Gogos v. AMS-Mechanical System, Inc.

Filing 14

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 7/11/2013. Mailed notice by judge's staff. (srb,)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
ANTHIMOS GOGOS,
Plaintiff,
v.
AMS-MECHANICAL SYSTEM, INC.,
Defendant.

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No.

13 C 3779

MEMORANDUM ORDER
Regrettably the understandable unfamiliarity of pro se
litigants with the rules and procedures that govern proceedings
in this federal District Court often create major problems for
the litigants themselves, as well as for the judges to whom their
cases have been assigned under the Court’s random assignment
system.

That has happened here, where this Court issued a brief

June 5, 2013 memorandum order (“Order”) that explained why
Anthimos Gogos (“Gogos”) could not pursue his attempted claim
that his ex-employer AMS-Mechanical System, Inc. (“AMS”) had
violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (“Act”).

Because

the assertions that Gogos had advanced in his proposed Complaint
“simply do not fit the concept of ‘disability’ as defined in the
Act and its caselaw” (Order at 1-2), the Order concluded by
dismissing both the Complaint and this action for lack of subject
matter jurisdiction, while expressing no opinion as to the
possibility that Gogos might perhaps seek some remedy against AMS
under some state law that could be pursued in the state courts.

Gogos then transmitted to this District Court’s Clerk’s
Office a document that he captioned “Motion for Reconsideration
of Dismissal,” received in that office on June 21.

But because

he apparently transmitted only the original of that document to
the Clerk’s Office, without enclosing the Judge’s Copy called for
by this District Court’s LR 5.2(f), the filing unfortunately
simply sat in the Clerk’s Office without this Court having any
awareness of that transmittal.

It was only when Gogos later

transmitted a “Second Motion Asking the Court Reconsideration of
My CCase to be Reinstate”--a 22-page, 94-paragraph sprawling
narrative coupled with a bulky set of attachments--that the
Clerk’s Office sent this Court the first page of the narrative
(Dkt. 11) together with a “Document Deficiency Notice” dated
July 2, 2013 that said “Copy of motion not sent to Judge.
Received in the mail.”

That was the first time that this Court

had been made aware that Gogos had done anything to follow up on
the original order of dismissal.
This Court has waded through the most recent filing--a
turgid autobiographical narrative that deals with Gogos’ trials
and tribulations over many years, rather than focusing on a
current claim under the Act.

And although Gogos’ painfully

lengthy account does make an occasional brief reference to the
EEOC and a right-to-sue letter, copies of neither the actual EEOC
document nor Gogos’ charge of discrimination that had to have

2

begun the EEOC’s consideration have been supplied by Gogos1--and
of course the Act requires a plaintiff to show that he has
exhausted his administrative remedies before filing suit.
This Court always goes out of its way to accommodate pro se
filers, not only by following the Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519,
520-21 (1972)(per curiam) directive to view their filings through
a more generous lens but also by trying to ferret out the
potential for invoking federal jurisdiction whenever possible.
But it is still the litigant’s responsibility to provide the
grist for the judicial mill, and here Gogos’ submissions, despite
their prolix nature, have provided no basis for such assistance.
This Court has no choice other than to deny his second motion for
reconsideration.

________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:

July 11, 2013

1

Gogos’ exhibits attached to his 22-page narrative occupy
another 60 pages or so (largely extraneous to a current claim
involving the Act), but those EEOC-related papers did not turn up
in a scanning of those pages.
3