Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01151/USCOURTS-ca7-15-01151-0/pdf.json

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

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15-1151

KENNETH OGUREK,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

JEFFREY GABOR,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Central District of Illinois.

No. 1:13-CV-01423-JES-TSH — James E. Shadid, Chief Judge.

____________________

SUBMITTED JUNE 15, 2016 — DECIDED JUNE 27, 2016

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and FLAUM, Circuit 

Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff, Kenneth Ogurek, a 

prisoner in Illinois’s Pontiac Correctional Center, seeks damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 from Jeffrey Gabor, one of the 

prison’s security investigators, who the plaintiff claims violated the First Amendment by charging him with a disciplinary infraction in retaliation for Ogurek’s having complained about Gabor to the warden. The district judge grantCase: 15-1151 Document: 41 Filed: 06/27/2016 Pages: 4
2 No. 15-1151

ed summary judgment in favor of the defendant on the 

ground that Ogurek had presented no evidence contradicting Gabor’s denial that his charging Ogurek with an infraction was motivated by Ogurek’s complaint to the warden.

In a fight with another inmate Ogurek had received cuts 

requiring stitches, and he was charged (not by Gabor) with a 

disciplinary infraction. He says he told Gabor that he wanted to charge the inmate, who he said had started the fight, 

with assault; also that items of personal property had been 

stolen from his cell while he was in segregation, where he’d 

been placed after the fight. He wanted Gabor to investigate 

both the fight and the theft, and when ten days elapsed with 

no response he complained to the warden, who forwarded 

the complaint to Gabor—who according to Ogurek berated 

him for complaining to the warden and told him that after

watching a security video of Ogurek’s fight with the other 

inmate he had determined that Ogurek had started it. When 

Ogurek denied this, Gabor filed a disciplinary report against 

him for impeding an investigation, which led to an administrative proceeding that resulted in Ogurek’s remaining in

segregation for six months. But an administrative appeal of 

Gabor’s report resulted in its being expunged, on the ground 

that Gabor had both violated the procedure for issuing disciplinary, see 20 Ill. Admin. Code § 504.30, and failed to substantiate his charge against Ogurek. This suit followed.

During discovery Ogurek sought by motion the security 

video that Gabor had claimed to be the basis of his disciplinary action. The district judge ordered Gabor to respond 

within 17 days, which he didn’t do, instead moving for 

summary judgment. The judge granted the motion, and 

dismissed the suit, before the video surfaced, in the mistaken 

Case: 15-1151 Document: 41 Filed: 06/27/2016 Pages: 4
No. 15-1151 3

belief that Ogurek had presented no evidence in support of 

his claim. The district judge erred in refusing to compel production of the security video, which would have been the

dispositive piece of evidence in this case. See Diaz v. Davidson, 799 F.3d 722, 724 (7th Cir. 2015); Bryant v. City of Chicago, 746 F.3d 239, 242–43 (7th Cir. 2014).

The First Amendment of course creates a right to “petition the Government [which by interpretation of the due 

process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been held 

to include state and local government] for a redress of grievances,” and Ogurek’s letter to the warden was such a petition. Gabor violated the amendment’s right of redress if he 

based the disciplinary action that he instituted against Ogurek on information that he knew to be false. The video might

vindicate Gabor’s claim that Ogurek started the fight with 

the other inmate and thus was properly subject to disciplinary action, but Gabor’s failure to produce the video suggests the contrary—that the video vindicates Ogurek’s version of the fight. Niehus v. Liberio, 973 F.2d 526, 530–31 (7th 

Cir. 1992). The judge erred, moreover, in saying that Ogurek 

had presented no evidence in support of his claim—his assertion that he had not started the fight with the other inmate, and that Gabor had known this and was acting out of 

spite, was evidence.

Another panel of this court noted in a recent case that “if 

Meyer [a prison guard] set out to punish Herron [a prisoner] 

for his grievances, then a price has been attached to speech“; 

but continuing the panel said that “many decisions assume 

that essentially everything a prisoner says in the grievance 

system—if not everything a prisoner says to a guard—is protected by the First Amendment. ... These decisions do not 

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discuss a parallel line of cases about grievances that public 

workers make about the conditions of their employment. 

That line of cases attempts to distinguish statements on topics of public importance (protected) from personal gripes 

(unprotected) and statements that disrupt the workplace (also unprotected).” Herron v. Meyer, 820 F.3d 860, 863–64 (7th 

Cir. 2016).

Yet the line of decisions criticized in Herron includes two 

earlier decisions of this court that are in tension with, yet are 

not cited in, that case. One is Watkins v. Kasper, 599 F.3d 791, 

795 (7th Cir. 2010) (“the dynamics of the government’s relationships with prisoner-employees and with public employees are too dissimilar to transfer the public concern test to 

the prison context”); the other is Bridges v. Gilbert, 557 F.3d 

541, 551 (7th Cir. 2009) (“we conclude that a prisoner’s 

speech can be protected even when it does not involve a 

matter of public concern”). No matter; an inmate’s complaint 

of being assaulted and injured by another inmate and then 

framed by a guard to prevent the victim from obtaining any 

redress is not a “personal gripe”; it is therefore a violation of

the Constitution under Herron’s rule and a fortiori under that 

of Watkins and Bridges, as well as of similar cases in other 

circuits cited in Bridges, supra, 557 F.3d at 551–52.

The grant of summary judgment in the defendant’s favor was thus premature, and so we reverse the judgment 

dismissing the suit and remand the case to the district court 

for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

REVERSED AND REMANDED

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