Opinion
No. 01 C 9393
December 28, 2001
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
After Eric Ralford ("Ralford") had submitted a self-prepared Complaint of Employment Discrimination against his former employer Fantastic Sams, using the form provided by this District Court's Clerk's Office for use by pro se litigants, this Court both (1) appointed an attorney to represent Ralford and (2) asked Ralford or his counsel to provide photocopies of Ralford's Charge of Discrimination ("Charge") and EEOC's right-to-sue letter (neither of which had been attached to the Complaint, despite its directives to do so). Those documents have now been tendered, and they appear to require the threshold dismissal of this action.
According to the Charge, Ralford's termination date of May 14, 2000 quite understandably represented the last date on which he was the victim of asserted sex and color discrimination by Fantastic Sams. But the Charge reflects that Ralford did not sign it until April 18, 2001 — and though EEOC's date stamp is unclear from the photocopy delivered to this Court, the Charge seems to have been filed the next day.
Those dates have confirmed as a factual matter a defect that this Court had noted in the Complaint, but that it thought might simply have been attributable to a mistake on the part of nonlawyer Ralford in filling in the blanks in the form Complaint ¶¶ 6 and 7(a): the Charge's having been filed outside of the 300-day limitation period established by 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5 (e)(1). Accordingly, unless Ralford's appointed counsel files in this Court's chambers on or before January 14, 2002 an explanation as to why dismissal is not in order, this Court will be constrained to dismiss this action because of Ralford's failure to have conformed to the statutory precondition of a timely filing of his Charge.