## United States Court of Appeals **For the Eighth Circuit**

___________________________
No. 20

- 1995

___________________________ Stansel Alexander Prowse, now known as Ka ’ Torah Arya Sage Prowse

Plaintiff - Appellant

v.
Walter Washington, Lieutenant, VSM, ADC; Ned Buttler, Sergeant, VSM, ADC

Defendants - Appellees

Brian Perkins, Sergeant, VSM, ADC; John Does, 1

- 3, Correctional Officer, VSM, ADC

Defendant s

____________ Appeal from United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Pine Bluff

____________

Submitted: June 15, 2021

Filed: August 18, 2021

____________ Before GRUENDER, ARNOLD, and STRAS, Circuit Judges.

____________
STRAS, Circuit Judge.

Paperwork sometimes gets misplaced, or so says Ka’Torah Prowse

. Although

p rison officials claim that Prowse initially failed to submit a complete administrative- 2

- appeal , she maintains that she did and has a dated document to prove it

. This is a classic dispute for a factfinder to resolve, which is why we reverse the grant of summary judgment and remand for further proceedings

.

I.

Prowse, an Arkansas inmate, claims that Lieutenant Walter Washington and Sergeant Ned Buttler assaulted her to the point of un consciousness. She filed an internal complaint, but h er attempts at both informal and formal resolution were
unsuccessful

.

Havin g reached an impasse, Prowse decided to file an administrative appeal.
She first submitted a complete package of documents dated August 16, 2019 , which prison officials claim they did not receive or review until August 28

. She also
submitted one of the attachment s a second time

, allegedly on August 22 , but prison officials reviewed it first, on August 27

. The lone attachment was rejected as incomplete and the complete package as “duplicat[ive].” Prowse’s position is that prison officials reviewe d the documents out of sequence

.

After Prowse filed a lawsuit against Lieutenant Washington and Sergeant
Buttle r, among others

, s ee U.S. Const. amend. VIII ; 42 U.S.C. § 1983 , the focus
soon turned to whether she had exhausted her administrative remedies. The district court said no and, adopting a magistrate judge’s report and recommendation, granted summary judgment to the defendants. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a).

II.

We review the district court’s dec ision to grant summary judgment de novo.
Tonelli v. United States , 60 F.3d 492, 494 (8th Cir. 1995). “Summary judgment [was] appropriate [if] the evidence, viewed in [the] light most favorable to [Prowse]

, shows no genuine issue of material fact exists a nd [the officials were] entitled to- 3

- judgment as a matter of law.” Phillips v. Mathews , 547 F.3d 905, 909 (8th Cir. 2008) (quotation marks omitted).

Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a prisoner who wishes to challenge
the conditions of confinement m ust typically exhaust all administrative remedies “in accordance with the [prison’s] applicable procedural rules” before bringing a
lawsuit. Woodford v. Ngo , 548 U.S. 81, 88, 93 (2006); see also 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)

. As relevant here, the rules at Prowse’s prison require d administrative appeals to have two attachments: a description of the issue and personnel involved (Attachment I)
and the warden’s response to the grievance (Attachment III). The dispute here is
over whether Prowse includ ed Attachment III in the paperwork she first turned over to prison officials.

According to Prowse, she did

. W hen prison officials failed to acknowledge receipt of her appeal within five day s , sh e sought a status update 1 by resubmitting a copy of Attachment I with the following note: “[n]o response, I still have fear for my safety.” After that point, due to what was likely a paperwork mix

- up, she believes that prison officials reviewed what she submitted in reverse chronological
order

. So from her point of view, she exhausted her administrative remedies exactly as the prison rules required

, with any breakdown on the prison’s part. 2

T he defendants view the evidence differently

. What must have happened, they surmise, is that Prowse originally submitted a n incomplete appeal that omitted

1 Prowse did not, despite what the defendants argue, forfeit this explanation by offering a different one to the district court

. See Weitz Co. v. Lloyd’s of London , 574 F.3d 885, 89 1 (8th Cir. 2009) (explaining that a “shift in approach” on appeal is not the same thing as raising “ a new issue”).

2 Though

, as Prowse points out , she filed other grievances too , they focus on “decidedly different issue[s] ,” like the falsification of documents

, preservation of evidence , and retaliation

. Muhammad v. Mayfield , 933 F.3d 993, 1003 (8th Cir. 2019). For that reason, none of them could have adminis tratively exhausted her excessive

- force claim.- 4

- Attachment III

. Then, realizing her mistake

, she handed over a second set of papers and backdated them to make it look like they were submitted first. Under this
scenari o, the prison was justified in denying both appeals for exactly the reasons it gave. And f or Prowse, it would mean that her administrative remedies remain
unexhausted

, spelling the end of her federal lawsuit

. See Woodford , 548 U.S. at 88,
93.

Whether Prowse’s lawsuit continues, in other words, comes down to which set of papers she filed first , which is a classic dispute of material fact. See Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. , 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986) (explaining that summary judgment is not appr opriate “if the evidence is such that a reasonable [factfinder] could return a verdict for the nonmoving party”). What is needed now is a factfinder to resolve
it

.

In reaching this conclusion, we necessarily reject the argument that the order
in which the prison stamped the papers is somehow dispositive

. See Scott v. Harris

, 550 U.S. 372, 380 (2007) (explaining that there is no genuine dispute when one
side’s account “ is blatantly contradicted by the record”). For one thing, nothing rules out the possibility that prison officials initially misplaced Prowse’s paperwork and then stamped it later

. For another , what matters under the prison’s rules is the order of submission, not recei pt

. So even assum ing that prison officials received the paperwork in the same order they reviewed it, a “reasonable [factfinder] could [still]
believe” that she fully exhausted her administrative remedies by submitting the one dated August 16 first. Id.

III.

We accordingly reverse the judgment of the district court, remand for further proceedings, and deny the pending motion for remand as moot

.

______________________________