In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 07-1325

LARRY GEORGE,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

JUDY SMITH, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Wisconsin.

No. 05-C-0403-C—Barbara B. Crabb, Chief Judge.

____________

SUBMITTED OCTOBER 17, 2007—DECIDED NOVEMBER 9, 2007

____________

Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and MANION and

KANNE, Circuit Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge. Larry George, one of Wisconsin’s prisoners, sued 24 persons who have had some

role in his confinement—guards, wardens, nurses, members of the parole board, and more. His sprawling complaint charges some defendants with failing to provide

adequate medical care, others with censoring his mail,

yet others with mishandling his applications for parole,

and so on. The district court dismissed some of his claims

on the pleadings, see 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16139 (W.D.

Wis. Aug. 2, 2005), and the rest on summary judgment, see

2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2421 (W.D. Wis. Jan. 10, 2007), 2006

U.S. Dist. LEXIS 92290 (W.D. Wis. Dec. 12, 2006), and 467

F. Supp. 2d 906 (W.D. Wis. 2006).
2 No. 07-1325

The district court did not question George’s decision to

join 24 defendants, and approximately 50 distinct claims,

in a single suit. It should have done so. The controlling

principle appears in Fed. R. Civ. P. 18(a): “A party asserting a claim to relief as an original claim, counterclaim,

cross-claim, or third-party claim, may join, either as

independent or as alternate claims, as many claims,

legal, equitable, or maritime, as the party has against an

opposing party.” Thus multiple claims against a single

party are fine, but Claim A against Defendant 1 should

not be joined with unrelated Claim B against Defendant 2.

Unrelated claims against different defendants belong

in different suits, not only to prevent the sort of morass

that this 50-claim, 24-defendant suit produced but also

to ensure that prisoners pay the required filing fees—for

the Prison Litigation Reform Act limits to 3 the number

of frivolous suits or appeals that any prisoner may file

without prepayment of the required fees. 28 U.S.C.

§1915(g). George was trying not only to save money

but also to dodge that rule. He hoped that if even 1 of his

50 claims were deemed non-frivolous, he would receive

no “strikes” at all, as opposed to the 49 that would result

from making 49 frivolous claims in a batch of 50 suits. The

district judge likewise assumed that a single non-frivolous

claim in a blunderbuss complaint makes the suit as a

whole non-frivolous.

In allowing George to pursue this mishmash of a complaint, the district court may have been influenced by

Boriboune v. Berge, 391 F.3d 852 (7th Cir. 2004). In 2002

the district court had ruled that multiple prisoners

cannot join as plaintiffs in a civil suit, notwithstanding

the first sentence of Fed. R. Civ. P. 20(a): “All persons

may join in one action as plaintiffs if they assert any

right to relief jointly, severally, or in the alternative in

respect of or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences and if any
No. 07-1325 3

question of law or fact common to all these persons

will arise in the action.” We held in Boriboune that the

PLRA does not supersede Rule 20, though it does require

each plaintiff to pay a separate filing fee and expose

each plaintiff to a “strike” if any claim in the consolidated

complaint is frivolous. After Boriboune the district court

has taken an anything-goes approach. But Boriboune does

not require this. It holds that the Rules of Civil Procedure

apply to suits by prisoners. See also, e.g., Pratt v. Hurley,

79 F.3d 601 (7th Cir. 1996) (a district court may not

limit prisoners to one civil case on file at a time).

This means that the second sentence of Rule 20(a)—“All

persons . . . may be joined in one action as defendants

if there is asserted against them jointly, severally, or in

the alternative, any right to relief in respect of or arising

out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of

transactions or occurrences and if any question of law or

fact common to all defendants will arise in the action”—is

as applicable as the first sentence. A buckshot complaint

that would be rejected if filed by a free person—say, a

suit complaining that A defrauded the plaintiff, B defamed him, C punched him, D failed to pay a debt, and E

infringed his copyright, all in different transactions—

should be rejected if filed by a prisoner. George did not

make any effort to show that the 24 defendants he named

had participated in the same transaction or series of

transactions or that a question of fact is “common to

all defendants”.

When a prisoner does file a multi-claim, multi-defendant

suit, the district court should evaluate each claim for

the purpose of §1915(g). Boriboune observed: “when any

claim in a complaint or appeal is ‘frivolous, malicious,

or fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted’,

all plaintiffs incur strikes” (391 F.3d at 855; emphasis

added). George thus incurs two strikes in this litigation—one for filing a complaint containing a frivolous
4 No. 07-1325

claim, another for an appeal raising at least one frivolous

objection to the district court’s ruling. Here’s just one

example: George sued one of the defendants because he

saw some particles of food on his plate at dinner, inferred

that the dishwasher had malfunctioned, and asserted

that this episode placed his health at risk. This does not

come within shouting distance of a constitutional grievance under the approach of Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S.

825 (1994), and similar decisions. George’s complaint

and appellate brief are full of equally weak claims.

George presents six issues on appeal, but most of these

have multiple sub-issues. For example, his first “issue” is:

“Was Plaintiff’s books and magazines denied for a valid

reason?” George ordered lots of publications, and some of

them were turned away as pornographic or because they

contained gang-related signals. The district court articulated the right rules for the evaluation of these claims

under the first amendment, took evidence (some of it in

secret to prevent prisoners from learning the prison’s

security criteria), and concluded that the prison’s reasons for withholding the books and magazines are sufficient under decisions such as Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78

(1987). The district judge’s reasons are spelled out in her

opinions and need not be rehearsed here.

Only a few of George’s arguments call for analysis. One

concerns an “atlas” that George ordered. The prison

refused to allow its entry, explaining that it might help

prisoners plan escapes. That’s a sound reason in theory,

but George retorts that the prison library itself contains

maps and atlases. A prison could not invoke security as

a reason to exclude publications that prisoners may

read in the library, and which they may copy out for use

in their cells. But maybe this “atlas” was more worrisome.

We have put the word in quotations because all we know

about the book is that George applies that label to it.

When the guards declined to allow George to receive the
No. 07-1325 5

volume, he directed them to send it elsewhere, and they

complied. George has not described the book in the complaint, produced it in discovery, or provided a title or

ISBN that would allow the court to evaluate the prison’s

claims about its potential effect on security. Plaintiffs need

not plead facts, see Erickson v. Pardus, 127 S. Ct. 2197

(2007), but they must give enough detail to illuminate the

nature of the claim and allow defendants to respond. See

Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 127 S. Ct. 1955 (2007).

George had a chance in his complaint, in later filings in

the district court at the summary-judgment stage, and

in his appellate brief; he did not take advantage of these

opportunities to describe the “atlas”, so we lack any reason

to disturb the district court’s resolution. See Matsushita

Electric Industrial Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S.

574, 586 (1986).

The prison refused to allow George to have a newsletter

from the Jeff Dicks Medical Coalition, informing him that

it was a fund-raising proposal that prisoners are not

entitled to possess—not so much because any one prisoner is forbidden to make charitable contributions (if he

has more than he needs to pay his fines, restitution, and

filing fees under the PLRA) but because prisoners are

not entitled to solicit money from each other, as the

newsletter encourages recipients to do. Money-raising

activities in prison may reflect extortion or disguised

payments for contraband; the prison lacks means to ensure

that any money George collects “for charity” will find

its way to the charity. George says that this exclusion

violates the first amendment, but he does not cite (and

we could not find) any case holding that prisons must

allow the entry of literature that encourages prisoners

to raise money in violation of prisons’ internal controls

on the exchange of funds. The Supreme Court has told us

that prisons’ legitimate concerns about security and

administration deserve respect, even when the subject is
6 No. 07-1325

the printed word. See, e.g., Beard v. Banks, 126 S. Ct. 2572

(2006). George does not say that his own speech has

been curtailed, and the newsletter’s publisher has not

appeared to assert its own constitutional interests (if

it has any) in trying to raise money from prisoners.

George maintains that the prison has refused to allow

him to speak to the public at large by placing advertisements in newspapers. That advertisements can be protected speech is clear. See, e.g., New York Times Co. v.

Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). But what did George want

to say? An advertisement calling on the public to elect a

Governor who will pardon or parole prisoners would be

protected; an advertisement offering to rent a helicopter

for an escape would not. An ad proposing a commercial

transaction (for example: “like-new atlas for sale”) would

be protected speech by a member of the general public,

see Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service

Comm’n, 447 U.S. 557 (1980), but prisons are entitled

to control their charges’ economic lives, which likely

includes an entitlement to control want ads and postings

on eBay—if only to prevent prisoners from scamming the

public. Neither the complaint nor any of George’s other

filings tells us whether the advertisements would have

contained political commentary, lonely-heart announcements (another potential source of scams), or offers to

acquire contraband. To repeat our point about the “atlas”:

a plaintiff who offers nothing but generalities by the

time a case is in the court of appeals cannot expect to

prevail.

Finally, a brief word about George’s claims against the

defendants who handled his administrative protests

concerning the events covered by the complaint. The

district court held that these officials are entitled to

absolute immunity. That conclusion is difficult to

reconcile with Cleavinger v. Saxner, 474 U.S. 193 (1985),

which holds that members of prison-discipline boards are
No. 07-1325 7

not entitled to absolute immunity. Doubtless these

persons would be eligible for qualified immunity, but we

need not reach that question. George’s argument on the

merits is that anyone who knows about a violation of

the Constitution, and fails to cure it, has violated the

Constitution himself. That proposition would not help him

if it were correct, for he has lost on all of his underlying constitutional theories. But it is not correct. Only

persons who cause or participate in the violations are

responsible. See Greeno v. Daley, 414 F.3d 645, 656–57

(7th Cir. 2005); Reed v. McBride, 178 F.3d 849, 851–52

(7th Cir. 1999); Vance v. Peters, 97 F.3d 987, 992–93 (7th

Cir. 1996). Ruling against a prisoner on an administrative

complaint does not cause or contribute to the violation. A

guard who stands and watches while another guard

beats a prisoner violates the Constitution; a guard who

rejects an administrative complaint about a completed

act of misconduct does not.

All of George’s other arguments are well handled in the

district court’s lengthy opinions.

AFFIRMED

A true Copy:

Teste: 

 ________________________________

Clerk of the United States Court of

Appeals for the Seventh Circuit 

USCA-02-C-0072—11-9-07