Opinion ID: 164588
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Ross' Medical Treatment Claims

Text: 24 As explained above, the district court concluded that Ross exhausted his administrative remedies with respect to his medical treatment claims because he filed a formal grievance on December 1, 1999, alleging a lack of medical care for his injured shoulder. We disagree. 8 25 As an initial matter, we note that it is not entirely clear exactly what conduct Ross intends to serve as the basis of his Eighth Amendment inadequate medical treatment claims. In his complaint, Ross articulates a laundry list of problems he encountered in seeking to obtain appropriate medical treatment from the time of his injury on November 29, 1999, to July 2000. At a minimum, it seems clear that Ross is seeking relief for more than the fact that his shoulder was not treated between November 29 and December 1, 1999. His Eighth Amendment claims involve numerous incidents that took place after December 1 in which he alleges that prison officials were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs. 26 None of those post-December 1 incidents were brought to the attention of prison officials through any grievance process. The record is devoid of evidence that Ross made any use of the MCDC grievance procedures to complain of inadequate medical care after December 1. 9 Moreover, Ross concedes that he did not invoke the BCDC grievance process while incarcerated there. 27 A grievance obviously cannot exhaust administrative remedies for claims based on events that have not yet occurred. Nor does a grievance exhaust administrative remedies for all future complaints of the same general type. Ross' December 1 grievance did nothing to alert prison officials to any inadequate treatment that might take place in the future. Consequently, it did not further the purposes of the PLRA's exhaustion requirement — allowing prisons to address specific complaints internally to obviate the need for litigation, filtering out frivolous claims, and creating a useful administrative record — as to the inadequate medical treatment claims Ross now pursues in federal court. 28 We therefore conclude that the administrative remedies available to Ross for his claims alleging inadequate medical treatment from November 30, 1999, to July 2000 were not exhausted, and that these claims are barred by the PLRA.