Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-azd-2_06-cv-01784/USCOURTS-azd-2_06-cv-01784-4/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Prisoner Civil Rights

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WO BL

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

Edward Goldwater, 

Plaintiff, 

vs.

Joseph Arpaio,

Defendant. 

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No. CV 06-1784-PHX-SMM (DKD)

ORDER

Plaintiff Edward Goldwater filed an action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against

Joseph Arpaio, Sheriff of Maricopa County (Doc. #6). Defendant thereafter filed a Motion

to Dismiss Plaintiff's Complaint. (Doc. #11). After careful consideration, the Court will grant

Defendant’s motion. 

I. Background

In his Complaint dated July 11, 2006, Plaintiff alleged that his constitutional rights

were violated by Defendant during his incarceration in the Maricopa County Madison Street

Jail (Docs. ##1, 6) by virtue of (1) overcrowding; (2) an inadequate and tainted diet; and (3)

deliberate indifference to his medical needs (Doc. #6). Defendant moved to dismiss the

action on the grounds that it is barred by the requisite statute of limitations and because

Plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies (Doc. #11). 

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II. Motion to Dismiss

A. Failure to Exhaust

Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a prisoner may

not bring a lawsuit with respect to prison conditions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 unless all

available administrative remedies are exhausted. See Roles v. Maddox, 439 F.3d 1016, 1017

(9th Cir.), cert denied 127 S.Ct. 232 (2006). Exhaustion is mandated “regardless of the relief

offered through administrative procedures.” Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 741 (2001).

It is required in all inmate suits regarding prison life. Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 523

(2002). To be “properly exhausted,” the prisoner “must complete the administrative review

process in accordance with the applicable rules, including deadlines, as a precondition to

bringing suit in federal court.” Woodford v. Ngo, 126 S.Ct. 2378, 2384 (2006). 

 Defendant bears the burden of raising and proving the absence of exhaustion. Wyatt

v. Terhune, 315 F.3d 1108, 1119 (9th Cir. 2003). The Court considers exhaustion as a matter

of abatement in an unenumerated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b) motion and “may

look beyond the pleadings and decide disputed issues of fact.” Id. at 1119-20. The Court has

broad discretion as to the method to be used in resolving the factual dispute. Ritza v. Int’l

Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union, 837 F.2d 365, 369 (9th Cir. 1988). 

An inmate should seek to resolve a conflict through the Maricopa County Jail

System’s Inmate Grievance Procedures. An inmate who wishes to file a grievance will be

provided a Grievance Form upon request and must submit the form to a detention officer.

The unresolved grievance is forwarded to the Shift Supervisor, and then to the Hearing

Officer. If the Hearing Officer is unable to resolve the grievance, the inmate may appeal his

decision to the jail commander, whose decision may be appealed to an External Referee. The

External Referee’s decision is final (Doc. #11, ex. 1, attach. A).

If the inmate seeks to file a grievance regarding medical, dental, or psychiatric

diagnoses, treatment, or care, the Hearing Officer promptly forwards the complaint to the

charge nurse, who will respond to the inmate. The inmate may appeal the charge nurse’s

decision by filing an External Grievance Appeal, which is forwarded to the Contracted

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Health Services Legal Liaison. The Legal Liaison’s decision is final (Id.). Sergeant Susan

Fisher attested that during Plaintiff’s incarceration in Maricopa County jails in November

2002, he failed to file any inmate grievances (Id., ex. 1).

Plaintiff responded by arguing that he was originally arrested in 1999 at which time

he submitted inmate grievances (Doc. #14). Plaintiff maintained that Fisher’s affidavit is

false (Id.). Plaintiff indicated that he filed multiple grievances, all of which were contained

in a box that was confiscated during a search (Id.). Plaintiff contended that with regard to

his medical claim, he was transferred to the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC)

before he could timely file an inmate grievance (Id.). Plaintiff introduced (1) various Inmate

Medical Requests; (2) an inmate grievance form in which he complained about a tooth ache,

which was resolved at the Jail Commander Level; and (3) inmate grievances in which he

complained about the food, which were resolved at or before the Bureau Hearing Officer

Level (Id.).

Plaintiff’s evidence does not support a conclusion that Fisher’s affidavit was false.

Fisher attested that Plaintiff did not file any inmate grievances in November 2002. Plaintiff

provided no evidence supporting a conclusion otherwise. Moreover, Plaintiff has not

presented any evidence and nor does the record support his contention that he fully exhausted

or grieved any of his claims. The record also demonstrates that Plaintiff had no available

remedies as to his claim of deliberate indifference to his medical needs. Plaintiff alleged that

he received inadequate medical treatment and then was immediately transferred to ADC

custody. However, the grievance policies do not provide for Plaintiff to file grievances

subsequent to being transferred. Accordingly, Defendant is not entitled to a dismissal of

Plaintiff’s claim of deliberate indifference to his medical needs based on his alleged failure

to exhaust his administrative remedies because there were no administrative remedies

available to Plaintiff at that time. Moreover, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to

the Plaintiff as the Court is bound to do the Court will address Defendant's argument that

Plaintiff’s action is barred by the requisite statute of limitations period. 

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B. Statute of Limitations

1. Lost Documents

In ruling on whether to dismiss an action as time-barred, the Court accepts “all factual

allegations of the complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party.” Morales v. City of Los Angeles, 214 F.3d 1151, 1153 (9th Cir. 2000). The

Court may grant a “motion to dismiss on statute of limitations grounds ‘only if the assertions

of the complaint, read with the required liberality, would not permit the plaintiff to prove that

the statute was tolled.’” Id. (internal quotations omitted).

Plaintiff contends that equitable tolling applies from May 2002 through June 2006,

because during that time period, Plaintiff did not have access to three of six “legal boxes”.

According to Plaintiff, in May 2002, the prison conducted a quarterly shakedown (search)

of his cell, during which time guards found a paperclips in one of his six legal boxes.

Because paperclips may be considered contraband, all six boxes were removed from his cell

for a more thorough search. Two weeks later, Plaintiff received three boxes back with a

verbal reprimand for possessing paperclips. He was told that the other three boxes were

destroyed because they contained contraband. However, in June 2006, Petitioner was asked

to pick up two of the three boxes he was previously told had been destroyed. The third box

remains "missing.” The two recovered boxes allegedly contain information relevant to the

matter presently before the Court.

Plaintiff has failed to establish why the confiscation of the boxes is relevant to the

tolling a civil action. Furthermore, even assuming that the confiscation amounted to

misconduct on the part of officers, Plaintiff has failed to show that any such alleged

misconduct proximately caused him to fail to file the instant action in a timely manner.

Notwithstanding the allegation that three boxes of Petitioner’s legal documents were missing

between May 2002 and June 2006, Plaintiff still managed to file the following criminal

documents in state court with respect to CR99-011600: a pro se petition for review of his

first Petition for PCR on December 18, 2002; a second pro se PCR notice and Petition on

June 19, 2003; a pro se petition for review on August 15, 2003; a third pro se PCR Notice

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Moreover, according to the Court's records, during the period of time that Plaintiff claims

he was unable to file the instant action, Plaintiff managed to file numerous other civil documents

with the Court. See cases numbered 00-835-SMM-DKD; 00-1093-SMM-DKD; 01-1203-SMMDKD; 01-2092-SMM-DKD; 03-0271-SMM-DKD. Furthermore, Mr. Goldwater has been a named

Plaintiff in twenty actions in this Court since 1995. 

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on December 12, 2003; and a pro se petition for review on January 23, 2004. Moreover,

Plaintiff filed and amended a Petition on June 29, 2005 and September 25, 2005 – eleven and

nine months before two of his three boxes were recovered.1

 Given this evidence,

Petitioner’s bare assertion that he was unable to “fight [his] legal cases” because three boxes

of documents were missing between May 2002 and June 2006 fails to demonstrate a causal

relationship between the missing boxes and his failure to timely file a civil action for which

a Complaint requires no citation to case law and, furthermore, does not require the

attachment of any evidence or documentation that may allegedly be stored in a missing box.

Each of Plaintiff's arguments for tolling calls for an unprecedented extension of the

principles of equitable tolling, which this Court must reject under prevailing Ninth Circuit

jurisprudence. See Spitsyn v. Moore, 345 F.3d 796, 799 (9th Cir. 2003) (“[e]quitable tolling

is justified in few cases,” and “the threshold necessary to trigger equitable tolling [under

AEDPA] is very high, lest the exceptions swallow the rule”) (alteration in original).

2. Unsound Mind

“Section 1983 does not contain its own statute of limitations.” TwoRivers v. Lewis,

174 F.3d 987, 991 (9th Cir. 1998). Therefore, the Court borrows Arizona’s two year statute

of limitations. Id. “A claim accrues when the plaintiff knows or has reason to know of the

injury which is the basis of the action.” Id. The Court also borrows Arizona’s tolling rules.

Id. at 992. Under Arizona law, the limitations period may toll when the plaintiff is of

unsound mind, that is, when the “person is unable to manage his affairs or to understand his

legal rights or liabilities.” Doe v. Roe, 191 Ariz. 313, 326, 955 P.2d 951, 964 (Ariz. 1988).

However, in order to demonstrate that he is entitled to the tolling of the limitations period due

to unsound mind, the plaintiff must come forth with “specific facts—hard

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evidence—supporting the conclusion of unsound mind,” and may not simply rely on

conclusory averments. Id

In support of his claim of unsound mind, Plaintiff argued that he was physically

abused by his wife and thus “non corpus mentis” (Docs. ##14, 17). Plaintiff filed a pleading

with the Court which he referred to as “Plaintiff’s proof that he is non corpus mentis”. He

notified the Court that he was releasing all of his medical and psychiatric records to the Court

(Doc. #17). Plaintiff, however, has not provided the Court with any of these records.

Plaintiff merely stated that he was unable to file the action due to his mental disability, but

has provided no evidence supporting that averment. Thus, because Plaintiff has not come

forth with “specific facts—hard evidence—supporting the conclusion of unsound mind,” see

Doe, 191 Ariz. at 326, 955 P.2d at 964, he has failed to demonstrate that the limitations

period tolled during any period of alleged mental incapacity. Accordingly, Defendant’s

Motion to Dismiss Plaintiff's Complaint as time-barred will be GRANTED.

III. Conclusion

Accordingly,

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss (Doc. # 11) is

GRANTED. 

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Clerk of Court shall enter a judgment of

dismissal accordingly.

DATED this 30th day of May, 2007.

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