Opinion ID: 787387
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Need to Convert Defendants' Motion

Text: 28 A district court must convert a motion for judgment on the pleadings to one for summary judgment if the motion includes material outside the pleadings and that material is not excluded by the court. Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(c). In this case, defendants attached to their motion (1) Sira's misbehavior report, (2) the full transcript of the non-confidential portion of his disciplinary hearing, (3) the full transcript of the confidential portion of the hearing, (4) the disposition ruling by Capt. Morton, and (5) Director Selsky's reversal order. Although none of these documents was attached to Sira's complaint or to defendants' answer, defendants maintain that all were fairly incorporated into the complaint and, therefore, not outside the pleadings. 29 A complaint is deemed to include any written instrument attached to it as an exhibit, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 10(c); Goldman v. Belden, 754 F.2d 1059, 1065 (2d Cir.1985), materials incorporated in it by reference, see Cortec Indus., Inc. v. Sum Holding L.P., 949 F.2d 42, 47 (2d Cir.1991), and documents that, although not incorporated by reference, are integral to the complaint, Chambers v. Time Warner, Inc., 282 F.3d 147, 153 (2d Cir.2002); see Cortec Indus., 949 F.2d at 47. Here, Sira's complaint explicitly refers to and relies upon two of the documents at issue, the misbehavior report and the disposition sheet, see Complaint ¶¶ 35-42, 66, to show that Sira was deprived of liberty without adequate notice of the charges against him. These documents are thus incorporated by reference into the complaint. 30 Although the complaint does not expressly cite the reversal order, this document is also incorporated into the pleading because reversal was integral to Sira's ability to pursue a § 1983 challenge to procedures that caused him to lose good-time credits. See Edwards v. Balisok, 520 U.S. 641, 648, 117 S.Ct. 1584, 137 L.Ed.2d 906 (1997) (holding that prisoner who files a § 1983 action challenging discipline procedures resulting in loss of good-time credits must show that the conviction has been overturned); see also Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477, 489, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994) (explaining that reversal rule does not simply engraft an exhaustion requirement upon § 1983, but rather den[ies] the existence of a cause of action absent reversal). In Muhammad v. Close, 540 U.S. 749, ___, 124 S.Ct. 1303, 1306, 158 L.Ed.2d 32 (2004) (per curiam), the Supreme Court recently clarified that a § 1983 action challenging the validity of a disciplinary sanction that does not affect the overall length of the prisoner's confinement may be brought regardless of whether the sanction was overturned. But that is not this case. Absent the reversal order, Sira's procedural challenges would necessarily have implicated the invalidity of the loss of his good-time credits. See Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. at 481-82, 114 S.Ct. 2364. Accordingly, the reversal order is fairly deemed incorporated. 31 The hearing transcripts, however, are another matter, being neither expressly cited in the complaint nor integral to the claims raised. Defendants nevertheless assert that Sira's paraphrasing of certain events occurring during parts of the disciplinary hearing and his single quotation of one excerpt from Lt. Schneider's testimony, see Complaint ¶¶ 45-64, incorporate the whole of these transcripts by reference into the complaint. We disagree. Limited quotation from or reference to documents that may constitute relevant evidence in a case is not enough to incorporate those documents, wholesale, into the complaint. See Cosmas v. Hassett, 886 F.2d 8, 13 (2d Cir.1989) (rejecting argument that short quotations from an annual report and 10K statement incorporated those documents into the complaint). Because the hearing transcripts were not incorporated into the complaint and because the district court did not exclude those documents from its consideration of defendants' motion, we conclude that the district court was required to convert the motion to dismiss into one for summary judgment. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(c).