David Holder, also known as DAVID T. ALLEN v. Officer Simons

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted May 20, 2026*
Decided May 20, 2026
Before
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge
REBECCA TAIBLESON, Circuit Judge
No. 25-1280
DAVID HOLDER, also known as
DAVID T. ALLEN,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
OFFICER SIMONS,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Southern District of
Indiana, Indianapolis Division.
No. 1:23-cv-02065-SEB-MG
Sarah Evans Barker,
Judge.
* The appellee was not served with process and is 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. Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

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No. 25-1280 Page 2
O R D E R
David Holder, an Indiana prisoner, appeals a judgment dismissing his failure-to-
protect lawsuit. The district court dismissed his complaint for failure to prosecute and
comply with court orders. We affirm.
These proceedings have been protracted. In late 2023 Holder filed a civil-
complaint form, alleging that while he was housed at the adult detention center in
Marion County, staff members at the center failed to protect him from sexual assault by
other detainees. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district court screened the complaint under
28 U.S.C. § 1915A and allowed Holder to proceed with his claim against only one
defendant, identified as “Officer Simons.” If through discovery Holder identified other
defendants, the court added, he could move to amend his complaint.
The district court had difficulty, however, verifying Officer Simons’s identity and
serving process. As a result, in June 2024 the court issued process on Marion County
Sheriff Kerry Forestal to appear in his official capacity to respond to certain discovery
requests (e.g., regarding the identity of detention-center employees who could properly
be named as defendants). The court informed Holder that he would have 30 days from
the date of Forestal’s response to amend his complaint, otherwise the action would be
dismissed.
Holder later filed discovery requests that Forestal responded to. In September
2024, the court denied Holder’s motion to compel Forestal to respond more specifically
to his discovery requests and extended Holder’s deadline to file an amended complaint
to October 4, 2024. The deadline came and went without any filing from Holder, so the
court dismissed the case without prejudice.
More than three months after the court entered judgment, Holder’s notice of
appeal was docketed. Because a notice of appeal must be filed within 30 days of the
entry of judgment, see FED. R. A PP. P. 4(a), we ordered Holder to explain why his appeal
should not be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. Holder responded that he had timely
submitted a notice of appeal for electronic filing, but prison staff failed to send it. This
sworn response appeared to satisfy the prison mailbox rule, so we allowed the appeal to
proceed to briefing.
Holder then missed the deadline to file his brief. We ordered him to show cause
why this appeal should not be dismissed for lack of prosecution. See C IR . R. 31(c)(2). He
responded that he had turned in his brief to prison staff, but they did not file it. He

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No. 25-1280 Page 3
attached several exhibits, including a copy of a brief in which he stated that prison staff
failed to electronically file a submission he gave them upon his release from a month-
long confinement in a strip cell. Because he had submitted multiple statements, we
ordered him to clarify which document he intended to serve as his opening brief.
Holder filed a new document entitled “Appeal Brief,” asserting that the prison
mailbox rule applies because (1) he timely filed a notice of appeal; (2) this was the
second filing not properly electronically filed by prison staff; (3) prison staff maliciously
caused him to miss deadlines by not electronically filing his submissions. He does not
say anything further about why he believes the district court wrongly dismissed his
case for failure to timely amend his complaint.
We see no error by the district court. This is a case in which the court never
received Holder’s purported filings. Even after the court entered judgment, Holder did
not alert the judge—through, for instance, a postjudgment motion under Rule 59(e) or
60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, see Taylor v. Brown, 787 F.3d 851, 860–61
(7th Cir. 2014)—that he had given prison staff a document that he meant to be an
amended complaint. His only mention to filing what might be an amended complaint
was in this court, in one of his exhibits to his show-cause response. There, he said that
he gave prison staff a “motion” on October 31, 2024. But even if we assume, first, that he
handed an amended complaint to staff on that date and, second, that the prison mailbox
rule applies, that submission still was filed well beyond the court’s deadline of October
4, 2024.
What’s more, Holder has provided no evidence that he submitted an amended
complaint to prison staff. In similar situations, we have said that application of the
prison mailbox rule is constrained by a “limiting principle.” Ray v. Clements, 700 F.3d
993, 1011 (7th Cir. 2012) (habeas context). A prisoner needs to provide the district court
with a sworn declaration that “identif[ies] the who, what, when, where, how, and why
of his alleged delivery to a prison official … plus some other corroborating evidence.”
Id. (emphasis omitted). Here, Holder did not place in the record any evidence to
corroborate his contention that he filed an amended complaint by the court’s deadline.
Having warned him that failure to timely file an amended complaint would result in
dismissal, the court was within its discretion to dismiss the case. See Stanard v. Nygren,
658 F.3d 792, 800 (7th Cir. 2011).
AFFIRMED

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