NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

___________

No. 11-2523

___________

PAUL C. WILLIAMS,

Appellant

v.

THOMAS P. SULLIVAN; ADRIENNE BARGE; ANDREA KINCHEN; DONNA 

KLIPPER; NICHOLAS MELFI; CRAIG SMITH; JAMES DOWD; JIMMIE 

GONZALES; ERIC BLAND; ROBERT FLEM; ANTHONY LAMANNA, individually 

and in their official capacities; EUGENE C. MAGGIONCALDA, individually and in 

their official capacities

____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of New Jersey

(D.C. Civil No. 1:08-cv-01210)

District Judge: Honorable Renee M. Bumb

____________________________________

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)

December 3, 2012

Before: SMITH, CHAGARES and WEIS, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: December 5, 2012)

_________

OPINION

_________

PER CURIAM.

The pro se appellant, Paul Williams, asks us to overturn the District Court order 

that dismissed his complaint for failure to comply with discovery obligations. See Fed. 
2

R. Civ. P. 37(b)(2). Williams argues that the Court abused its discretion by overlooking 

crucial facts. We disagree and will affirm its order.

In 2007, Williams was incarcerated at the Bayside State Prison in New Jersey, a 

facility with a storied recent history. See generally In re Bayside Prison Litig., 157 F. 

App’x 545 (3d Cir. 2005). Contending that the present echoed the past, Williams filed 

suit in early 2008, alleging several violations of his constitutional rights. The District 

Court screened the complaint pursuant to its 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2) responsibilities, 

leaving one claim standing and allowing Williams to amend his other allegations (he 

declined to do so). See Williams v. Sullivan

That deadline, however, was never met, and would be extended several times over 

the course of the litigation.

, No. 08-1210, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 

50053, at *20 (D.N.J. June 30, 2008). With screening out of the way and the complaint 

served and answered, the pretrial discovery phase commenced, with an initial completion 

date set for August 31, 2009.

1

 1

 Because the parties are familiar with the procedural history of this case, we will discuss 

only those parts that are relevant to our disposition.

 On September 30, 2009, the defendants informed the Court 

that no discovery responses had been received from Williams. Another, similar letter 

was sent on January 21, 2010, and was swiftly followed by a dual motion to compel 

discovery compliance and, alternatively, to dismiss. Williams, who in the interim had 

been transferred to Northern State Prison, wrote to the Court and explained that he was 

being “subjected to a variety of [circumstances] that have deprived [him] of the ability 
3

to” access his discovery materials, such as an alleged failure of prison officials at Bayside 

to return to him his documents and their confiscation of his word processor and digital 

archives. The Court granted the defendants’ motion to compel, but denied their request 

to dismiss the complaint without prejudice. Significant for this appeal, Williams then 

sent a letter to the defendants (dated August 11) in which he purported to “enclose[] . . . 

[his] most recently prepared answers and objections to [their] interrogatories and request 

for production of documents,” which he characterized as the “second occasion [he] ha[d] 

prepared and submitted them” (emphasis in original). Williams apparently sent a copy of 

this letter (but none of the purported enclosures) to the District Court, where it was 

docketed at ECF No. 39.

In October, having still not received any discovery from Williams despite his letter 

to the contrary, the defendants wrote to the District Court, again requesting that the 

complaint be dismissed. In response, Williams renewed his challenge to the prison 

officials’ failure to return his legal materials and to allow meaningful access to the Court, 

and repeated his claim that he had complied with the defendants’ discovery request on 

not one but two prior occasions. See ECF No. 52. After acknowledging that dismissal 

would be a sanction of last resort, the Court once again declined to dismiss, but instead 

ordered Williams to “serve (or re-reserve) answers and any objections to the

interrogatories and document requests on Defendants’ counsel with a copy of the same to 

the Court within twenty days of the entry of this Order” under pain of sanctions; which, it 

expressly stated, might include dismissal. 
4

Williams again failed to comply, filing instead a letter motion for a preliminary 

injunction in which he requested, inter alia, that the Commissioner of the New Jersey 

Department of Corrections be ordered to return to him “all . . . items previously 

confiscated” so as to allow him to comply with discovery demands. He further alleged 

that his legal mail was being tampered with and that he was not receiving the Court’s 

(and defendants’) communiqués in a timely fashion. Williams also stated that he could 

not prepare his answers and objections “for a third time” (emphasis in original) without 

access to his word processor. The Court declined to grant injunctive relief.

In January of 2011, almost three years after the initiation of the suit, the 

defendants filed their third and final motion to dismiss for failure to comply with 

discovery orders. In a thorough, lengthy Report and Recommendation, Magistrate Judge 

Ann Marie Donio summarized the convoluted procedural history of the case up to that 

point and, weighing the six factors we articulated in Poulis v. State Farm Fire & Casualty 

Co., 747 F.2d 863 (3d Cir. 1984),

2 determined that the sanction of dismissal was 

warranted. Williams v. Sullivan

 2

 Those factors are: “(1) the extent of the party’s personal responsibility; (2) the 

prejudice to the adversary caused by the failure to meet scheduling orders and respond to 

discovery; (3) a history of dilatoriness; (4) whether the conduct of the party or the 

attorney was willful or in bad faith; (5) the effectiveness of sanctions other than 

dismissal, which entails an analysis of alternative sanctions; and (6) the meritoriousness 

of the claim or defense.” Id. at 868 (emphasis omitted). 

, No. 08-1210, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56414, at *32

(D.N.J. May 20, 2011). Specifically, Judge Donio determined that Williams was 

personally responsible for the delay, that the defendants had been prejudiced by 
5

Williams’ non-compliance with Court orders, that Williams evinced a clear pattern of 

dilatoriness through his “persistent lack of response to Defendants’ discovery requests 

and this Court’s Orders,” that Williams had acted in bad faith, and that no other sanction 

would “prompt Plaintiff to comply with his discovery obligations.”3

 Id. at *20–32. In 

analyzing the fourth Poulis factor—the willfulness/bad-faith inquiry—Judge Donio 

credited the defendants’ evidentiary submissions, which called into question Williams’ 

claims regarding access to legal materials and the confiscation of his word processor, 

while noting that he had apparently been able to file “multiple motions and letters with 

the Court” unimpeded. Id. at *25–29. Moreover, Judge Donio pointed out a crucial 

inconsistency in William’s story: if his word processor was necessary for furnishing 

copies of the discovery documents, yet it was confiscated in December 2009, how was 

Williams able to produce his “second” set of discovery materials in August 2010? Id.

We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

at 

*27–28. The District Court adopted the Report and Recommendation and dismissed the 

suit. Williams timely appealed.

4

 3

 Given the early stage of the litigation, Judge Donio “assume[d] for purposes of [the 

Poulis] analysis that Plaintiff’s claims ha[d] merit.” Id. at *31.

 We review the District 

4

 Our jurisdiction includes the District Court’s denial of preliminary injunctive relief. 

See Chambers v. Ohio Dep’t of Human Servs., 145 F.3d 793, 796 (6th Cir. 1998) (“It is 

clear that parties are not required to file an interlocutory appeal; rather, a party may forgo 

an interlocutory appeal and present the issue to this court after final judgment.”).

We pause, by necessity, to acknowledge that the District Court mistakenly adopted the 

Report and Recommendation without affording Williams the full fourteen days to file 
6

Court’s decision to dismiss the complaint for abuse of discretion and its underlying 

factual findings for clear error. Thomas Consol. Indus. v. Herbst (In re Thomas Consol. 

Indus.), 456 F.3d 719, 724 (7th Cir. 2006); Ware v. Rodale Press, Inc., 322 F.3d 218, 222

(3d Cir. 2003); Hicks v. Feeney, 850 F.2d 152, 155 (3d Cir. 1988). “In determining 

whether a District Court has abused its discretion in dismissing a complaint . . . we will 

be guided by the manner in which the court balanced the Poulis factors and whether the 

record supports its findings.” Hicks, 850 F.3d at 156 (quoting Ali v. Sims

In his short, informal brief, Williams simply states that “despite being apprised of 

the facts” of the interference with his ability to access the court, the District Court 

“denied plaintiff’s motion for . . . a[n] extension of time and dismissed the complaint.” 

Elsewhere, he claims that the District Court “overlooked, if not simply ignored” those 

relevant facts. Mindful of our obligation to construe William’s pro se submissions 

liberally, 

, 788 F.2d 954, 

957 (3d Cir. 1986)). 

see Zilich v. Lucht, 981 F.2d 694, 694 (3d Cir. 1992), and mindful too that 

dismissal with prejudice is an “extreme” sanction, Ware

 

objections, and the record reflects that Williams timely objected before filing his notice 

of appeal. Williams then moved for reconsideration, and the District Court entered a 

second, similar order that he did not appeal. Because Williams’ objections, which we 

have reviewed as part of this appeal, would not have changed the outcome of this 

litigation, the District Court’s initial error was harmless. Cf. Mannix v. Phillips, 619 F.3d 

187, 196 (2d Cir. 2010) (declining to address whether objections were timely filed 

because petitioner’s claim “fail[ed] on the merits”); see also Henderson v. Carlson, 812 

F.2d 874, 878 n.4 (3d Cir. 1987) (noting that when, as here, a District Court reviews the 

case de novo before adopting Magistrate Judge’s recommendation, no waiver is 

implicated); Braxton v. Estelle, 641 F.2d 392, 397 (5th Cir. 1981) (subjecting failure to 

properly inform plaintiff of Magistrate’s recommendation to harmless-error analysis). 

, 322 F.3d at 221–22, we simply 
7

cannot agree. From our vantage point, the District Court overlooked nothing; rather, it 

took stock of the record thus far and, finding five of the six Poulis

For substantially the same reasons expressed above, and in light of the District 

Court’s factfinding, we also conclude that the order denying a preliminary injunction was 

not an abuse of discretion. 

factors to weigh 

against Williams, determined that the sanction of dismissal was appropriate. We see no 

clear error in its factual analysis nor any misapplication of law. This was a proper 

exercise of the District Court’s discretion and Williams has put forth no reason why it 

should be overturned.

Marco v. Accent Pub. Co., 969 F.2d 1547, 1548 (3d Cir. 

1992). Accordingly, we will affirm the judgment of the District Court.