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Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted October 27, 2016*

Decided October 28, 2016

Before

     RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

     JOEL M. FLAUM, Circuit Judge

     KENNETH F. RIPPLE, Circuit Judge

No. 15‐3888

DENNIS TONN,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

MICHAEL MEISNER, et al.,

Defendants‐Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Western District of

Wisconsin.

No. 14‐cv‐481‐jdp

James D. Peterson,

Judge.

O R D E R

Dennis Tonn, a Wisconsin inmate formerly incarcerated at Columbia Correctional

Institution, sued several prison officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for due process violations

in connection with restitution he was ordered to pay after being found to possess

medication that was not prescribed to him. The district court concluded that he failed to

exhaust administrative remedies and granted summary judgment against him. We

                                                 

* We have unanimously agreed to decide the case without oral argument because

the briefs and record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral

argument would not significantly aid the court. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 15‐3888    Page 2

affirm because we agree that Tonn did not follow the required administrative

procedures for filing his complaint.

In July 2013, a correctional officer found Tonn incoherent in his cell. Prison staff

took him to a local hospital, where he tested positive for a tricyclic antidepressant and

for Suboxone, a narcotic. Because neither medication belonged to Tonn, he was found

guilty by a disciplinary committee on July 29, 2013 for misusing prescription medication.

The committee ordered Tonn to serve 90 days in the segregation unit and to pay $1,350

to compensate the institution for the cost of his trip to the hospital. According to the

committee, the restitution amount was based on the costs of other inmates’ trips to the

hospital under similar circumstances.

The Prison Litigation and Reform Act, see 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), requires prisoners

to exhaust available administrative remedies before suing to challenge a prison’s

violation of their constitutional rights. See Ross v. Blake, 136 S.Ct. 1850, 1854–55 (2016). In

Wisconsin, a prisoner raising an issue related to a disciplinary hearing must first file an

appeal with his institution’s warden within 10 days of receiving a copy of the decision.

See WIS. ADMIN. CODE § DOC 303.82(1).1 After the appeal to the warden is complete, the

prisoner may then use the inmate complaint review system to appeal any procedural

errors. Id. § DOC 310.08(3). Under this process, the prisoner files a complaint with the

inmate complaint examiner within 14 calendar days of the occurrence giving rise to the

complaint. Id. § DOC 310.09(6). The inmate complaint examiner must review the

complaint—and a reviewing authority such as the warden must issue a decision—before

the prisoner may appeal further to the corrections complaint examiner. Id. § DOC

310.13(1).

The day after his disciplinary hearing, Tonn made two separate challenges to the

committee’s decision. The first challenge followed the correct administrative procedure:

he appealed to the then‐warden, Defendant Michael Meisner, and objected to the

committee’s guilty finding. In that challenge, however, he did not contest the restitution

order or the means by which the committee had calculated the amount. On September 21

the warden upheld the committee’s determination, adding that Tonn had not noted any

procedural errors.

As for Tonn’s second challenge, he filed it with the corrections complaint

examiner, repeating his disagreement with the guilty finding and objecting that the

                                                 

1This provision was formerly 303.76(7) prior to the December 2014 revisions to the

Wis. Admin. Code § DOC.

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decision to assess restitution based on the cost of other inmates’ hospital trips was “not

right.” Two weeks later, on August 14, 2013, the corrections complaint examiner

returned Tonn’s submission, explaining that “[o]ffender complaint issues are first raised

at the institution level and then if you are dissatisfied with the appropriate reviewing

authority decision, you may within 10 calendar days after the [reviewing authority’s]

decision submit an appeal to the [corrections complaint examiner] for an appeal review.”

At this point, however, Tonn could no longer make a timely appeal to the warden over

restitution because more than 14 days had lapsed since the disciplinary hearing.   

About seven months later, in March 2014, Tonn filed two grievances through the

inmate complaint review system regarding the restitution payment, but the institution

complaint examiner rejected those grievances as untimely, since they were submitted

“beyond 14 calendar day limit.” Tonn appealed these grievances to the warden, who

determined that the complaints had been properly rejected.   

Tonn then filed this § 1983 suit in federal court, asserting that his sanction of 90‐ 

days’ segregation and $1,350 in restitution violated his due process rights (because he

was ordered to pay restitution without sufficient evidence of the true restitution

amount) and double jeopardy rights (because both restitution and time in segregated

confinement were imposed as punishment for his infraction). The district court

dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim. On appeal, we upheld the dismissal

of the double jeopardy claim but vacated the dismissal of Tonn’s due process claim

regarding restitution because he adequately alleged that the restitution order was not

supported by any evidence.   

The district court then granted Tonn leave to proceed on his due process claim,

after which he moved for appointment of counsel. The district court denied Tonn’s

motion, however, because it found that Tonn’s submissions reflected he was capable of

litigating the case himself.   

After further briefing by both sides, the defendants moved for summary

judgment based on Tonn’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The district court

granted the motion; it explained that Tonn’s appeal of his discipline to the warden did

not address the matter of restitution, and the prison officials properly rejected his other

attempts through the inmate complaint review system to contest the restitution amount.

That said, the court expressed misgivings with the manner in which the prison had

“ballparked” the costs of Tonn’s hospitalization without documenting its actual

out‐of‐pocket expenses.

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Tonn then moved for reconsideration. He argued in his motion that the 14‐day

limit for filing inmate grievances did not apply to violations such as his that were

ongoing; his were ongoing, he maintained, because the prison continued to deduct

restitution payments from his account. But the district court rejected that argument on

the basis that the constitutional violation Tonn was challenging — the disciplinary

hearing decision — occurred in July 2013 and therefore could not be ongoing.   

On appeal Tonn asserts generally that he must have exhausted his administrative

remedies because the grievances he filed in 2014 eventually were seen by the warden.

But the warden did not decide the 2014 grievances on the merits. Rather, he simply

signed his name as the reviewing authority agreeing that the institution complaint

examiner appropriately rejected the complaint as untimely. As the district court

properly explained, Tonn had only 14 days from the date of his disciplinary hearing to

present the warden with his restitution challenge, and his later grievances that did

challenge the restitution amount were untimely by many months. Tonn did not follow

the required procedures for filing his complaint, and therefore failed to exhaust his

administrative remedies. See Pozo v. McCaughtry, 286 F.3d 1022, 1025 (7th Cir. 2002) (to

meet the exhaustion requirements of 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), prisoners “must file

complaints and appeals in the place, and at the time, the prison’s administrative rules

require”); Pavey v. Conley, 663 F.3d 899, 906 (7th Cir. 2011).

Tonn also contends that the district court abused its discretion in failing to recruit

counsel because he “is not a lawyer and has no litigation skills.” But the district court

complied with the requirements of Pruitt v. Mote, 503 F.3d 647, 649 (7th Cir. 2007), and

reasonably declined the request. A court must consider “both the difficulty of the case

and the pro se plaintiffʹs competence to litigate it himself.” Id. Here, the district court

noted that Tonn’s submissions reflected his ability to “effectively organize and present

his arguments,” and this case involved “a relatively straightforward, fact‐based

question: whether the defendants lacked evidence to support their decision to impose

restitution.” In any event, the presence of counsel would not have affected the outcome

of the litigation because Tonn had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies before

filing this suit. See Pruitt, 503 F.3d at 659. Tonn also moved for appointment of counsel

on appeal, but we denied his motion since appointment was not warranted under Pruitt.   

We have also considered Tonn’s remaining arguments, and none has merit.   

AFFIRMED.

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