Ernest Southall v. USF Holland, LLC ( 2022 )

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION
File Name: 22a0050n.06
No. 21-5265
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
) FILED
ERNEST SOUTHALL, ) Jan 26, 2022
) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk
Plaintiff-Appellant,
)
v. ) ON APPEAL FROM THE U.S.
) DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
USF HOLLAND, LLC; OCCUPATIONAL ) MIDDLE DISTRICT OF
HEALTH CENTERS OF THE SOUTHWEST, P.A. ) TENNESSEE
CO.; TEAMSTERS LOCAL UNION 480; )
)
Defendants-Appellees.
)
Before: SILER, KETHLEDGE, and READLER, Circuit Judges.
KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. This is now the third appeal in a straightforward matter
that—according to the magistrate judge here—Ernest Southall and his counsel have made an
“unmitigated mess.” The district court dismissed Southall’s present lawsuit based on issue and
claim preclusion. We affirm.
Southall has driven big-rig trucks for USF Holland since 1999. He was diagnosed with
sleep apnea in 2013 and thereafter struggled to get medical clearance to drive. When Southall
lacked that clearance, Holland suspended him from driving. Southall also had problems during
the periods he was driving: in December 2013, an officer ticketed him for driving while fatigued;
eight months later he drove his truck into a concrete barrier in a construction zone in Indiana; and
on another occasion he fell asleep while waiting for his truck to be loaded.
No. 21-5265, Southall v. USF Holland et al.
Yet in 2015 Southall sued Holland and Occupational Health Centers (which had performed
his medical exams), asserting discrimination and retaliation claims under the Americans with
Disabilities Act. During discovery, Holland obtained Southall’s medical records, which indicated
that he had suffered a stroke in July 2016. Southall later admitted during his deposition that he
had not told Occupational Health about his stroke during the medical examination that followed
it. (He denied having one, notwithstanding what the records said.) Southall also admitted in his
deposition that his sleep apnea did not affect any of his major life activities. Holland then
suspended Southall—this time for failing to disclose his stroke—and sent him back to
Occupational Health for another examination. Over Southall’s objection, the district court allowed
Holland to provide Southall’s medical records to Occupational Health for purposes of that exam.
In December 2018, the district court granted summary judgment to Holland and
Occupational Health in that first lawsuit. The court’s order made clear that it addressed all the
alleged “discrimination and/or retaliation” that had occurred up to that point (which in Southall’s
view included the provision of his medical records to Occupational Health). Southall v. USF
Holland, Inc., 2018 WL 6413651, at *6 (M.D. Tenn. Dec. 5, 2018). The court held that Southall
had raised no genuine dispute as to whether he was disabled, given Southall’s own testimony that
his sleep apnea—the putative disability—had not affected any of his major life activities. Southall
appealed that order (his first of now three appeals here).
Meanwhile, Holland and Occupational Health moved for attorneys’ fees in the district
court; and our court affirmed the district court’s summary-judgment order. The district court then
granted the defendants’ motion for fees, on the ground that Southall’s claims “became frivolous
and unreasonable once [he] testified in his deposition that he had no disability.” Southall again
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No. 21-5265, Southall v. USF Holland et al.
brought an appeal, which this court dismissed because the district court had not yet determined the
amount of the fee award.
But in the meantime Southall filed this suit, in which he seeks again to assert ADA claims
against Holland and Occupational Health, as well as his union, Teamsters Local 480. He also
purports to assert a claim for breach of contract—alleging in conclusory terms that he was the
third-party beneficiary of a contract between Holland and Occupational Health, which those parties
allegedly breached because, he says, Holland manipulated Occupational Health to deny Southall
medical clearance.
The district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss based on both issue preclusion
and claim preclusion. The court had already held that Southall’s sleep apnea was not a disability,
which precluded his new claim of discrimination based upon that same condition. The court also
reasoned, among other things, that Southall’s claims in his second suit should have been brought
in his first. Southall then brought to us this appeal, his third. We review the district court’s
decision de novo. Buck v. Thomas M. Cooley L. Sch., 597 F.3d 812, 816 (6th Cir. 2010).
We affirm for substantially the reasons stated in the district court’s cogent opinion.
Southall cannot show his sleep apnea is a disability, which forecloses most of his ADA claims
(whether against Holland, Occupational Health, or Local 480). Booth v. Nissan N. Am., Inc.,
927 F.3d 387, 393, 396 (6th Cir. 2019). Beyond that, Southall forfeited any argument that his
remaining ADA claims are not precluded on the same grounds. See United States v. Huntington
Nat’l Bank, 574 F.3d 329, 331–32 (6th Cir. 2009). Nor can he relitigate the issue whether Holland
influenced Occupational Health’s examinations or planned to decertify him. Those facts were
before the district court when it issued its first summary-judgment order, which by its terms
addressed Southall’s “continuing” claims of retaliation and discrimination. See Dubuc v. Green
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No. 21-5265, Southall v. USF Holland et al.
Oak Twp., 312 F.3d 736, 750 (6th Cir. 2002). And precluded or not, Southall’s claim for breach
of contract is conclusory and patently meritless. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009).
The district court’s judgment is affirmed.
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