Farley v. Koepp, No. 14-1695 (7th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseAt 4:15 p.m. on Friday, March 8, the plaintiff’s attorney in a civil-rights case opened an electronic case file in the Southern District of Illinois by e-mailing the complaint and civil cover sheet to the clerk’s office as required by the local court rules. The clerk received the e-mail, opened a new case file in the Case Management/ Electronic Case Filing system (CM/ECF), and at 5:11 p.m. notified the attorney that it was available to receive uploads. On the next business day (Monday) the attorney’s assistant tried to upload the complaint but encountered problems with the electronic payment system. On Tuesday, March 12, she paid the filing fee and uploaded the complaint. The deadline to sue was Monday, March 11, and under local rules, the complaint was not “filed” until it was uploaded into CM/ECF. The district court dismissed. The Seventh Circuit remanded for reinstatement. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “[a] civil action is commenced by filing a complaint with the court,” and a paper is “filed” by “delivering it … to the clerk.” Although the filing process was not complete under the local rules until the complaint was uploaded, transmitting the complaint via e-mail effectively “delivered” it to the clerk for purposes of Rule 5(d)(2).
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