Len Boogaard v. National Hockey League ( 2018 )


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  •                                    In the
    United States Court of Appeals
    For the Seventh Circuit
    ____________________
    No. 17-2355
    LEN BOOGAARD and JOANNE BOOGAARD, Personal Represent-
    atives of the Estate of DEREK BOOGAARD, Deceased,
    Plaintiffs-Appellants,
    v.
    NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE, et al.,
    Defendants-Appellees.
    ____________________
    Appeal from the United States District Court for the
    Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
    No. 1:13-cv-04846 — Gary Feinerman, Judge.
    ____________________
    ARGUED JANUARY 11, 2018 — DECIDED MAY 25, 2018
    ____________________
    Before EASTERBROOK and BARRETT, Circuit Judges, and
    STADTMUELLER, District Judge. *
    BARRETT, Circuit Judge. Len and Joanne Boogaard appeal
    the dismissal of the wrongful-death action they brought as
    the personal representatives of the estate of their son, Derek
    *   Of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, sitting by designation.
    2                                                 No. 17-2355
    Boogaard. They devote their appeal almost entirely to argu-
    ments that would spark excitement—or fear—in the heart of
    a civil procedure student. There is a Hanna v. Plumer prob-
    lem—whether Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 17(b)(3) con-
    trols the Boogaards’ ability to bring this suit. 
    380 U.S. 460
    (1965). There is an Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins question—
    whether federal or state law applies if Rule 17(b)(3) does not
    control. 
    304 U.S. 64
    (1938). There is a choice-of-law prob-
    lem—whether Illinois, Minnesota, or New York law applies
    if this is a matter of state law. And there is even a relation-
    back issue—whether, if Minnesota law applies, Federal Rule
    of Civil Procedure 17(a)(3)’s relation-back provision can save
    the Boogaards from an error that it is otherwise too late to
    correct.
    At the end of the day, however, it is an argument to
    which the Boogaards give short shrift that disposes of their
    case: forfeiture. For the reasons that follow, we agree with
    the district court that by failing to respond to the National
    Hockey League’s argument that their complaint fails to state
    a claim, the Boogaards forfeited any argument that it does.
    Their suit thus fails regardless of whether they can run the
    procedural gantlet of showing that they are the proper par-
    ties to bring it.
    I.
    Because we are reviewing a dismissal under Rule
    12(b)(6), we treat the allegations contained in the Boogaards’
    complaint as true. That does not mean, however, that we
    vouch for their accuracy. It means only that at this stage of
    the case, the Boogaards are entitled to have every factual in-
    ference drawn in their favor. In what follows, then, we re-
    No. 17-2355                                                        3
    count the facts as the Boogaards tell them in the complaint
    they filed against the National Hockey League.
    Derek Boogaard (“Derek”) was a professional hockey
    player with the National Hockey League (“NHL”). 1 He
    joined the NHL in 2005 as a member of the Minnesota Wild,
    where he remained until the summer of 2010. During his
    time with the Wild, team doctors repeatedly prescribed
    Derek with pain pills relating to various injuries and proce-
    dures. He became addicted to those pills by 2009.
    In September of that year, the NHL placed Derek into its
    Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health Program. The Pro-
    gram is the product of a 1996 agreement (which we’ll call the
    “substance abuse agreement”) between the NHL and its
    players’ union to create a comprehensive system for address-
    ing substance abuse among NHL players. When a player en-
    ters the Program, he is initially permitted to receive his full
    NHL salary without penalty so long as he complies with the
    Program. If the player violates the Program’s rules, however,
    he receives penalties of increasing severity.
    Pursuant to the Program, Derek was checked into a Cali-
    fornia rehabilitation facility for in-patient treatment of his
    opioid and sleeping-pill addictions. Upon leaving that facili-
    ty, he was subject to the NHL’s mandatory “Aftercare Pro-
    gram,” which required him to refrain from using opioids
    and Ambien and to submit to random drug testing. The
    NHL told Derek that his failure to follow the Aftercare Pro-
    gram conditions could result in his permanent suspension.
    1 We call him “Derek” to distinguish him from his parents, Len and
    Joanne Boogaard, who represent Derek’s estate in this appeal.
    4                                                  No. 17-2355
    Derek signed a contract with the New York Rangers in
    the summer of 2010. Before long, he began asking trainers
    for Ambien, leading an NHL doctor to remind him that he
    could not use Ambien or opioids. But Derek still relapsed.
    And over the following months, NHL doctors made Derek’s
    situation worse by violating various conditions of the After-
    care Program. They prescribed him Ambien and pain medi-
    cation. They failed to impose penalties when Derek reported
    that he had purchased pain medications off the street over
    Christmas break. They again failed to impose penalties when
    Derek failed urine tests in January and March. And when
    Derek was admitted to a recovery center in California to
    treat opioid dependence, they allowed him to leave the facil-
    ity without a chaperone. While on one such trip, Derek pur-
    chased thousands of dollars of opioids off the street; on an-
    other, he overdosed on pills and died.
    This litigation began two years later. Its procedural histo-
    ry is complicated, so we will keep it to the highlights.
    Derek’s estate sued the NHL and the other defendants in Il-
    linois state court. The original complaint asserted eight
    claims, four of which it characterized as arising under Illi-
    nois’s Wrongful Death Act and another four under Illinois’s
    Survival Act. The complaint alleged that the NHL had failed
    to prevent the over-prescription of addictive medications to
    Derek, had breached its voluntarily undertaken duty to
    monitor and curb Derek’s drug addiction in the Program,
    had been negligent in monitoring Derek for brain trauma
    during his career, and had negligently permitted team doc-
    tors to inject Derek with an intramuscular analgesic called
    Toradol.
    No. 17-2355                                                            5
    The NHL removed the case to federal court. It argued
    that federal jurisdiction existed under the doctrine of com-
    plete preemption, which applies when the scope of a federal
    law is so broad that it essentially replaces state-law claims.
    The district court agreed and denied the estate’s motion to
    remand. It held that at least two of the claims were founded
    directly on rights created under the parties’ collective bar-
    gaining agreement—the claims that the NHL had breached
    its duties under the Program to care for Derek and address
    his drug addiction—and were therefore preempted by the
    Labor Management Relations Act. It had supplemental ju-
    risdiction over any remaining state claims.
    The NHL then moved to dismiss the whole complaint for
    preemption and failure to state a claim. At that point, Len
    and Joanne Boogaard filed a first amended complaint nam-
    ing themselves as the successor personal representatives of
    Derek’s estate. (Someone else had initially represented it.)
    The amended complaint invoked Minnesota’s wrongful-
    death and survival statute, although it also kept its refer-
    ences to Illinois law, choosing to characterize the claims as
    arising under both states’ statutes.
    The district court deemed the NHL’s still-pending motion
    to dismiss to be directed at the Boogaards’ first amended
    complaint, and the court ordered the NHL to file a supple-
    mental memorandum in support of the motion. The NHL
    added a new argument for dismissal: Wrongful-death and
    survival actions can only be brought by a court-appointed
    trustee under Minnesota law, and the Boogaards were not
    court-appointed trustees. 2 And since the time during which
    2 Minnesota law has a special statutory regime for appointing a trus-
    tee to prosecute wrongful-death and survival actions on behalf of the
    6                                                            No. 17-2355
    a Minnesota court could appoint a trustee for Derek’s estate
    had run, this was not a problem that the Boogaards could
    fix. In response, the Boogaards argued that the law of Illi-
    nois, not Minnesota, determined who is entitled to bring this
    wrongful-death and survival action. The district court did
    not reach this choice-of-law problem. Instead, it granted
    summary judgment to the NHL on the ground that all of the
    Boogaards’ claims were preempted.
    After summary judgment, the Boogaards moved to file a
    second amended complaint, which added claims—still un-
    der Minnesota and Illinois wrongful-death and survival
    laws—that the Boogaards said were not preempted. The
    NHL disputed that contention, but the district court con-
    cluded that two of the new counts put forward a “theory of
    tort—that the NHL unreasonably harmed Boogaard—[that]
    is viable … and not preempted by the [Labor Management
    Relations Act]” and the other two “contain the seed of a via-
    ble, non-preempted claim … that the NHL actively and un-
    reasonably harmed Boogaard by implicitly communicating
    that head trauma is not dangerous.” It allowed the
    Boogaards to file the new complaint and told the NHL that it
    decedent’s living spouse and next of kin. Being appointed as such a trus-
    tee is different from being appointed personal representative of the de-
    cedent or estate. Steinlage ex rel. Smith v. Mayo Clinic Rochester, 
    435 F.3d 913
    , 915–17 (8th Cir. 2006); Ortiz v. Gavenda, 
    590 N.W.2d 119
    , 124 (Minn.
    1999) (stating that the appointment of a wrongful-death trustee is an ex-
    ercise of the principle that “those entitled to recovery as a result of the
    wrongful death shall be represented by the trustee without compro-
    mise”). The Boogaards were appointed as the personal representatives of
    Derek’s estate, but they were never appointed as trustees for wrongful-
    death and survival actions.
    No. 17-2355                                                           7
    could still move to dismiss the complaint—so long as it did
    so on grounds other than preemption.
    The NHL took the district court’s suggestion. It renewed
    its argument, which the district court had not yet addressed,
    that the Boogaards’ claims could only be brought by a trus-
    tee appointed pursuant to Minnesota law. In the alternative,
    it argued that the new complaint did not state a claim no
    matter which state’s law applied. The Boogaards focused on
    the NHL’s argument about the Minnesota trustee require-
    ment. 3 In addition to the choice-of-law points they had made
    before, they contended that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
    17(b), which governs the choice-of-law analysis in determin-
    ing a party’s capacity to sue, required the court to apply Illi-
    nois law regarding who can bring a wrongful-death or sur-
    vival action. The Boogaards said nothing in response to the
    NHL’s alternative argument that their allegations, even if
    true, would not entitle them to relief.
    The district court granted the motion to dismiss on both
    grounds pressed by the NHL. It held that Minnesota law
    applied to the action and thus required a wrongful-death or
    survival action to be brought by a court-appointed trustee.
    In the alternative, it held that the Boogaards had forfeited
    their claims by failing to respond to the NHL’s argument that
    the complaint failed to state a claim under the law of any
    state. This appeal followed.
    3   They also responded to the NHL’s contention that the First
    Amendment protected it from the Boogaards’ claim that the NHL pro-
    moted violence. The parties’ arguments on that issue are not relevant to
    this appeal.
    8                                                            No. 17-2355
    II.
    Before we reach the merits, we have some housekeeping
    to do. Every brief filed by an appellant in our court must
    contain a “jurisdictional statement” explaining why we have
    authority to decide the appeal. The Boogaards hedge in
    theirs. Their jurisdictional statement consists of the observa-
    tion that the NHL removed the case to federal court on a
    theory of complete preemption. In other words, rather than
    assuring us that jurisdiction exists, the Boogaards essentially
    say “the NHL says that jurisdiction exists.” The statement
    does not endorse (or indeed, even acknowledge) the district
    court’s jurisdictional ruling, presumably because the
    Boogaards continue to disagree with it. Despite the
    Boogaards’ evident belief that jurisdiction is lacking, their
    brief goes on to ask us to review the merits of the district
    court’s decision.
    This is insufficient. If a party believes that we lack juris-
    diction, it has an obligation to say so. We thus ordered the
    parties to file supplemental briefs on the jurisdictional issue
    so that we could discharge our obligation to determine
    whether we have the authority to decide this appeal.
    The Boogaards come clean in their supplemental brief.
    They argue that the Labor Management Relations Act does
    not completely preempt their state-law claims and that there
    is thus no basis for federal jurisdiction. 4 The NHL, on the
    other hand, maintains that the district court got the jurisdic-
    tional issue right.
    4 Diversity jurisdiction does not exist, because the parties cannot sat-
    isfy the complete diversity of citizenship requirement.
    No. 17-2355                                                      9
    The district court did get it right. The doctrine of com-
    plete preemption “confers exclusive federal jurisdiction in
    certain instances where Congress intended the scope of a
    federal law to be so broad as to entirely replace any state-law
    claim.” Franciscan Skemp Healthcare, Inc. v. Central States Joint
    Bd. Health & Welfare Tr. Fund, 
    538 F.3d 594
    , 596 (7th Cir. 2008).
    In this case, § 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act
    “displace[s] entirely any state cause of action” for violation
    of a collective bargaining agreement. Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal.
    v. Constr. Laborers Vacation Tr., 
    463 U.S. 1
    , 23 (1983). It does
    not matter that the lawsuit styles itself as something other
    than a breach-of-contract action. If the suit’s claims are
    “founded directly on rights created by collective-bargaining
    agreements” or are “substantially dependent on analysis of a
    collective-bargaining agreement,” then § 301 governs those
    claims. Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 
    482 U.S. 386
    , 394 (1987) (ci-
    tation omitted).
    The Boogaards’ complaint makes plain that at least two
    of their initial claims were based on a duty allegedly con-
    tained within the substance abuse agreement. It alleges that
    by administering the Program established by the substance
    abuse agreement, the NHL assumed the duty to curb, cure,
    and monitor Derek’s drug addiction. And it contends that
    the NHL breached that duty when it violated the procedures
    it had agreed to use in administering the Program. For ex-
    ample, the Boogaards allege that NHL doctors provided
    Derek with prescriptions for pain medication even though
    the rules of the Program forbade Derek to take any opioids
    and that the NHL allegedly failed to penalize Derek in ac-
    cordance with the Program rules when urine tests came back
    positive for prohibited drugs. The complaint frequently
    couches its accusations of duty and breach in terms of obli-
    10                                                 No. 17-2355
    gations and violations of the Program, leading unavoidably
    to the conclusion that the Boogaards’ claims rely on applying
    and interpreting the substance abuse agreement, which dic-
    tated the Program’s terms.
    Now, this only matters for purposes of § 301 of the Labor
    Management Relations Act if the substance abuse agreement
    is part of the collective bargaining agreement between the
    NHL and the NHL Players’ Association. The Boogaards say
    it’s not. But the collective bargaining agreement had an inte-
    gration clause stating that this agreement “and any existing
    letter agreements between the parties that are not incon-
    sistent with this Agreement” were the “entire understanding
    between the parties.” The substance abuse agreement was an
    existing letter agreement between the parties, and the
    Boogaards have pointed to no inconsistency between it and
    the collective bargaining agreement. Moreover, the collective
    bargaining agreement states that the Program will still han-
    dle certain categories of substance abuse. This reference
    would not make sense if the parties intended the collective
    bargaining agreement to supersede the substance abuse
    agreement.
    In sum, the district court correctly concluded that it had
    subject-matter jurisdiction over the claims asserting that the
    NHL breached its obligations under the substance abuse
    agreement. And even if that created federal question juris-
    diction over only some of the claims in the complaint, the
    district court had supplemental jurisdiction over the rest. See
    28 U.S.C. § 1367(a) (“[T]he district courts shall have supple-
    mental jurisdiction over all other claims that are so related to
    claims in the action within such original jurisdiction that
    they form part of the same case or controversy under Article
    No. 17-2355                                                  11
    III … L.”). The Boogaards’ late-coming jurisdictional chal-
    lenge therefore fails.
    III.
    This appeal presents a curious situation. The Boogaards
    devote almost their entire brief to attacking the district
    court’s ruling that the Minnesota trustee requirement bars
    their suit. But that was not the only ground on which the dis-
    trict court dismissed the case—it held in the alternative that
    the Boogaards had forfeited their claims by failing to re-
    spond to the NHL’s argument that they failed to state a claim
    under the law of either Minnesota or Illinois. Thus, even if
    the Boogaards are right about the trustee requirement, they
    still lose if the district court’s alternative holding stands.
    It is hard to fault the Boogaards for lodging a weak chal-
    lenge to the district court’s forfeiture holding, because there
    are no strong arguments available against it. Their opener is
    hardly a knockout: they assert that alternative holdings
    should be disregarded as “mere dictum.” That contention is
    meritless. As an initial matter, it is well settled that we will
    affirm a district court’s judgment if any of several alternative
    holdings supports it. See, e.g., Maher v. City of Chicago, 
    547 F.3d 817
    , 821 (7th Cir. 2008). More fundamentally, the
    Boogaards are wrong to characterize alternative holdings as
    “dictum.” The rule is the exact opposite: “It is blackletter law
    that ‘where a decision rests on two or more grounds, none
    can be relegated to the category of obiter dictum.’” BRYAN A.
    GARNER ET AL., THE LAW OF JUDICIAL PRECEDENT 122 (2016)
    (citations omitted). If alternative holdings have precedential
    force as a matter of stare decisis, one can hardly argue that
    they are not independently sufficient grounds on which to
    affirm the judgment they support.
    12                                                No. 17-2355
    The Boogaards’ second argument is not much better.
    They do not—and cannot—deny that a district court may
    hold a claim forfeited if a plaintiff fails to respond to the
    substance of the defendant’s motion to dismiss. See, e.g.,
    Kirksey v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 
    168 F.3d 1039
    , 1043 (7th
    Cir. 1999); Stransky v. Cummins Engine Co., 
    51 F.3d 1329
    , 1335
    (7th Cir. 1995). They argue, however, that the district court
    was wrong to do so in this instance. According to the
    Boogaards, the district court implicitly rejected a Rule
    12(b)(6) argument when it permitted them to file an amend-
    ed complaint adding the new claims. They insist that they
    were thus justified in believing that the NHL was simply re-
    gurgitating an argument that it had already lost.
    The record belies that contention. The district court en-
    tered summary judgment on the Boogaards’ first amended
    complaint solely on preemption grounds. When the NHL
    opposed the Boogaards’ request to file a second amended
    complaint, it insisted that amendment would be futile be-
    cause the proposed second amended complaint likewise
    contained only preempted claims. That preemption point
    was the NHL’s only futility argument against amendment; it
    did not argue that the new claims also failed to state a claim
    under state law. The district court held that § 301 did not
    preempt the new claims in the proposed complaint and
    granted the Boogaards’ motion for leave to amend. It then
    invited the NHL to either answer the complaint or move to
    dismiss it, but the court cautioned that if the defendants
    chose to move to dismiss any surviving claims, “they should
    not do so on preemption grounds.”
    The Boogaards place great emphasis on the district
    court’s use of the word “viable” to describe the new counts
    No. 17-2355                                                 13
    in the second amended complaint. But in context, it is plain
    that the court was merely communicating its view that these
    counts could survive the only challenge then lodged against
    them: the NHL’s argument that they were preempted. The
    question whether the Boogaards’ allegations, if true, would
    entitle them to relief under state law was not before the
    court. And lest there be any doubt about the breadth of the
    court’s ruling, its express instruction that the NHL could
    move to dismiss on non-preemption grounds makes it even
    clearer that the court was not purporting to anticipatorily
    resolve other grounds for dismissal.
    If the Boogaards misunderstood the district court, the
    NHL’s motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) should have
    been a wake-up call. When the NHL moved to dismiss on
    grounds the Boogaards claim to believe were impliedly fore-
    closed, the prudent course was to clarify matters with the
    district court or respond to those arguments anyway. By re-
    maining silent, the Boogaards took the risk that the district
    court would hold their claims forfeited. The court acted well
    within its authority when it did.
    We will not entertain the Boogaards’ alternative request
    that we remand to allow them to file an amended complaint.
    Their complaint was dismissed in the alternative for forfei-
    ture, and amending the underlying complaint does not cure
    their forfeiture. Furthermore, the Boogaards have not ex-
    plained in any detail what amendments they would make,
    which is itself reason to deny the request. Gonzalez-Koeneke v.
    West, 
    791 F.3d 801
    , 808–09 (7th Cir. 2015). The judgment of
    the district court is AFFIRMED.