Case Information
*1 Before W OOD , Chief Judge , F LAUM , Circuit Judge , and K ENNELLY , District Judge .*
F LAUM , Circuit Judge
. Richard Bell sued various de- fendants for copyright infringement, accusing each of impermissibly displaying a photo that he owns on web- * The Honorable Matthew F. Kennelly, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinоis, sitting by designation. sites promoting their respective businesses. Bell’s com- plaint sought both damages and an injunction prohibit- ing future use of the photo. The defendants moved for summary judgment on the damages issue, arguing that Bell cannot demonstrate how they caused him financial harm and, thus, that he is not entitled to monetary recov- ery. The district court granted the motion, and Bell ap- pealed. In addition to the summary judgment ruling, Bell contests the district court’s denial of two motions to com- pel and a motion seeking leave to file a fourth amended complaint.
We have no jurisdiction to decide these issues. Alt- hough the cоurt purported to issue a “final judgment” after ruling on the defendants’ summary judgment mo- tion, it did so in error; the issue of injunctive relief was never adjudicated. Because Bell’s copyright claim was not entirely disposed of by the district court’s summary judgment ruling, the judgment—by definition—was not final. Accordingly, an appeal in this case is premature un- til the district court resolves Bell’s outstanding claims for injunctive relief.
I. Background
Richard Bell, a lawyer and phоtographer, alleges that three small Indianapolis business owners (and the small businesses of two of those three defendants), violated federal copyright laws (and an Indiana theft statute) by publishing on the internеt a photo that he took of the In- dianapolis skyline without his authorization. Defendant Fred O’Brien has an insurance business (co-defendant Insurance Concepts) and, for a few weeks in 2011, oper- ated а website (www.insuranceconceptsfinancial.com), where he allegedly displayed the photo. Defendant Cam- eron Taylor operates a computer business (co-defendant Taylor Cоmputer Solutions), which he advertises on the web at www.taylorcomputersolutions.com. Bell alleges that he used the photo between January 2009 and April 14, 2011. Defendant Shanna Cheatham is a real estatе agent, who marketed her services at www.shannasells.com. Bell alleges that her site displayed his photo between June 2008 and June 15, 2011. Bell at- tached his photo to the (operative) third amended com- plaint, which sought both monetary damages and injunc- tive relief.
In August 2013, the district court set a deadline for fil- ing motions for leave to amend the pleadings. Neverthe- less, Bell sought to amend his complaint (for a fourth time) nearly eight months after the cut-off. The impetus for Bell’s motion to amend was his realization that de- fendant Taylor had not actually used the photo at issue (a photo of Indianapolis’s skyline during the daytime); ra- ther, Taylor’s website displayed a different photo belong- ing to Bell—one depicting Indianapolis’s skyline at night . Although motions for leave to amend are to be granted liberally, the district court deniеd Bell’s motion, citing undue delay and his own carelessness as grounds for the ruling.
On May 2, 2014, the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment. In it, they argued that defendant Taylor was entitled to summary judgment, because she never displayеd the photo about which Bell complained. And, as to all defendants, they argued that Bell was not entitled to damages; “even in the event [Bell] is able to establish ownership of the photo in question … he is nоt entitled to economic damages based upon applicable law and the facts of this case,” they contended. The defend- ants moved to dismiss the state law claim on preemption grоunds.
The district court concluded that, although Bell had established ownership of the photo, he was not entitled to damages. In the court’s view, Bell failed to demonstrate that the defendants profited from thеir misuse of his pho- to. And, though the court agreed that Bell was entitled to damages equal to the photo’s fair market value, it deemed his affidavit representing its value ($200) as in- sufficient proof. It also agreed that Bell’s state claims were preempted, and so it granted the defendants’ sum- mary judgment motion in full.
In doing so, the court also denied an outstanding mo- tion to compel that Bell had filed earlier in the case. In that motion, Bell sought spreadsheets that defendant Cheatham’s expert had used in the creation of a table she made displaying the web traffic that Cheatham’s site re- ceived before, during, and after the period in which she displayed Bell’s photo. Earlier in the proceedings, the dis- trict court also had denied Bell’s request for tax returns from each defendant for every year from 2000 to 2011, which Bell hoped would show that the defendants’ prof- its increased during the periods in which their websites displayed Bell’s photo.
On the day the court ruled on the defendants’ sum- mary judgment motion, it also entered what was labeled “Final Judgment,” purporting to dispose of the case in the defendants’ favor. Bell then appealed, arguing that the district court made a multitude of errors. First, he charges the district judge with improperly denying his two motions to compel, unfairly impeding his ability to prove an entitlement to monetary damages. Second, Bell contends that, even setting aside the court’s discovery ruling, it erroneously granted summary judgment in fa- vor of the defendants on the damages issue. Third, he claims that the district court improperly denied his mo- tion for leave to amend his complaint for the fourth time in order to correct his photo identification error with re- spect to Taylor. Finally, Bell asserts that the court inap- propriately entered final judgment in this case, as the de- fendants’ summary judgment motion (and the court’s ruling on it) only pertained to Bell’s claim to mоnetary relief; Bell’s request for an injunction was never ad- dressed.
II. Discussion
We begin, and end, with the issue of appellate juris- diction, because—as it turns out—we have none here. Having reviewed the defendants’ summary judgmеnt motion and the district court’s opinion, Bell is correct: the court did not resolve his claims for injunctive relief. As such, the district court’s ruling was not final, and Bell’s appeal is premature.
In their motion for summary judgment, thе defend-
ants made clear that they were moving for judgment only
as to the issue of damages. Indeed, they captioned their
brief in support of their summary judgment motion as a
“Motion for Partial Summary Judgment as to Dаmages
and Preemption.” And the district court acknowledged
as much in its opinion, noting that the “Defendants …
rest their motion for summary judgment on the premise
that Mr. Bell cannot establish actual damages or indireсt
profits.”
Bell v. Taylor
, No. 13-cv-798,
Yet Bell sought both damages and an injunction
against the defendants. So, despite the court’s ruling,
Bell’s copyright claim was still alive. Indeed, “[t]he exist-
ence of damages suffered is not an essential element of a
claim for copyright infringement.”
Davis v. The Gap, Inc.
,
Bell declined to bring the error to Judge Pratt’s atten- tion. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a) provides: “The court may correct a clerical mistake or a mistake arising from oversight or omission whenever one is found in a judgment, order, or other part of the record. The court may do so on motion or on its own, with or without no- tice.” And Rule 60(b) makes clear that “[o]n motion and just terms, the court may relieve a party or its legal repre- sentative from a final judgment, order, or proceeding for the following reasons: (1) mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglеct; … (6) any other reason that justifies relief.” Rule 59(e) permits “motion[s] to alter or amend a judgment,” requiring that such a motion be filed within 28 days of the judgment’s entry. Because the district judge mistakenly believed that she had entered a proper final judgment, it seems that a motion brought under any of these rules would have sufficed to alert her that Bell’s claims had not been resolved in full, and thus that the final judgment had been entered erronеously. Yet Bell filed no motion.
Instead, Bell sought appellate review, filing a notice of appeal, and asking us to review (as detailed above) vari- ous rulings made by the district judge. However, 28 U.S.C. § 1291 grants us “jurisdiction оf appeals from all final decisions of the district courts of the United States.” And a decision is not final “unless it ends the litigation on the merits.” Cunningham v. Hamilton County , 527 U.S. 198, 204 (1999). In other words, “[a] district court’s deci- sion is final when only ministerial details remain.” Man- ley v. City of Chicago , 236 F.3d 392, 395 (7th Cir. 2001). That clearly is not the case here, as the issue of injunctive relief remains undecided.
Moreover, the order entered by the district court pur- porting to be a “final judgment” is of no consequence. As we hаve said, “a district court’s label cannot convert an otherwise non-final judgment into a final judgment.” Du- bicz v. Commonwealth Edison Co. , 377 F.3d 787, 792 (7th Cir. 2004). “A district court’s decision is a final judgment only when the decision meets the requirements for being a final judgment.” Id. at 791. Here, thоse requirements were not met. Accordingly, we have no jurisdiction to decide the issues presented by Bell in this appeal. [1]
III. Conclusion For the foregoing reasons, we D ISMISS this appeal for lack of jurisdiction and R EMAND tо the district court for resolution of the outstanding issues identified in this opinion.
Notes
[1] The defendants argue that “in the event [we] affirm[] the district
court’s summary judgment ruling, the issue of declaratory relief be-
comes moot,” becаuse the photos have been removed from their re-
spective websites. Setting aside the defendants’ overly simplistic
view of mootness, s
ee e.g.
,
Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl.
Servs. (TOC), Inc.
,