Mack v. City Of Chicago et al

Filing 17

MEMORANDUM Order: For the reasons stated in this memorandum order, plaintiff's motion to vacate judgment and to amend the initial petition 15 is denied. Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 6/22/2017:Mailed notice(clw, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION

TERRENCE MACK (N-95539),
Plaintiff,
v.
CITY OF CHICAGO, et al.,
Defendants.

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Case No. 17 C 3302

MEMORANDUM ORDER
This is one of two cases, in each of which a motion by a prisoner plaintiff seeks to rehash
his or her unsuccessful efforts for relief from a state court conviction and the resulting sentence
that he or she is serving, has landed on this Court's desk at the same time. In this instance
Terrence Mack ("Mack") has filed a pro se "Motion to vacate Judgement [sic] and to amend the
initial petition (complaint) Rule 59(e)" (the "Motion"), in which his attempted attack calls into
play the principle stated in felicitous terms more than three decades ago by Judge Dortch
Warriner in Above the Belt, Inc. v. Mel Bohannan Roofing, Inc., 99 F.R.D. 99, 101 (E.D. Va.
1983):
The motion to reconsider would be appropriate where, for example, the Court has
patently misunderstood a party, or has made a decision outside the adversarial
issues presented to the Court by the parties, or has made an error not of reasoning
but of apprehension. A further basis for a motion to reconsider would be a
controlling or significant change in the law or facts since the submission of the
issue to the Court. Such problems rarely arise and the motion to reconsider
should be equally rare.
Here it remains true that Mack's 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition is hopelessly out of time, and
this Court's earlier query of defense counsel as to whether defendants would waive the statute of

limitations defense to the petition brought a negative answer to that question. In short, Mack's
Motion (Dkt. No. 15) is groundless, and it is denied.

__________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date: June 22, 2017

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