IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

 FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO

 EASTERN DIVISION

Frank C. Brown, Jr., :

 Plaintiff, : Case No. 2:10-cv-967

 v. : JUDGE EDMUND A. SARGUS, JR.

 Magistrate Judge Kemp

Deb Timmerman-Cooper, et al., :

 Defendants. :

 REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

AND ORDER

 This is one of a number of civil rights actions filed by

plaintiff Frank C. Brown, Jr., a state prisoner. In this case,

he has alleged that the three named defendants - Deb TimmermanCooper, the Warden of the London Correctional Institution, Brian

Cook, the Warden of the Madison Correctional Institution, and

Gary Croft, the Chief Inspector of the Ohio Department of

Rehabilitation and Correction - violated his constitutional

rights by having him transferred from the London Correctional

Institution to the Madison Correctional Institution, from Madison

to the North Central Correctional Institution, and then back to

London, as part of a scheme to retaliate against him for his use

of the prison grievance process. The defendants have filed a

motion for judgment on the pleadings. For the following reasons,

it will be recommended that the motion be granted and that this

case be dismissed. The Court will also issue a ruling on certain

other motions or, as appropriate, recommend a disposition of

those other motions by the District Judge.

I. The Facts

Because the case is before the Court by way of a motion for

judgment on the pleadings, the only facts which the Court may

consider are those well-pleaded facts which appear on the face of

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the complaint. Mr. Brown’s complaint in this case can be fairly

summarized as follows.

On October 28, 2009, Mr. Brown was transferred from London

to Madison. He alleges that this transfer was “in retaliation

and in reprisal for Plaintiffs (sic) practices of utilizing the

grievance procedure.” Complaint, ¶1. Only a few days after he

arrived at Madison, Mr. Brown was transferred to the North

Central Correctional Institution, which he also asserts was

related to his use of the prison grievance procedure, apparently

during his short stay at Madison. He was not at North Central

very long before he was transferred back to London. He arrived

there on November 28, 2009, less than thirty days after initially

being transferred out. The only other facts alleged (as opposed

to legal conclusions) are that some of his property was stolen at

NCCI and that he was charged with some type of misconduct at

Madison due to the volume of his legal materials and his refusal

to send them home. He claims these actions violated his rights

under the First, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the

United States Constitution.

II. Legal Standard

 A motion for judgment on the pleadings filed under

Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(c) attacks the sufficiency of the pleadings and

is evaluated under the same standard as a motion to dismiss. 

Amersbach v. City of Cleveland, 598 F.2d 1033, 1038 (6th

Cir.1979). In ruling upon such motion, the Court must accept as

true all well-pleaded material allegations of the pleadings of

the opposing party, and the motion may be granted only if the

moving party is nevertheless clearly entitled to judgment. 

Southern Ohio Bank v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith,

Inc., 479 F.2d 478, 480 (6th Cir.1973). The same rules which

apply to judging the sufficiency of the pleadings apply to a Rule

12(c) motion as to a motion filed under Rule 12(b)(6); that is,

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the Court must separate factual allegations from legal

conclusions, and may consider as true only those factual

allegations which meet a threshold test for plausibility. See,

e.g., Tucker v. Middleburg-Legacy Place, 539 F.3d 545 (6th Cir.

2008), citing, inter alia, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly

550 U.S. 544 (2007). It is with these standards in mind that the

motion for judgment on the pleadings must be decided.

III. Discussion

The defendants raise a number of different arguments in

support of their request for judgment on the pleadings. Their

primary argument is that the complaint, to the extent that it

attempts to state a claim for retaliation for the exercise of

First Amendment rights under Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 175 F.3d 378,

394 (6th Cir. 1999), is deficient because it alleges only the

first element of such a claim - that Mr. Brown was engaged in

protected First Amendment activity when he used the prison

grievance process - and none of the other required elements. in

Thaddeus-X, 175 F.3d at 394 (6th Cir. 1999), the Court of Appeals

held that a valid claim for retaliation can be stated if an

inmate alleges three things: the exercise of a First Amendment

right, “an adverse action ... taken against the plaintiff that

would deter a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to

engage in that conduct; and ... a causal connection between

elements one and two - that is, the adverse action was motivated

at least in part by the plaintiff's protected conduct.” 

Mr. Brown’s complete response to the motion for judgment on

the pleadings is terse. In a combined response to this and other

motions, in both this and other cases, he argues the following:

Defendants (sic) motion is barred by the doctrine

of estoppel namely res judicata. This Honorable Court

has already denied these motions once before in toto.

Memorandum in Opposition, Doc. #37, at 6. Clearly, as defendants

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correctly point out, this statement is incorrect. The Court

ruled on a prior motion for judgment on the pleadings, but the

only issue raised in that motion was that defendants had not been

sued in their individual capacities and that Mr. Brown’s damage

claims were barred by the doctrine of sovereign immunity. See

Doc. #30. Mr. Brown’s complaint was deemed amended to include a

claim for damages against the defendants in their individual

capacities. That, however, did not answer the question posed by

the current motion, which is whether the complaint states any

valid claim for relief under any provision of the United States

Constitution.

Even though Mr. Brown has not presented any specific

argument in opposition to the motion for judgment on the

pleadings, the Court will still review his complaint in light of

the defendants’ arguments to determine if he has properly pleaded

a claim under any of the constitutional provisions he cites. 

After conducting such a review, and for the following reasons,

the Court concludes that he has not.

The complaint fails on at least two grounds. Taking the

Thaddeus-X factors in reverse order, in order to plead a valid

claim for retaliation, the plaintiff must plead facts from which

a plausible conclusion can be drawn that the actions about which

the prisoner complains - here, the three transfers in less than a

month - were caused by the plaintiff’s exercise of some First

Amendment right. Mr. Brown’s complaint does not contain any

factual (as opposed to wholly conclusory) allegations on this

point. For example, he does not relate any of the transfers to

the filing of any particular grievance or set of grievances at

any of the three institutions involved. He has not even pleaded

temporal proximity - that is, that the transfers occurred so soon

after his use of the grievance process that a reasonable person

could infer a connection between the two. Even if he had, the

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case law makes clear that “conclusory allegations of temporal

proximity are not sufficient to show a retaliatory motive.” 

Skinner v. Bolden, 89 Fed. Appx. 579, 579-80 (6th Cir. March 12,

2004), citing, inter alia, Smith v. Campbell, 250 F.3d 1032, 1038

(6th Cir. 2001). Nor are similar allegations about the

defendants’ motives; as this Court has held, “[c]onclusory

allegations of retaliatory motive which are not supported by

material facts are insufficient to state a claim under §1983.”

Treesh v. Bobb-Itt, 2011 WL 3837099, *7 (S.D. Ohio August 29,

2011), citing Harbin-Bey v. Rutter, 420 F.3d 571, 580 (6th Cir.

2005). Thus, the complaint fails to satisfy the plausibility

standard set forth in Twombly with respect to this element of a

First Amendment retaliation claim.

Even if the complaint were sufficient as to the third

element, it fails to satisfy the second. The only factual

allegations in the complaint concerning the effect of these

transfers are that the officials at Madison had some issue with

the amount of Mr. Brown’s legal property, and that someone stole

some of his property while he was at North Central. There is no

allegation that the officials at Madison took action concerning

the legal property requirement in a way that is inconsistent with

ODRC regulations, or that it was likely that if Mr. Brown were

moved to that institution, the move would adversely affect his

ability to pursue grievances or litigation. The theft of

property at North Central appears similarly unrelated to the

transfer, other than the fact that the theft happened while he

was there - and not because transferred prisoners were likely to

have their property stolen. These types of transfers, without

any accompanying foreseeable effect on an inmate’s ability either

to pursue First Amendment protected conduct or to be housed in

conditions similar to those which affect all inmates, are

generally not the type of adverse actions which would deter an

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inmate of ordinary firmness from pursuing his constitutional

rights. That is particularly so where, as here, the entire

process took less than a month and Mr. Brown ended up back at the

same institution he started at.

In this circuit, “the transfer of a prisoner may rise to the

level of unconstitutional retaliation where there are foreseeable

consequences to the transfer that would inhibit the prisoner's

ability to access the courts.” Hix v. Tennessee Dept. of

Corrections, 196 Fed.Appx. 350, 358 (6th Cir. August 22, 2006),

citing Siggers-El v. Barlow, 412 F.3d 693, 704 (6th Cir. 2004). 

The converse of that statement is that if the transfer does not

carry with it such foreseeable consequences, it is not the type

of adverse action which can satisfy the second prong of the

Thaddeus-X test. Thus, without any facts in the complaint

showing that the transfers were accompanied by some foreseeable

impact on Mr. Brown’s First Amendment activities - that is,

absent “aggravating circumstances” which accompanied the

transfers - he has not met this part of the test. See Smith v.

Jones, 2009 WL 6632300, *8 (W.D. Mich. October 8, 2009). 

All of Mr. Brown’s claims center around his allegations of

retaliation. Since such claims are properly analyzed under the

First Amendment, the Court need not conduct a separate analysis

of the other claimed constitutional basis for the alleged denial

of Mr. Brown’s rights. See, e.g., County of Sacramento v. Lewis,

523 U.S. 833, 841-42 (1998). However, it is clear that Mr. Brown

has no cognizable claim under the Fifth Amendment, because that

provision applies only to the federal government and not the

States, see Scott v. Clay County, Tenn., 205 F.3d 867, 873 n.8

(6th Cir. 2000), and has not alleged any conditions of

confinement which would amount to cruel and unusual punishment

under the applicable Eighth Amendment standard. See Rhodes v.

Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981) (Eighth Amendment is violated

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by conduct which fall below contemporary standards of decency). 

His Fourteenth Amendment claims is simply duplicative of his

First Amendment claim.

Defendants have raised other arguments as well, such as

qualified immunity and lack of personal involvement. In light of

the fact that the complaint does not state a viable First

Amendment claim, there is no need to discuss these other bases

for relief.

IV. Other Motions

There are two other motions pending in this case which fall

within the jurisdiction of the Magistrate judge to determine in

the first instance. They are Mr. Brown’s motion for leave to

supplement and to strike (#52) and defendants’ motion for an

extension of time (#57). The former motion does not appear to be

specific to this case and requests no relief that would affect

the recommendation being made on the motion for judgment on the

pleadings. The latter motion is moot. Both motions will be

denied. 

The other pending motions are all motions which must be

finally ruled on by the District Judge because they ask, in one

form or another, for some type of interim injunctive relief. 

Should the Court adopt this Report and Recommendation, all of

those motions (including #s 18, 38, 39, 43,and 53) would be moot

and should be denied, at least to the extent that they request

relief in this case (many of these motions were filed in

identical form in both this and other cases brought by Mr.

Brown).

 V. Recommendation and Order

Based on the above discussion, it is recommended that the

defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings (#35) be granted

and that the complaint be dismissed with prejudice for failure to

state a claim upon which relief can be granted. It is further

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recommended that, if the Court adopts this recommendation and

dismisses the case, that the motions filed at ECF #s 18, 38, 39,

43,and 53 all be denied as moot. It is further ordered that Mr.

Brown’s motion for leave to supplement and to strike (#52) and

defendants’ motion for an extension of time (#57) are denied. 

VI. Procedure on Objections

 If any party objects to this Report and Recommendation, that

party may, within fourteen days of the date of this Report, file

and serve on all parties written objections to those specific

proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made,

together with supporting authority for the objection(s). A judge

of this Court shall make a de novo determination of those

portions of the report or specified proposed findings or

recommendations to which objection is made. Upon proper

objections, a judge of this Court may accept, reject, or modify,

in whole or in part, the findings or recommendations made herein,

may receive further evidence or may recommit this matter to the

magistrate judge with instructions. 28 U.S.C. §636(b)(1).

 The parties are specifically advised that failure to object

to the Report and Recommendation will result in a waiver of the

right to have the district judge review the Report and

Recommendation de novo, and also operates as a waiver of the

right to appeal the decision of the District Court adopting the

Report and Recommendation. See Thomas v. Arn, 474 U.S. 140

(1985); United States v. Walters, 638 F.2d 947 (6th Cir.1981).

 

 /s/ Terence P. Kemp 

 United States Magistrate Judge

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