CHICAGO (LN) — A federal magistrate judge in the Central District of Illinois on Thursday granted an electrician leave to amend his disability-discrimination complaint against Mueller Water Products and its subsidiary, ruling that the defendants' futility arguments were premature and that denying a first amendment would carry a high risk of being deemed an abuse of discretion.
Jonathon Wells, who began working for Mueller Co. LLC as an electrician in spring 2024, was suspended a year and a half later for reasons he alleges violated the FMLA and the ADA. He sued both Mueller Co. LLC and its parent, Mueller Water Products, Inc., asserting two violations of each. His complaint largely survived a motion to dismiss, but his ADA claims against Mueller Co. LLC were dismissed because Wells had named only "Mueller Water Products, LLC" — not Mueller Co. LLC — in his administrative charge with the Illinois Department of Human Rights.
The court's earlier order left open a path back. Under the Seventh Circuit's Eggleston doctrine, the failure to name a party in an administrative charge does not bar a later suit if that party had notice of the charge and an opportunity to participate in conciliation proceedings. The problem, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Hanna explained ruling, was that Wells had not alleged enough facts to make Eggleston's application plausible.
Wells's amended complaint tries to fill that gap. It alleges that his employment documents left uncertain which entity was his true employer, that both Mueller entities "share a common workplace facility, human resources infrastructure, and personnel administration system," and that both "share common legal counsel."
Mueller Water Products and Mueller Co. LLC pushed back on two fronts. They argued first that the defect "arises from the administrative process itself" and therefore cannot be cured through amendment — a position Hanna flatly rejected. The court's prior dismissal was without prejudice precisely because it was Wells's pleading, not his administrative charge, that fell short. If Eggleston applies, Hanna wrote, any defect is beside the point.
The defendants also argued that the court had already resolved the exhaustion question. Hanna disagreed, noting that the earlier order dismissed the claims without prejudice and that the court had not yet evaluated whether the new factual allegations plausibly bring the case within Eggleston's reach.
On futility, Hanna declined to conduct that analysis at the amendment stage, citing a line of district court decisions holding that futility arguments are better addressed through a motion to dismiss with full briefing. The Seventh Circuit's standard requires futility to be "certain from the face" of the amended complaint — a bar the defendants did not clear.
The defendants' prejudice argument fared no better. Hanna observed that Wells's decision to oppose the motion to dismiss rather than amend immediately was reasonable given that six of his eight claims survived, and that the defendants would still have been required to either renew their motion to dismiss or file an answer regardless of when Wells amended. The amendment, Hanna wrote, did not impose any more prejudice than the ordinary burden of litigation.
Wells has seven days from Thursday's order to file his amended complaint on the docket. All defendants must then respond to the amended complaint — with the dispute now narrowed to the single question of whether Eggleston applies.