Posner wins dismissal of suit for unpaid salary by pro se plaintiff who led his center for unrepresented litigants
Judge Richard Posner poses in his chambers in Chicago on July 2, 2012. Posner, who is retired, has won dismissal of a lawsuit filed by an Indiana man who said he was owed $170,000 in unpaid salary. (Photo by John Gress/Corbis via Getty Images)
Retired federal appeals Judge Richard Posner has won dismissal of a lawsuit filed by an Indiana man who said he was owed $170,000 in unpaid salary for leading a Posner-founded group that helped litigants representing themselves in court.
U.S. District Judge Theresa L. Springmann of the Northern District of Indiana cited contract law Monday when she tossed the suit filed by pro se litigant Brian Vukadinovich, who sought $170,000 for a year-and-a-half of work as executive director of the Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se’s.
Law.com, Reuters and Law360 have coverage of Springmann’s May 19 order.
Posner, a former judge on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Chicago, was accused of orally agreeing in March 2018 to pay Vukadinovich his $120,000 annual salary in a lump sum after at least a year. But there never was a paycheck for Vukadinovich, and the group he led, the Posner Center of Justice for Pro Se’s, closed in July 2019.
Vukadinovich, a retired teacher, worked for the pro se center between February 2018 and July 2019. He claimed that payment was due by July 2020. He was hired after successfully representing himself in a suit. Vukadinovich had planned to use his salary for law school, Springmann said in her opinion.
Springmann tossed the two remaining claims in Vukadinovich’s suit, filed in May 2022: breach of contract and unjust enrichment.
Springmann said oral contracts are enforceable under Indiana law only if their terms can be performed within a year. The alleged oral contract between Vukadinovich and Posner required performance after a year, so it could not be enforced, Springmann said.
The doctrine of promissory estoppel does not supply an exception to the statute of frauds because there was no evidence that Vukadinovich relied on the salary promise in a way that was substantial and independent of the contract benefits, Springmann said.
Nor can Vukadinovich use the doctrine of unjust enrichment to establish a statute of frauds exception, Springmann said.
To succeed, Vukadinovich would have to show that he provided a “measurable benefit” to Posner. Vukadinovich had offered some Posner emails to show a measurable benefit, but they weren’t sufficient, Springmann said.
“Although a few of the emails indicate that the plaintiff did some very minimal work for the defendant, most of the emails merely speculate about the possibility that the plaintiff would perform services for the defendant in the future,” Springmann said.
Turning to Vukadinovich’s independent unjust enrichment claim, Springmann said he waited too long to assert it under Indiana’s statute of limitations, which requires suits to be filed within two years. The statute began to run when Vukadinovich stopped working for the center in July 2019, Springmann said.
Vukadinovich told Law360 in a statement that Springmann’s order was “corrupt and rotten to the core.” He told Reuters that he would “definitely appeal this corrupt ruling,” but it shouldn’t be heard by the 7th Circuit because of a “major conflict of interest.”
Posner was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease about six months after his September 2017 retirement from the 7th Circuit, one of his lawyers had told Vukadinovich in a letter. The lawyer asserted that Posner did not have the capacity to enter into contracts when Vukadinovich began working for the center, but that issue was not addressed in Springmann’s ruling.
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