NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

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

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted September 15, 2022*

Decided September 19, 2022

Before

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge

CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge

No. 21-2941

STEVE L. MANSON,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

WESTERN ILLINOIS CORRECTIONAL CENTER,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States 

District Court for the Central

District of Illinois.

No. 3:20-cv-03249-MMM

Michael M. Mihm, Judge.

O R D E R

While he was an inmate at Western Illinois Correctional Center, Steve Manson 

mailed to the United States Attorney’s Office copies of more than 400 pages of grievances he had filed within the prison system. The Office put them in a box and sent them 

to the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, which treated them 

as a complaint. This irregular way to commence a suit—it lacked both a plaintiff and a

defendant—has led to a sprawling mess whose resolution Manson contests on appeal.

* The defendant was not served with process and has not participated in this appeal, which we are 

deciding without oral argument because the brief and record suffice. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a); Cir. R. 34(f).
No. 21-2941 Page 2

A district judge directed Manson to replace the box with a complaint, and Manson did so, though the complaint was scarcely less extensive than the contents of the 

box. Manson proceeded as if one suit could resolve every complaint that he had ever 

had against anyone at the prison. Yet he never named anyone as a defendant, though 

the body of the complaint mentions at least ten persons. Before the district judge could 

screen this complaint under 28 U.S.C. §1915A, Manson filed another. The district court 

looked to that as the operative filing and dismissed it without authorizing service of 

process on the defendant—which remains identified as the prison itself, though Manson 

has never provided any reason for thinking that the prison, as an institution, could be 

liable under the criteria of Monell v. New York City Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 

658 (1978), or even that the prison is a juridical entity capable of being sued. A prison is 

a building, not a distinct component of Illinois or any state agency. The Illinois Department of Corrections would be a more plausible defendant (though Monell might entitle

it to prevail), but Manson has never sought relief against the Department.

Manson’s appellate brief mentions multiple grievances. He says that one health 

attendant smashed his hearing aids, that a supervisor overcharged him for copies of records and threatened to withhold all records in the future, that a nurse refused to allow 

him to see a physician, that a mailroom supervisor stole some of his mail and impeded 

communication with his family, that another employee denied him accommodations for 

his disabilities and refused to allow him to take a shower for some period, and that the 

Warden and Assistant Warden did not solve these problems when he asked. The complaint itself names some additional persons and grievances.

It is evident from even this quick recitation that these contentions do not belong 

in a single complaint and should not have been handled by the district court as one lawsuit. A plaintiff may join as many claims as he has against a single defendant, Fed. R. 

Civ. P. 18(a), but may join multiple defendants in a suit only if all of the defendants 

could be liable on a single claim, Fed. R. Civ. P. 20(a)(2). Manson may have the makings 

of several suits against several persons (or groups of persons), but he cannot turn 400 

pages of internal grievances into an omnibus suit. See, e.g., Wheeler v. Wexford Health 

Sources, Inc., 689 F.3d 680, 683 (7th Cir. 2012) (“A litigant cannot throw all of his grievances, against dozens of different parties, into one stewpot.”); George v. Smith, 507 F.3d 

605, 607 (7th Cir. 2007). Prisoners may not know how to separate their claims, but a district judge should enforce the limits on joinder. Judges have discretion in determining 

whether claims and parties are related for the purpose of joinder, and in solving misjoinder, but the district court’s orders in this suit do not show us that the judge appreciated the problem or undertook to address it.
No. 21-2941 Page 3

Plaintiffs who try to use one suit to handle a boxful of grievances cause multiple 

problems. One is that a sprawling suit can be hard to evaluate, a difficulty that has 

cropped up here. The district court’s screening order does not mention several of the 

claims or theories that we see in Manson’s complaint and brief—and we are not confident that we have found all of them ourselves. Instead of remanding with instructions 

to write a more comprehensive screening order, it seems better to remand with instructions to break this complaint down into components consistent with Rules 18 and 20. 

They will be easier to address, with reduced chance of error by omission.

A second problem is that §1915A(a) requires the district judge to screen the complaint “as soon as practicable” after its filing. We remarked in Wheeler that complex

complaints cannot be screened in a timely fashion. We have no idea what a district 

judge is supposed to do with 400 pages of intra-prison grievances, even if the clerk’s office decides to treat a ream of assorted papers as a complaint. Far better to dismiss such 

a “complaint” instantly and invite the prisoner to file documents that satisfy the Rules 

of Civil Procedure and name natural persons rather than buildings as defendants.

Still a third problem is that statutes and rules of court call for a filing fee to be 

paid for each case. Prisoners may seek to consolidate their grievances in order to avoid 

those fees (which must be collected from their prison trust accounts), but judges should 

not be complicit in avoiding Acts of Congress. The Prison Litigation Reform Act also 

limits to three the number of frivolous suits or appeals that a prisoner may pursue without prepaying the required fees. 28 U.S.C. §1915(g). This statute, too, should not be 

skirted by lumping multiple suits together. George stressed both of these points.

The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded with instructions to proceed 

as appropriate under Rules 18, 20, and 21.