Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-casd-3_15-cv-02445/USCOURTS-casd-3_15-cv-02445-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 42:1983pr Prisoner Civil Rights

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

James John McBride,

Plaintiff,

v.

D. Servantes, et al.,

Defendants.

Case No.: 15-cv-02445-LAB-JLB

Report and Recommendation 

[ECF No. 15]

Plaintiff James John McBride is a prisoner currently incarcerated at California 

State Prison – Los Angeles County, California, and is proceeding pro se in this civil 

action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Defendants1are all correctional or medical care 

officials employed at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility where Plaintiff was 

incarcerated in 2015. (ECF No. 1, Cpl.)

Currently pending before this Court is Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment 

for Failure to Exhaust Administrative Remedies filed pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 56. (ECF No. 15.) The Court submits this Report and Recommendation to 

United States District Judge Larry Alan Burns pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §636(b)(1) and 

Local Civil Rule 72.1 of the United States District Court for the Southern District of 

 

1 The term “Defendants” refers to all named defendants: G. Casian, K. Challakere, E. Iheanacho, D. 

Onate, E. Sandoval, D. Servantes, and A. Vanderslipe.

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California. After a thorough review of the motion papers and evidence filed in support 

thereof, this Court RECOMMENDS Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment (ECF 

No. 15) be GRANTED.

I. Procedural History

On February 18, 2016, the District Court granted Plaintiff’s Motion to Proceed In 

Forma Pauperis pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a). (ECF No. 4.) The Court also screened 

Plaintiff’s Complaint as required by 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2) and § 1915A(b) and found 

that his Complaint contained excessive force and medical care claims sufficient to 

overcome the “low threshold” for surviving the initial sua sponte screening process. (See 

id.)

On June 6, 2016, Defendants filed a Motion for Summary Judgment pursuant to

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 based on Plaintiff’s failure to properly exhaust

available administrative remedies prior to filing suit as required by 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a).

(ECF No. 15.) The Court notified Plaintiff of the deadline and requirements for filing an 

opposition to the pending summary judgment motion. (ECF No. 16.)

The deadline for Plaintiff to file an opposition (and for Defendants to file a reply)

was later extended by approximately 30 days to allow Plaintiff time to respond to 

Defendants’ motion with evidence. (ECF No. 20.) Plaintiff was given until August 2,

2016, to file an opposition to Defendants’ motion but that time has since passed and 

Plaintiff has not filed an opposition. Therefore, Defendants have not filed a reply.

After a careful review of Defendants’ Motion, as well as all evidence submitted, 

the Court RECOMMENDS Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment be GRANTED

based on Plaintiff’s failure to exhaust his administrative remedies as explained below.

II. Plaintiff’s Factual Allegations

Plaintiff alleges that on August 15, 2015, Sergeant Servantes and Officers

Vanderslipe, Sandoval, and Iheanacho used excessive force on him. He alleges that 

Sergeant Servantes beat him, using a baton and his hands and feet. (ECF No. 1 at 1, 4.)

He alleges that Officer Vanderslipe punched and kicked him, jumped up and down on his 

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back, and held him while Sergeant Servantes beat him. (Id.) He alleges that Officer 

Sandoval punched and kicked him and held him while Sergeant Servantes beat him. (Id.)

He alleges that Officer Iheanacho struck and kicked him and raped him by penetrating his 

anus with his fingers. (Id.) Plaintiff claims that as a result of these beatings and rape, he 

suffered upper and lower back pain and injury, head injury, hand and wrist injury, and 

embarrassment, shame, and mental anguish. (Id.)

Plaintiff further alleges that Dr. Casian failed to supervise medical staff and failed 

to prevent him from receiving an overdose of drugs. (ECF No. 1 at 5.) Plaintiff also 

alleges that Dr. Casian followed the directive of non-medical staff to administer lethal 

amounts of drugs into his system. (Id.) Plaintiff alleges that Dr. Challakere ordered 

Nurse Onate to give him multiple injections of drugs against his will, causing him to 

overdose and have to be taken to an outside hospital, where he remained in a coma. (Id.)

He further alleges that Nurse Onate injected him with an overdose of multiple drugs, 

causing overdose and coma. (Id.)

III. Defendants’ Motion

Defendants seek summary judgment on the ground that “Plaintiff failed to exhaust 

administrative remedies before filing suit.” (ECF No. 15-1 at 2.)

A. Legal Standards

1. Statutory Exhaustion Requirement

Pursuant to the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (“PLRA”), “[n]o action shall

be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other

Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until

such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). 

This statutory exhaustion requirement applies to all inmate suits about prison life, Porter

v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 532 (2002) (quotation marks omitted), regardless of the relief

sought by the prisoner or the relief offered by the process. Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S.

731, 741 (2001).

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“Proper exhaustion demands compliance with an agency’s deadlines and other 

critical procedural rules[.]” Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 90 (2006). “[T]o properly 

exhaust administrative remedies prisoners must ‘complete the administrative review 

process in accordance with the applicable procedural rules,’ . . . -rules that are defined not 

by the PLRA, but by the prison grievance process itself.” Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199,

218 (2007) (quoting Woodford, 548 U.S. at 88). See also Marella v. Terhune, 568 F.3d

1024, 1027 (9th Cir. 2009) (“The California prison system’s requirements ‘define the

boundaries of proper exhaustion.’”) (quoting Jones, 549 U.S. at 218). 

The only recognized limitation on the exhaustion requirement is that the 

administrative remedies must be available to the prisoner. “Courts may not engraft an 

unwritten ‘special circumstances’ exception onto the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement.

The only limit to § 1997e(a)’s mandate is the one baked into its text: An inmate need 

exhaust only such administrative remedies as are ‘available.’” Ross v. Blake, 136 S. Ct. 

1850, 1862 (2016). Indeed, “the PLRA requires only that a prisoner exhaust available 

remedies, and [] a failure to exhaust a remedy that is effectively unavailable does not bar 

a claim from being heard in federal court.” McBride v. Lopez, 807 F.3d 982, 986 (9th 

Cir. 2015) (citing Nunez v. Duncan, 591 F.3d 1217, 1225-26 (9th Cir. 2010); Sapp v. 

Kimbrell, 623 F.3d 813, 823 (9th Cir. 2010); Albino v. Baca, 747 F.3d 1162, 1177 (9th 

Cir. 2014) (en banc). “To be available, a remedy must be available ‘as a practical

matter’; it must be ‘capable of use; at hand.’” Albino, 747 F.3d at 1171.

Because the failure to exhaust is an affirmative defense, Defendants bear the

burden of raising it and proving its absence. Jones, 549 U.S. at 216; Albino, 747 F.3d at 

1166. “In the rare event that a failure to exhaust is clear on the face of the complaint, a 

defendant may move for dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6).” Albino, 747 F.3d at 1166. 

Otherwise, Defendants must produce evidence proving the Plaintiff’s failure to exhaust, 

and they are entitled to summary judgment under Rule 56 only if the undisputed

evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff, shows he failed to exhaust.

Id.

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2. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 Summary Judgment

Any party may move for summary judgment, and the Court must grant summary

judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and

the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a) (quotation

marks omitted); Albino, 747 F.3d at 1166. Each party’s position, whether a fact is

disputed or undisputed, must be supported by: (1) citing to particular parts of materials in

the record, including but not limited to depositions, documents, declarations, or

discovery; or (2) showing that the materials cited do not establish the presence or absence

of a genuine dispute or that the opposing party cannot produce admissible evidence to

support the fact. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56 (c)(1) (quotation marks omitted). The Court may

consider other materials in the record not cited to by the parties, although it is not

required to do so. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c)(3).

When defendants seek summary judgment based on the plaintiff’s failure to 

exhaust, they “must first prove that there was an available administrative remedy and that 

the prisoner [plaintiff] did not exhaust that available remedy.” Williams v. Paramo, 775

F.3d 1182, 1191 (9th Cir. 2015) (citing Albino, 747 F.3d at 1172). If defendants meet 

this burden, then “the burden shifts to the plaintiff who must show that there is something

particular in his case that made the existing and generally available administrative

remedies effectively unavailable to him by ‘showing that the local remedies were

ineffective, unobtainable, unduly prolonged, inadequate, or obviously futile.’” Williams, 

775 F.3d at 1191; see also McBride, 807 F.3d at 984 (citing “certain limited

circumstances where the intervening actions or conduct by prison officials [may] render 

the inmate grievance procedure unavailable”).

“If undisputed evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the prisoner shows a 

failure to exhaust, a defendant is entitled to summary judgment under Rule 56.” Albino, 

747 F.3d at 1166. However, “[i]f material facts are disputed, summary judgment should 

be denied, and the district judge rather than a jury should determine the facts.” Id.

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3. Administrative Requirements of the California Department of 

Corrections and Rehabilitation

In a PLRA suit, the court may consider only claims that meet the particular 

administrative exhaustion requirements of the particular state’s prison system. Jones v. 

Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 218 (2007). In California, those administrative exhaustion 

requirements are described in Title 15 of the California Code of Regulations. The 

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation provides its inmates with an 

administrative appeal process whereby an inmate “may appeal any policy, decision, 

action, condition, or omission by the department or its staff that the inmate or parolee can 

demonstrate as having a material adverse effect upon his or her health, safety, or 

welfare.” 2 Cal. Code Regs. tit. 15, § 3084.1(a). The appeal process includes up to three 

levels of administrative review, and an inmate’s administrative remedies for a claim are 

not deemed exhausted until the claim is “addressed through all required levels of

administrative review up to and including the third level.” Cal. Code Regs. tit. 15, 

§ 3084.1 (“all appeals are subject to a third level of review, as described in section 

3084.7, before administrative remedies are deemed exhausted”).

B. Plaintiff’s Record of Grievances

Defendants argue that their motion for summary judgment should be granted 

because Plaintiff filed this lawsuit before the administrative exhaustion process was 

complete.

As set forth in greater detail herein, the PLRA’s statutory exhaustion requirement 

is clear. If administrative remedies were available to the prisoner presuit, then “a district 

court must dismiss a case without prejudice ‘when there is no presuit exhaustion,’ even if 

there is exhaustion while suit is pending.” Lira v. Herrera, 427 F.3d 1164, 1170 (9th Cir. 

 

2

“Department means the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.” Cal. Code Regs. tit. 

15, § 3000.

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2005); see also Ross, 136 S. Ct. at 1862 (“Courts may not engraft an unwritten ‘special 

circumstances’ exception onto the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement.”).

In support of their argument that Plaintiff failed to properly exhaust his claims in 

this action through the available administrative appeal process, Defendants supply the 

declarations of B. Self, Appeals Coordinator at R.J. Donovan (ECF No. 15-2); M. Voong, 

the Chief of the Office of Appeals for CDCR in Sacramento, California (ECF Nos. 15-3

and 15-4); D. Van Buren, Health Care Appeals Coordinator at R.J. Donovan (ECF No. 

15-6); and R. Robinson, Chief of Inmate Correspondence and Appeals Branch (ECF No. 

15-5). These declarations are undisputed and show that Plaintiff lodged four grievances 

with the prison related to the allegations in his complaint. Before filing suit, three levels 

of administrative review were both required and available to Plaintiff for his grievances. 

Id.; Cal. Code Regs. tit. 15, § 3084.1. Yet, Petitioner did not receive third level decisions 

on any of his relevant grievances prior to filing this lawsuit. Three of the four grievances 

received third level decisions from the prison months after Plaintiff filed this lawsuit,3

and as of the date of Defendants’ motion for summary judgment, the fourth had not yet 

been presented for third level review.4 Thus, Plaintiff failed to complete the exhaustion 

process for any of his claims before he filed this lawsuit.5 Therefore, Defendants have 

met their Rule 56 burden to show there was an available administrative remedy for 

Plaintiff’s claims and that Plaintiff did not exhaust that available remedy before filing this 

lawsuit. 

 

3 These grievances were assigned Appeal Log No. RJD-B-15-02874, Health Care Appeal Log No. RJDHC-15053861, and Health Care Appeal Log No. RJD-HC-015054070. (See ECF No. 15-1 at 5-8.) 

Health Care Appeal Log No. RJD-HC-015054070 was deemed to be a duplicate of Health Care Appeal 

Log No. RJD-HC-15053861. (ECF No. 15-6 at 21.)

4 This grievance was assigned Appeal Log. No. RJD-B-15-03195. (See ECF No. 15-1 at 6.) 

5 Defendants also raise purported deficiencies with each grievance, such as Plaintiff’s expansion of his 

claims and failure to name Defendant Iheanacho and certain medical staff members his grievances. 

(See, e.g., ECF No. 15-7 at 2-5.) However, in light Plaintiff’s failure to exhaust any of his grievances

prior to filing this lawsuit, the Court declines to address the merits of the deficiencies identified.

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In order to defeat a properly supported motion seeking summary judgment based

on a prisoner’s failure to exhaust pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), Plaintiff must “come

forward with evidence showing” either that he has properly exhausted all available

administrative remedies before filing suit, or that “there is something in his particular

case that made the existing and generally available administrative remedies effectively

unavailable to him.” Williams, 775 F.3d at 1191; Jones, 549 U.S. at 218. Plaintiff did 

not file an opposition in this matter and provides no evidence to contradict Defendants’

evidence showing non-exhaustion. The only document before the Court reflecting 

Plaintiff’s position with respect to exhaustion is his complaint. In his complaint, Plaintiff

pleads that he exhausted his administrative remedies “by means of Appeal Form 602 and 

the process continues as a matter of law regarding – Plata. Still pending in the 9th Circuit 

Court of Appeals.”

6

 (ECF No. 1 at 8.) This incomplete and contradictory assertion fails 

to meet Plaintiff’s burden to present evidence raising a genuine issue of material fact that 

either exhaustion occurred or should be excused because administrative remedies were 

effectively unavailable to him at the time he filed this lawsuit.

Therefore, based on the record before the Court, the Court concludes that 

Defendants have met “their burden of demonstrating a system of available administrative 

remedies at the initial step of the Albino burden-shifting inquiry.” Williams, 775 F.3d at 

1192. Defendants have presented evidence showing that the administrative remedies 

were available to Plaintiff, that Plaintiff was aware of the remedies, and that Plaintiff 

failed to properly exhaust his administrative remedies. Plaintiff failed to submit evidence 

showing the presence of a genuine dispute as to any material fact regarding his failure to 

exhaust available remedies prior to filing this lawsuit.

 

6 The significance or meaning of “Plata” is unknown.

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 Therefore, the Court concludes that Defendants are entitled to summary judgment 

based on Plaintiff’s failure to exhaust his available administrative remedies before filing 

this action as required by 42 U.S.C. § 1997e.

IV. Conclusion

The Court submits this Report and Recommendation to United States District

Judge Larry Alan Burns pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §636(b)(1) and Local Civil Rule 72.1 of

the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. For the reasons

outlined above, IT IS HEREBY RECOMMENDED that the Court issue an Order: 

(1) approving and adopting this Report and Recommendation; and (2) GRANTING

Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment (ECF No. 15).

IT IS ORDERED that no later than September 2, 2016, any party to this action 

may file written objections with the Court and serve a copy on all parties. The document 

should be captioned “Objections to Report and Recommendation.”

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that any reply to the objections shall be filed with the 

Court and served on all parties no later than September 13, 2016. The parties are 

advised that failure to file objections within the specified time may waive the right to 

raise those objections on appeal of the Court’s order. See Turner v. Duncan, 158 F.3d 

449, 455 (9th Cir. 1998); Martinez v. Ylst, 951 F.2d 1153, 1156 (9th Cir. 1991).

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: August 12, 2016

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