Schmees v. HC1.com, Inc., No. 22-1214 (7th Cir. 2023)
Annotate this Case
One week after Schmees started working for HC1.COM, the company eliminated her position and terminated her employment. Schmees sued, alleging that HC1 fraudulently induced her to join the company. HC1 moved to dismiss Schmees’s first amended complaint. Three months after the parties had briefed the motion, Schmees sought leave to amend her complaint to add new factual allegations buttressing the same claims. The district court denied HC1’s motion to dismiss Schmees’s fraud claims, then denied as moot the motion for leave to amend. The court gave Schmees a month to renew the motion; she opted not to seek a further amendment. In response to HC1’s subsequent motion for summary judgment, Schmees attempted to supplement her complaint with a new fraud claim via her briefing. The district court granted HC1 summary judgment, finding the new fraud claim beyond the scope of the complaint, and declining to treat her response brief as a de facto amendment to the complaint.
The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The district court did not abuse its discretion. After concluding that Schmees had sufficiently stated her fraud claims, adding new facts supporting those claims was unnecessary. The court invited Schmees to seek leave again, but she did not. At summary judgment, it was too late for Schmees to add a new claim beyond the scope of the complaint.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.