NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

LONNIE CLARK WILLIAMS , Jr. ,

Plaintiff

- Appellant ,

v.
DANIEL PARAMO , Warden, et al. ,

Defendant s - Appell ee s
. No. 15

- 56160
D.C. No. 3:1 2

- cv - 00113

- BTM

- RBB

MEMORANDUM *
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California Barry Ted Moskowitz , Chief District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted May 10 , 2017 Pasadena, California
Before: O’SCANNLAIN and OWENS , Circuit Judges and WILKEN, ** Senior District Judge. Plaintiff appeal s the district court’s decision to grant summary judgment for

Defendants in this prisoner civil rights case. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28
U.S.C. § 1291, and we reverse
.

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36

- 3.

* * The Honorable Claudia Wilken, Senior District Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, sitting by designation. 

# FILED

MAY 30 2017
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLER K U.S. COURT OF APPEAL S2

I. Imminent Danger Defendants argue that Williams may not maintain her 1 in forma pauperis (IFP)

status i n this appeal. If a prisoner has previously brought three or more actions or appeals that were dismissed as frivolous or on similar grounds, the priso ner may not bring a civil action or appeal a judgment in a civil action IFP “unless the prisoner is under imminent danger of serious physical injury.” 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). A prisoner

must “allege the continued existence of imminent danger at the time [a] n otice of appeal is filed.” Williams v. Paramo ( Williams I ), 775 F.3d 1182, 1187 (9th Cir. 2015)

. Williams has “three strikes” and therefore may only bring this appeal IFP if

she was in imminent danger at the time she filed it

. Williams sufficiently alleged that she was in imminent danger at the time she filed this appeal. In her August 27, 2015 sworn motion for IFP and pro bono counsel she allege d that she was the victim of multiple attacks as a direct result of being labeled a sex offender by prison officials, and that she is under continuing threat of

the same

. Similarly, in her April 9, 2015 sworn opposition to Defendants’ motio n for summary judgment she made lengthy alleg ations of imminent danger akin to those

1 Williams identifi es as a transgender woman, and we refer to her as a woman even though she is classified as male in the prison records.3

she ha d made previously and of a type that would be expected to continue. T he ongoing imminent danger that Williams alleged at the time she filed the notice of the instant appeal is essentially indistinguishable from the danger that she alleged at the

time of her first notice of appeal , which the panel in Williams I found sufficient. Id.

at 1190

. It is the law of the case, see Hegler v. Borg , 50 F.3d 1472, 1475 (9th Cir. 1995) , that t he danger Williams alleged bears a legally sufficient nexus to

Defendants’ conduct, Williams I , 775 F. 3d at 1190

. Accordingly, Williams may maintain her IFP status in this appeal.

II. Exhaustion

On review of this grant of summary judgment, the panel considers the evidence

de novo , see Brunozzi v. Cable Commc’ns, Inc. , 851 F.3d 990, 995 (9th Cir. 2017),

a nd in the light most favorable to Williams as the non

- movant, see Fed. R. Civ. P.
56; Celotex Corp. v. Catrett , 477 U.S. 317, 322

- 23 (1986); Eisenberg v. Ins. Co. of

N. Am. , 815 F.2 d 1285, 1288

- 89 (9th Cir. 1987).

The P rison L itigation R eform Act (PL RA) requires a prisoner to exhaust

“administrative remedies as are available ” before bringing an action with respec t to prison conditions. 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a); see Williams I , 775 F.3d at 1190

- 91. “[A] n inmate is required to exhaust those, but only those, grievance procedures that are4

‘capable of use’ to obtain ‘some relief for the action complained of.’” Ross v. Blake , 136 S. Ct. 1850, 1859 (2016). “To be available, a remedy must be available ‘as a

pra ctical matter’; it must be ‘capable of use; at hand.’” Williams I , 775 F.3d at 1191 (quoting Albino v. Baca , 747 F.3d 1162, 1171 (9th Cir. 2014) (en banc)). A prison

official’s i mproper failure to process a timely filed grievance renders admin istrative

rem edies unavailable, Andres v. Marshall , 854 F.3d 1103 , 1105 (9th Cir. 2017 ) (per curiam) , as does improper ly screening out a grievance, Sapp v. Kimbrell , 623 F.3d 813, 823 (9th Cir. 2010)

.
I n Williams I

, the panel found that Williams had met her burden of production

to show that administrative remedies were not available to her by alleging under

oath that s he informed Warden Paramo of the facts underlying her grievan ce and he verbally rebuffed her; and that she then attempted to file a grievance and an appeal
with Officer Cobb, who refused to file the grievance or the appeal

. 2 775 F.3d at

1191

- 92. The panel found that the evidence produced by Defendants “at most” met

their burden , at the initial step of the Albino burden

- shifti ng inquiry , to demonstrate

2 Following remand, Williams clarified that she also re

- wrote the grievance and appeal that she submitted to Officer Cobb and mailed the duplicates to Warden Paramo with a request that he forward them to Officer Cobb and instruct him to process them. Defendants do not dispute this.5

the existence of a system of administrative remedies

. Id. at 1192. The panel concluded that summary judgment 3 on exhaustion was improper and remanded for further proceedings. Id.

T he only new evidence that Defendants offered after remand in support of their motion for summary judgment on exhaustion is the declaration of Officer Cobb.

Officer Cobb did not deny that he refused to accept Williams’ grievance and appeal

. He declared that he did not recall receiving a grievance from Williams on January 5,

2012 , but that if she submitted a grievance and he returned it, he would have done so because the grievance did not comply with prison regulations. Much like the

evidence Defendants offered in su pport of their first dispositive motion, Officer

Cobb’s declaration shows that a system of administrative remedies was in place, and Defendants again carried their burden under the first step of the Albino inquiry. See

Williams I

, 775 F.3d at 1191. But Wil liams has also carried her burden to show that “something particular . . . made the existing and generally available administrative remedies effectively unavailable” to her. Id. T he ultimate burden of proof on

3 Defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings relied on evidence outside the pleadings and the district court considered that evidence; a ccordingly, the panel in Williams I treated the district court’s dismissal of the complaint as summary judgment. 775 F.3d at 1191.6

exhaustion remains with Defendants under the A lbino burden

- shifting regime, id. , in addition to the burden to negate Williams’ evidence in order to prevail on summary judgment , s ee Nissan Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Fritz Cos

. , 210 F.3d 1099, 1102 (9th Cir. 2000). Officer Cobb’s speculative testimony is insufficient to satisfy either

burden. Accordingly, Defendants have no t demonstrated that there is no dispute of material fact concerning whether Williams exhausted her administrative appeals.

We remand for further proceedings on this issue.

REVERSED AND REMANDED
.