Great Lakes’s contract
with DOE requires it to comply with all agency regulations, including those addressing
interest capitalization—the practice by which a lender adds the amount of unpaid
accrued interest on a loan to the loan’s principal balance. Interest capitalization
increases a loan’s outstanding principal as well as the interest the borrower has to pay
(which, of course, is based on the principal amount).
For some time, Great Lakes’s computerized loan servicing system capitalized
accrued interest after certain forbearance periods for DOE-owned student loans (the
parties call the forbearance periods at issue here “B-9 Forbearances”).2 In other words,
Great Lakes rolled the unpaid interest that had accumulated before and during a B-9
Forbearance into the principal of the loan once the loan came out of forbearance.
In May 2012, DOE had instructed its loan servicers, including Great Lakes, to
1 Dawson also brought a breach-of-contract claim against the United States Department of Education and
RICO claims against several individual Great Lakes employees. The district court dismissed Department
of Education and entered summary judgment in favor of the Great Lakes employees. Dawson has not
challenged these decisions on appeal.
2 “B-9 Forbearances” refer to administrative forbearance periods described in 34 C.F.R. § 685.205(b)(9) and
34 C.F.R. § 682.211(f)(11).

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create two new types of forbearances that did not trigger interest capitalization. This led
Great Lakes to revise its capitalization rules and, in the process, cease interest
capitalization after B-9 Forbearances. According to Great Lakes, these modifications
were largely completed by April 2014 and finished in August 2015.
B. The Remediation Project
Dawson had federal student loans serviced by Great Lakes that had been subject
to B-9 Forbearance. Noticing the capitalization of interest after the forbearance period,
she filed this lawsuit on July 31, 2015. Approximately a year later, DOE informed Great
Lakes that some of its capitalization practices after B-9 Forbearance periods had
violated agency regulations (although Dawson asserts that Great Lakes knew this far
earlier).
In January 2017, Great Lakes proposed a “remediation project” to DOE to correct
these errors.3 Under this proposal, Great Lakes would deduct all accrued interest and
any financial transactions that occurred from the date of the first erroneous
capitalization. It then would recalculate the principal amount without the errors and re-
apply the financial transactions that it had deducted, essentially “rebuilding” the loans
as though the improper capitalizations never occurred. DOE approved Great Lakes’s
proposal in August 2017, and Great Lakes began the project shortly thereafter.
There were about 137,000 borrowers affected by Great Lakes’s B-9 Forbearance
capitalization errors, and Great Lakes recalculated each of their loan balances as part of
its remediation efforts. For most borrowers, implementing the corrected balance was
straightforward. So long as the borrower still had an outstanding loan serviced by Great
Lakes, they received a balance reduction for any erroneous additions in the form of
credits to their account. But for a minority of borrowers, the situation was more
complicated.
Some borrowers had loans that were no longer serviced by Great Lakes but by
another servicer. For individuals in this group, Great Lakes provided DOE with a
3 Great Lakes refers to this as the “Second Remediation Project.” When investigating Dawson’s allegations,
Great Lakes had discovered two additional programming errors in its servicing system. Great Lakes
implemented a remediation project to correct these errors; Great Lakes refers to that as the “First
Remediation Project.” Dawson has disclaimed any reliance on these programming errors or the First
Remediation Project.

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spreadsheet with the recalculated balance and instructed DOE to send the spreadsheet
to the new servicer. Other borrowers had fully paid the impacted loan before the
remediation project began but had other accounts with outstanding balances. For them,
Great Lakes applied the amount of overpayment to the remaining accounts. Yet others
had fully paid the loan but had no other accounts. Great Lakes instructed DOE to issue
reimbursement checks to this group for any overpayment exceeding five dollars.
The process was most complicated for a fourth group comprising approximately
15,000 borrowers, whose account balances increased as a result of the remediation
process. These increases were due to a variety of reasons, such as when a post-
remediation lower principal-to-interest ratio caused a borrower to no longer qualify for
certain federal loan subsidies or when the remediation triggered unrelated
capitalization events pursuant to DOE guidance.
This last point merits some explanation. In September 2014, DOE issued a
memorandum instructing loan servicers to capitalize interest for loans in certain
circumstances. (Such instructions are known in the industry as “change requests.”) It
was only in November 2015, however, that DOE authorized Great Lakes to begin
implementing the change request after much dialogue.
DOE also informed the servicers, including Great Lakes, that they did not need
to affirmatively apply the change request to loans in their portfolios retroactively.
Instead, the servicers were to apply the new capitalization rules whenever they came
across an impacted loan in the process of adjusting or remediating the loan for some
other purpose. When rebuilding the loans during the B-9 Forbearance remediation,
Great Lakes had to apply the change request, which increased the loan balance for some
borrowers.
For those borrowers in this group, whose account balances increased as a result
of this process, Great Lakes took no further action. But there was a small number of
borrowers who had fully paid off their loans before the remediation project and
experienced an outstanding balance post-remediation. For those borrowers, Great Lakes
used its own funds to pay off the balance. Great Lakes completed the remediation
project in August 2018.

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C. Procedural History
By the time the remediation project was finished, the district court had already
certified the class as to liability, and Great Lakes moved for summary judgment. It
argued, in part, that the remediation project had fully redressed any damages class
members might have experienced as a result of its alleged negligence. The district court
disagreed because, in its view, Great Lakes had not met its burden to prove that it had
mitigated the class’s damages completely. Moreover, the district court certified the class
as to damages (as well as liability) based upon evidence from Dawson’s expert that
Great Lakes’s capitalization errors had increased the class’s loan balances by
approximately $28.8 million. The district court, however, did grant summary judgment
to Great Lakes on the RICO claims. See Dawson v. Great Lakes Educ. Loan Servs., Inc., No.
15-cv-475, 2021 WL 1174726, at *20 (W.D. Wis. Mar. 29, 2021).
The case was set to proceed to trial on the negligence claims, but by then, Great
Lakes had offered substantial evidence in the form of expert attestations that its
remediation project had addressed whatever damages the class may have suffered due
to the improper capitalization. Because Dawson did not offer any experts to contest
these opinions and it was unclear how she intended to challenge this evidence at trial,
the district court invited another round of summary judgment motions, this time solely
on the issue of damages. See Dawson v. Great Lakes Educ. Loan Servs., Inc., No. 15-cv-475,
2022 WL 602903, at *5 (W.D. Wis. Mar. 1, 2022).
The parties then filed cross-motions for summary judgment, with Great Lakes
once more relying on its remediation project and Dawson arguing that the class was
entitled to $6.6 million—the amount by which Dawson believed the remediation project
fell short. This time, the district court agreed with Great Lakes and granted summary
judgment in its favor with one exception: the court kept the claim alive for those
borrowers who had overpaid by five dollars or less but were never reimbursed. See
Dawson v. Great Lakes Educ. Loan Servs., Inc., No. 15-cv-475, 2022 WL 1500447, at *12
(W.D. Wis. May 12, 2022), reconsideration denied, 2022 WL 2104121 (W.D. Wis. June 2,
2022). Given the relatively small amount that remained at issue, the court solicited the
parties’ views on how to proceed.
In response, Great Lakes argued that Dawson could not adequately represent the
surviving borrowers as required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a)(4) because she
did not fall within this group. As such, Great Lakes proposed that the court exclude
these borrowers from the class. The court agreed, removed them from the class, and

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entered summary judgment in Great Lakes’s favor. See Dawson v. Great Lakes Educ. Loan
Servs., Inc., No. 15-cv-475, 2022 WL 1641143, at *3 (W.D. Wis. May 24, 2022).
Dawson now appeals, arguing that the district court erred in granting summary
judgment to Great Lakes on the negligence and RICO claims. She also challenges the
class notice as well the court’s handling of various case management issues throughout
this litigation.
II.
A. Summary Judgment
We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of
Great Lakes, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Dawson and construing all
reasonable inferences in her favor. See Juday v. FCA US LLC, 57 F.4th 591, 594 (7th Cir.
2023). “Summary judgment is appropriate when there are no material facts in dispute
and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Id. (citing Fed. R. Civ.
P. 56(a)).
1. Negligence Claims
The district court granted summary judgment to Great Lakes on the state law
negligence claims because, it reasoned, although Dawson had provided evidence that
the capitalization errors increased the class members’ debt by $28.8 million, Great Lakes
had provided unrebutted evidence that its remediation project removed those errors
from class members’ accounts. See Wingad v. John Deere & Co., 523 N.W.2d 274, 278 (Wis.
Ct. App. 1994) (“Generally, it is the plaintiff’s burden to establish damages which result
from the defendant’s tortious acts or breach of contract. However, it is the defendant’s
burden to establish matters asserted in mitigation or reduction of the amount of
plaintiff’s damages.”) (citation omitted).
On appeal, Dawson argues that the class is entitled to the full $28.8 million
because Great Lakes cannot support the sufficiency of its remediation. But in her
opening brief in support of her summary judgment motion before the district court,
Dawson said that the figure was $6.6 million. Dawson calculated this number by
starting with $28.8 million (her expert’s opinion of the total damages) and subtracting
$22.2 million (the amount that Great Lakes returned to class members through refunds
or balance reductions). Dawson attributed the $6.6 million largely to Great Lakes’s
application of DOE’s change request during the remediation process.

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Dawson then changed course in her reply brief, arguing for the first time that the
class was entitled to the full $28.8 million because Great Lakes had not recorded
“snapshots” of each class member’s account before and after conducting the
remediation project. The district court rejected this argument as untimely, finding that
Dawson had not received “any new information that would justify such a significant
change in her position.” Dawson, 2022 WL 2104121, at *3. We do not believe that the
district court abused its discretion by doing so. See Chessie Logistics Co. v. Krinos
Holdings, Inc., 867 F.3d 852, 860 (7th Cir. 2017).4 In any event, Dawson’s argument lacks
merit.5
Dawson concedes that Great Lakes provided expert evidence that “the
capitalizations were no longer being used in class members’ balance calculations.” But,
according to her, Great Lakes can only prove that it fully remediated the loans by
providing records of each borrower’s account both before and after the remediation. We
see no reason (nor does Dawson provide any) why such evidence is necessary when
Great Lakes has offered uncontested evidence of its remediation efforts and their
impact.
Dawson submits four additional reasons why, she believes, Great Lakes’s
mitigation efforts fell short. But, as we shall see, none rebut the evidence Great Lakes
has offered.
4 Dawson argues, as she did in the district court, that Great Lakes’s response to one of her proposed
findings of fact contained new information about the remediation project. But, as the district court
explained, all the evidence cited in Great Lakes’s response was available “long before [Dawson] filed her
summary judgment brief.” Dawson, 2022 WL 2104121, at *3. Dawson has not contested this finding on
appeal.
5 Dawson also claims that Great Lakes purposefully “spoliated” the evidence of how the remediation
project altered the loan balances. But she did not develop this argument in her opening brief, only
expounding on it in her reply. This is waiver. See Puffer v. Allstate Ins. Co., 675 F.3d 709, 718 (7th Cir. 2012)
(arguments that are “underdeveloped, conclusory, or unsupported by law” are waived); Wonsey v. City of
Chicago, 940 F.3d 394, 398 (7th Cir. 2019) (“[A]rguments raised for the first time in a reply brief are waived.”)
(citations omitted). Additionally, Dawson says in passing that Great Lakes could have “arbitrarily” set class
members’ debt at a certain number when removing the capitalization errors, but she points to nothing in
the record to substantiate this assertion.

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a. Balance Increases
As evidence that the remediation project failed to completely redress the class
members’ damages, Dawson points to the approximately 15,000 borrowers whose loan
balances actually increased post-remediation. As noted, Dawson attributes this increase
mostly to the new capitalization rules that were triggered by Great Lakes’s review of
the loans. The district court rejected Dawson’s reliance on these borrowers, holding that
the balance increases were not proximately caused by Great Lakes’s alleged negligence.
To establish legal causation under Wisconsin law, a plaintiff must prove cause-
in-fact, see Miller v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 580 N.W.2d 233, 238 (Wis. 1998), and the court
must assess whether, despite this causal connection, public policy precludes liability, see
Hornback v. Archdiocese of Milwaukee, 752 N.W.2d 862, 875 (Wis. 2008) (listing the six
public policy factors courts should consider). As we have explained, these public policy
factors “function like a proximate cause analysis.” Burton v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours &
Co., Inc., 994 F.3d 791, 829 (7th Cir. 2021); see Fandrey ex rel. Connell v. Am. Family Mut.
Ins. Co., 680 N.W.2d 345, 353 (Wis. 2004) (“[W]hen a court precludes liability based on
public policy factors, it is essentially concluding that despite the existence of cause-in-
fact, the cause of the plaintiff’s injuries is not legally sufficient to allow recovery.”).
The district court primarily relied on the first factor, which asks whether the
injury was “too remote from the negligence” to support liability. Hornback, 752 N.W.2d
at 875 (citation omitted). This remoteness inquiry focuses on the foreseeability of the
injury, see Gracyalny v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 723 F.2d 1311, 1323 (7th Cir. 1983), and
whether “‘a superseding cause should relieve the defendant of liability.’” Kidd v.
Allaway, 807 N.W.2d 700, 705 (Wis. Ct. App. 2011) (quoting Cefalu v. Cont’l W. Ins. Co.,
703 N.W.2d 743, 750 (Wis. Ct. App. 2005)). Here, the district court explained, it was
DOE that required Great Lakes to apply new capitalization rules to the remediated
loans and, at the time of the allegedly negligent errors, Great Lakes could not have
reasonably foreseen this. In the court’s view, this development severed the causal link
between Great Lakes’s purported negligence and the balance increases the borrowers
experienced.
Dawson does not challenge this conclusion directly. She merely states that the
district court “asked all the wrong causation problems” without explaining why its
proximate cause analysis was incorrect under Wisconsin law. Indeed, she does not cite
any Wisconsin causation cases at all. This failure to engage with the district court’s
reasoning borders on waiver. See Wonsey, 940 F.3d at 398 (“A party asking this court to

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reverse a district court’s judgment must ‘argue why we should reverse that judgment’
and ‘cite appropriate authority to support that argument.’”) (quoting United States v.
Berkowitz, 927 F.2d 1376, 1384 (7th Cir. 1991)).
Nevertheless, we believe that the district court got it right. The court’s decision
hinged on its conclusion that Great Lakes could not have foreseen at the time of the
alleged negligence that it would have to apply DOE’s new capitalization rules when it
remediated the loans. And, while Dawson does not contest this conclusion, our own
review of the record confirms the district court’s determination.
Dawson’s most substantive challenge emerged during oral argument when her
counsel claimed that Great Lakes could have employed an alternative remediation
methodology that would have avoided the new capitalization rules. However, this
argument was not only raised too late, see Harden v. Marion Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 799 F.3d
857, 863 (7th Cir. 2015), but also the document counsel cited does not support this
contention.6 Dawson, therefore, fails to demonstrate that the balance increases
undermine Great Lakes’s remedial efforts.
b. Refunds By Intermediaries
Next, Dawson raises several arguments specific to (a) borrowers whose loans
were transferred to other loan servicers, and (b) borrowers who had fully paid off their
loans prior to the remediation. As to the former, Great Lakes followed the “standard
business protocol” for federal student-loan servicers in this situation: it sent
spreadsheets with updated account information to DOE with instructions to route them
to the new servicers. To address the latter group, Great Lakes instructed DOE to issue
reimbursement checks through the United States Treasury for any borrowers who had
overpaid on their loans by more than five dollars. These facts are uncontested.
Instead, Dawson focuses on the final step of the process and argues that Great
Lakes failed to present any evidence that these intermediaries—DOE and other
servicers—followed through on Great Lakes’s instructions. But an employee attested
that Great Lakes had received confirmation that DOE had issued the appropriate
refunds and that servicers had made the necessary adjustments. Additionally, one of
6 The document only says that Great Lakes considered using a formulaic (rather than account-rebuilding)
approach, which would calculate and refund each borrower the “net impact” of the capitalization errors.
As far as we can tell, the document does not indicate whether this alternative approach would have avoided
the new capitalization rules.

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Great Lakes’s experts explained that he had reviewed similar corroboration in the form
of “screenshots of refund confirmations issued by the … Treasury.” Furthermore, these
were not ad-hoc procedures Great Lakes invented, but well-established protocols that
were standard in the industry.
By contrast, Dawson has provided no reason to believe that Great Lakes’s
instructions were not followed. Dawson does cite to one class member (Angela
Monger), who declared that she never received a reimbursement check for her
overpayments. But, in her case, the overpayments were reimbursed in the form of
credits applied to her consolidated loan account. Dawson points to another class
member (Elizabeth Mosser), who said that, even though she had fully paid off her loan,
she had a new outstanding balance after the remediation. But Dawson does not dispute
that Great Lakes used its own money to pay off the outstanding balances of borrowers
in Mosser’s position. And, Mosser’s balance was the result of an administrative
oversight that Great Lakes promptly corrected. None of this casts doubt on the overall
completeness of the remediation.
c. Collateral Source Rule
Dawson also argues that Great Lakes’s reliance upon the remediation project
runs afoul of Wisconsin’s collateral source rule. Specifically, Dawson appears to take the
position that compensation (e.g., any refunds or credits), to the extent any was
generated from the remediation project and received by the class, came from DOE or
the other servicers, not Great Lakes itself.
The collateral source rule is an equitable doctrine intended to “deter negligent
conduct by placing the full cost of the wrongful conduct on the tortfeasor” and “allow
the injured party, not the tortfeasor, to benefit from a windfall that may arise as a
consequence of an outside payment.” Fischer v. Steffen, 797 N.W.2d 501, 506 (Wis. 2011)
(footnote omitted). To that end, the rule provides that payments from sources
“collateral” to the tortfeasor may not be used to reduce the tortfeasor’s liability. Koffman
v. Leichtfuss, 630 N.W.2d 201, 209 (Wis. 2001). In other words, the tortfeasor cannot
receive credit for payments made by, for example, the plaintiff’s insurer or for benefits
that the plaintiff has the good luck to receive. See id. at 210. On the other hand, the
plaintiff is entitled to benefits conferred by “the tortfeasor or someone identified with
the tortfeasor (such as the tortfeasor’s insurance company).” Leitinger v. DBart, Inc.,
736 N.W.2d 1, 7 (Wis. 2007). The application of the collateral source rule is a question of
law that we review de novo. See Fischer, 797 N.W.2d at 506.

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We see no reason why the collateral source rule would apply here. In this case,
the benefits the borrowers received are neither unrelated to nor independent from the
alleged tortfeasor, Great Lakes. Indeed, Great Lakes was intimately involved at every
stage of the remediation process. It planned the project; obtained DOE’s approval to
implement the project; calculated the refund, account credit, or correction owed to each
borrower; and instructed DOE on how to effectuate the proper remedy. When
necessary, it even compensated borrowers out of its own pocket. And, to the extent that
DOE provided credits or reimbursements to borrowers as part of the remediation, its
servicing contract with Great Lakes obligated it to do so. Thus, the benefits the
borrowers received were hardly “collateral” to Great Lakes. See Leitinger, 736 N.W.2d at
7.7
What is more, the collateral source rule is an equitable doctrine. Our analysis
must be guided by public policy as well as the facts of this case. See Paulson v. Allstate
Ins. Co., 665 N.W.2d 744, 749 (Wis. 2003) (noting that the application of the collateral
source rule “depends heavily upon the facts presented”) (citation omitted). Great
Lakes—with assistance from DOE—undertook significant efforts to correct its errors.
Applying the collateral source rule here would discourage such constructive efforts and
result in double recovery for the class members. See id. at 752 (collateral source rule did
not apply where plaintiff’s insurer settled its subrogation claim because the rule would
result in double recovery and discourage settlements); Fischer, 797 N.W.2d at 509–10
(similar). Thus, even if it were applicable, we do not believe that application of the
collateral source rule is warranted here.
d. De Minimis Class Members
Lastly, as evidence that the remediation did not completely address the class’s
damages, Dawson points to the small subset of borrowers who had made overpayments
of five dollars or less but never received any compensation. According to Great Lakes,
this was due to a de minimis threshold imposed by DOE (a fact Dawson disputes).
Regardless, the district court believed that all injured borrowers were entitled to redress
7 Dawson relies on Molzof v. United States, 6 F.3d 461 (7th Cir. 1993), but that case is readily distinguishable.
There, we concluded that Wisconsin law would consider future medical expenses funded by government-
provided veteran’s healthcare to be collateral to the government’s tort liability. Id. at 466–68. This was
because veteran’s medical benefits are similar to “traditional employee health benefits” and because the
damages were for future medical expenses (meaning the veteran could choose between government-
provided or truly collateral private healthcare). Id. Neither is true here.

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and allowed the case to proceed as to these class members.
A short time later, Great Lakes moved to exclude this subset of class members
from the class, arguing that Dawson (the sole class representative) could not adequately
represent them. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(4). Dawson failed to provide any response to
this argument, and the district court agreed with Great Lakes and excluded these
borrowers from the class. Dawson, 2022 WL 1641143, at *2. Other than mentioning it,
Dawson does not present any meaningful argument on appeal either, and we need not
address it further. See Puffer, 675 F.3d at 718.
2. RICO Claims
Dawson also brought RICO claims under 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c), alleging violations
of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c) based on the same loan servicing errors that formed the basis of
the negligence claims. The district court granted summary judgment to Great Lakes as
to these claims, concluding that Dawson had not presented any facts from which a
reasonable jury could find a RICO violation.
Section 1962(c) makes it unlawful for a “person” to “conduct or participate” in
the affairs of an “enterprise” through a pattern of racketeering. 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c). To
establish a claim under this section, the plaintiff must identify two entities: the RICO
“person” (i.e., the defendant liable for RICO violations) and the RICO “enterprise” (i.e.,
the vehicle through which the unlawful racketeering is committed). See Nat’l Org. for
Women, Inc. v. Scheidler, 510 U.S. 249, 259 (1994); United Food & Commercial Workers
Unions & Emps. Midwest Health Benefits Fund v. Walgreen Co., 719 F.3d 849, 853 (7th Cir.
2013).
Additionally, the plaintiff must establish that the defendant “conduct[ed]” the
affairs of the enterprise. 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c). In Reves v. Ernst & Young, the Supreme
Court explained that this language requires proof that the defendant “participated in
the operation or management of the enterprise itself.” 507 U.S. 170, 183 (1993). Put
differently, the defendant “must have [had] some part in directing [the enterprise’s]
affairs.” Id. at 179; see also Muskegan Hotels, LLC v. Patel, 986 F.3d 692, 698 (7th Cir. 2021)
(discussing section 1962(c)’s “operation-or-management requirement”).
Here, Dawson points to two Great Lakes affiliated entities: the parent

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corporation and one of its wholly-owned subsidiaries.8 According to Dawson, the
subsidiary (the RICO “person”) conducted the affairs of its parent corporation (the
RICO “enterprise”) to engage in a pattern of fraudulent loan servicing.
The problem is that Dawson has offered no evidence that the Great Lakes
subsidiary “controlled” its parent corporation in any fashion. She points only to the
undisputed fact that the subsidiary was responsible for its own loan servicing
operations with minimal oversight by the parent corporation. From this, Dawson
surmises that the subsidiary “controlled” the parent’s loan servicing business. This
reasoning is at odds with the Supreme Court’s decision in Reves, which makes it clear
“that the subsidiary [must] participate in the control of the parent.” Fitzgerald v. Chrysler
Corp., 116 F.3d 225, 227 (7th Cir. 1997) (emphasis in original) (citation omitted); see Reves,
507 U.S. at 185 (“[L]iability depends on showing that the defendants conducted or
participated in the conduct of the enterprise’s affairs, not just their own affairs.”)
(emphases in original) (cleaned up).
Thus, the typical corporate structure, where a wholly-owned subsidiary acts on
behalf of and for the benefit of its parent company, is insufficient to support RICO
liability. See Emery v. Am. Gen. Fin., Inc., 134 F.3d 1321, 1324 (7th Cir. 1998) (explaining
that the “conduct the affairs through” requirement would be satisfied if the subsidiary
“managed to wrest control of the parent and use the parent as an instrument for further
criminal activities”); see also Brannon v. Boatmen’s First Nat. Bank of Okla., 153 F.3d 1144,
1147–48 (10th Cir. 1998) (noting that, “as a matter of corporate reality,” a subsidiary
inherently “acts on behalf of” its parent company, which is not enough to state a RICO
claim); Bessette v. Avco Fin. Servs., Inc., 230 F.3d 439, 449 (1st Cir. 2000) (“[A] subsidiary
that simply conducts its affairs as delegated by the parent company for the profit of the
parent company is engaged in nothing more than a legitimate corporate and financial
relationship, … which is certainly not subject to RICO liability on that basis alone.”)
(citations omitted). Accordingly, summary judgment in favor of Great Lakes on the
RICO claims was proper.
8 The parent corporation (named “Great Lakes Higher Education”) started servicing student loans in 1977.
In 1996, it incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary (called “Great Lakes Educational Loan Services”) to
take over the student loan servicing business.

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B. Case Management
Dawson’s remaining arguments focus on the district court’s management of this
case.
1. Class Notice
As Dawson sees it, the district court approved a class notice that violated Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 23(c) as well as the class members’ due process rights. Her
argument (though not entirely clear) appears to take aim at the notice’s failure to
expressly discuss the remediation project.
Early in this lawsuit, the district court invited the parties to submit proposed
class notices. The court selected Great Lakes’s proposal because it “hewed more
closely” to the model forms developed by the Federal Judicial Center and “used plain
language that would be easier for a nonlawyer to understand.” The district court also
accepted Dawson’s suggested revisions except one. She objected to the disclaimer,
which stated: “[t]he Court has not yet decided whether Great Lakes did anything
wrong. There is no money available now, and no guarantee that there will be.”
In its place, Dawson proposed: “Great Lakes has declared to the Court that Great
Lakes is providing money and loan balance reductions” to borrowers, but “the Court
has not confirmed the truth or accuracy” of these statements. The district court found
this statement “confusing” because “it suggest[ed] that [an] individual must join the
class if he or she wishes to obtain the benefits that Great Lakes is allegedly offering,”
which was not accurate.
Due process requires that class members in an action for money damages receive
“personal notice and an opportunity to opt out of the class action.” Lemon v. Int’l Union
of Operating Eng’rs, Loc. No. 139, AFL-CIO, 216 F.3d 577, 580 (7th Cir. 2000) (citation
omitted). To ensure that this opportunity is meaningful, a class member must have
“sufficient information about the specific lawsuit to allow a class member to assess
whether to exercise the right either to appear or to opt out.” 7AA Charles Alan Wright
& Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1787 (3d ed. 2023). To that end, Rule
23 imposes a notice requirement in damages class actions. See Eisen v. Carlisle &
Jacquelin, 417 U.S. 156, 173–74 (1974) (explaining that Rule 23’s notice requirements are
designed to fulfill the requirements of due process).

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Dawson’s objections to the notice are unpersuasive. She suggests that, because
the remediation project was a “counterclaim,” the notice needed to inform putative
class members about the remediation and its details. See 7AA Wright & Miller, § 1787
(class notice should include the defendant’s counterclaims so that absent class members
are aware of their potential liability). But the notice informed putative class members
that Great Lakes believed that the class members had not suffered any “compensable
financial injuries to the extent that they have not paid back more than they rightfully
owed on their student loans.” Such language plainly alerts recipients that they might
not be entitled to recover any damages at all. On this record, we cannot say that the
district court abused its discretion in choosing the language that it did.
2. Docket Management
Lastly, Dawson resorts to arguing that the district court abused its discretion in
the way it managed and scheduled matters in this case. This is an exceedingly difficult
argument to make, as we have repeatedly announced that a district court has “broad
discretion to manage” its docket and make scheduling decisions. See, e.g., Wis. Cent. Ltd.
v. Soo Line R.R. Co., 993 F.3d 503, 508 n.7 (7th Cir. 2021) (citation omitted); see also Ruark
v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., 916 F.3d 619, 630 (7th Cir. 2019) (because district courts “must
have a wide berth to manage caseloads and dockets,” their discretion in scheduling
trials is “almost standardless”) (cleaned up).
Dawson has not pointed to a single instance where the district court abused its
discretion. For example, Dawson notes that, when filing its first summary judgment
motion, Great Lakes did not file any proposed findings of fact in violation of the local
rules. Although Dawson had already filed her opposition to the summary judgment
motion, the district court granted Great Lakes leave to file its proposed findings of fact
late. In doing so, the court admonished defense counsel’s failure to follow “well-known
and long-standing” procedures. But, the district court continued, “in a case as complex
as this one, denying the motion [for leave to file proposed findings] might well create
more problems than it would solve.”
This was not an abuse of discretion. District courts may enforce or relax local
rules, so long as those rules are enforced equally between the parties. See Novak v. Bd. of
Trs. of S. Ill. Univ., 777 F.3d 966, 974 n.9 (7th Cir. 2015); Modrowski v. Pigatto, 712 F.3d
1166, 1169 (7th Cir. 2013). Indeed, Dawson does not offer any examples where the
district court unfairly enforced local rules against her, but not Great Lakes. Instead,
Dawson cursorily claims that the district court’s decision gave Great Lakes a strategic

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advantage. This is incorrect. The district court’s order gave Dawson the opportunity to
respond to Great Lakes’s proposed findings of fact and limited those findings to the
facts discussed in Great Lakes’s opening brief.
Although Dawson provides other instances of the district court’s supposed
abuses, her arguments are meritless. Our review of this long, complicated lawsuit
reveals a district court that was fair and measured to both sides. This was true even
when the court was forced, on multiple occasions, to entreat both parties to comply with
the court’s rules, support their legal arguments with relevant authority, and avoid
“inflammatory language.” See Dawson, 2021 WL 1174726, at *20; Dawson v. Great Lakes
Educ. Loan Servs., Inc., No. 15-cv-475, 2019 WL 13184961, at *2 (W.D. Wis. Jan. 30, 2019).
Defense counsel appears to have heeded this wise advice on appeal; unfortunately,
plaintiffs’ counsel has not.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM.

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