Opinion
No. 02 C 9448
January 13, 2003
MEMORANDUM ORDER
Promptly after the assignment to this Court's calendar of this action, which had been removed by defendant Bank One, N.A. ("Bank One") from the Circuit Court of Cook County to this District Court, this Court issued a brief memorandum that (1) referred to numerous actions that had previously been tiled by Stephanie McCallum or the McCallum Estate or both against Bank One and (2) raised the question whether one or more of those already-closed cases barred the current action under claim preclusion principles. McCallum and the Estate of McCallum were accordingly granted until January 23, 2003 to file a suitable explanation in that respect.
What McCallum has filed instead is a self-prepared Notice at Motion that asks this Court "to deny the request for removal" of this case as assertedly "not in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Proceedure [sic]." But that Notice goes on to say that various of the earlier cases that were referred to in this Court's earlier memorandum "were dismissed without a proper chance to here [sic] the appeal of these cases" and, more significantly for present purposes, also goes on to state:
Res judicata is obvious in these cases that have already been filed.
Despite McCallum's obvious lack of understanding of both procedure and substance (something that is not surprising on the part of a nonlawyer), her Notice has (perhaps inadvertently) confirmed the difficulty that this Court had anticipated in its earlier memorandum. It is plain from McCallum's own assertions that this action does attempt to relitigate matters that were addressed or could have been addressed in one or more of her earlier lawsuits, so that a dismissal of this action on claim preclusion grounds is appropriate. This Court so orders.