Opinion ID: 2977854
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: CMS and Hutchinson

Text: Defendants CMS and Hutchinson argued that plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies with respect to the claims based on the refusal to approve the recommended shoes in February 2001, and the resulting partial amputation of his right foot in November 2002. With the initial complaint, plaintiff identified and attached copies of grievances filed on September 26, 2005 (URF 0590 1880 12I) (“1880”) and February 20, 2006 (URF 0602 0437 12H) (“0437” ). Defendants established that these grievances were not properly exhausted because they failed to comply with applicable MDOC grievance procedures. The first of these (“1880”), dated September 26, 2005, named CMS and Hutchinson in the Step I grievance and claimed that the failure to approve and provide specialty footwear recommended by Dr. Page in February 2001 led to the infection and amputation of two toes No. 08-1281 7 on his right foot. The Step I response indicated both that the issue was not timely as the concern spanned greater than five years, and that plaintiff was provided accommodative footwear in April 2001. In the Step II appeal, the MDOC reiterated the Step I response. The Step III denial concluded both that the grievance was not filed timely and that plaintiff had received appropriate medical care. Where the grievance is denied alternatively on the merits and for failure to comply with critical grievance procedures, a later action will be subject to dismissal for failure to properly exhaust under Woodford. See Grear v. Gelabert, No. 07-cv203, 2008 WL 474098, at  2, n.1 (W.D. Mich. Feb. 15, 2008) (“A state is, of course, always free to reject a grievance both for failure to properly comply with available procedures and on the merits. . . . As long as the ‘procedural default’ rejection is clear, a subsequent § 1983 claim based on the grievance will be subject to dismissal for failure to properly exhaust.”). Plaintiff argued in the district court that the grievances were not untimely because he did not know of CMS’s or Hutchinson’s role in setting policy or reviewing requests until September 22, 2005, when another prisoner showed him an affidavit from another case in which Hutchinson identified himself as the Senior Regional Medical Director for CMS. The district court found that it was not required to accept this allegation because it was “patently and incontrovertibly false.” Indeed, as the district court noted, plaintiff filed an earlier action arising out of these facts against CMS and other defendants. Vandiver, 304 F. Supp. 2d at 943. Although plaintiff avers that the September 2005 grievance was an attempt to finally exhaust this claim against CMS, this misses the point that proper exhaustion still requires No. 08-1281 8 compliance with the grievance policy’s critical procedures such as timeliness. See O’Sullivan v. Boerckel, 526 U.S. 838, 848 (1999); Walker v. Thompson, 288 F.3d 1005, 1009 (7th Cir. 2002) (stating that dismissal for failure to exhaust is without prejudice and does not bar the reinstatement of the suit, unless it is too late to exhaust). Making a somewhat different argument with respect to Hutchinson, who was not a defendant in the earlier lawsuit, plaintiff claims that defendants “concealed” Hutchinson’s identity as the doctor who denied him the recommended shoes in 2001. The district court found from the averments in the complaint, however, that plaintiff clearly knew of Hutchinson’s involvement in his medical care and referred to him as his treating physician. The allegation actually was that when Hutchinson, as CMS’s Regional Director, denied plaintiff the recommended shoes, Hutchinson already had personal knowledge of plaintiff’s condition because Hutchinson, as an MDOC employee, had previously treated plaintiff. Nonetheless, plaintiff also alleged in the complaint that “Dr. Page told Plaintiff he faxed [the recommendation for special shoes] to the Defendant CMS’s Senior Regional Medical Director Dr. Craig Hutchinson.” It follows that the district court did not err in finding that it was plain from the plaintiff’s pleadings that Hutchinson’s identity had not been concealed. The other grievance (“0437”), dated February 20, 2006, claimed that CMS and Hutchinson implemented a policy and custom of providing substandard medical care, repeating the allegations regarding the MDOC’s 1997 memoranda concerning orthopedic and other soft-soled shoes and the MDOC’s 2000 contract with CMS to provide medical services. The MDOC denied the grievance at Step I for several reasons, including that on the “date of No. 08-1281 9 incident” identified as February 15, 2006, plaintiff’s foot was evaluated by a nurse who referred him to a medical service provider on an urgent basis. In addition, the Step I response indicated both that the grievance was a duplicate of the first one (“1880”), and that concerns relating back to 1997 were not timely. Denied for the same reasons at Step II, the grievance was rejected as duplicative of the earlier grievance at Step III. Plaintiff argued that this grievance was an attempt to separately grieve the alleged policy and custom, as opposed to Dr. Hutchinson’s personal involvement, but the district court did not err in finding that the this grievance duplicated the earlier one and was not properly exhausted. Finally, plaintiff also alleged in the complaint that he grieved this claim in 2001. The district court acknowledged, in light of Jones, that plaintiff was not required to name every defendant to properly exhaust at the time the 2001 grievance was filed. Nonetheless, the court also found that the 2001 grievance did not exhaust these claims because it failed to give the defendants fair notice that the grievance was directed against them. In dismissing CMS from the earlier suit, the court found the 2001 grievance mentioned CMS but did not indicate that CMS was a party against whom plaintiff presently had a grievance. Vandiver, 304 F. Supp. 2d at 944. Also, the 2001 grievance specifically grieved the actions of King and DeBruyn without addressing the claim being made against Hutchinson. The district court did not err in finding that the claims at issue were not properly exhausted by the 2001 grievance.