Opinion ID: 221938
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exhaustion Of The Claims Against Minton, Jackson, And Campbell Regarding The Mail Rejections, The Two Major Misconduct Tickets, And The April 8, 2007 Grievance

Text: 1. The Mail Rejections Siggers argues that the district court erred in holding that he was required to file individual grievances challenging each of the mail rejections issued by Defendant Campbell. Siggers Br. at 10. In our view, the district court's decision that these claims were unexhausted can be broken into two parts: the Notices that occurred before September 12, 2006 (i.e., the Notices from September 6, 2005; October 10, 2005; October 11, 2005; and October 24, 2005), and the Notices that occurred after September 12, 2006 (i.e., the Notices from September 15, 2006; September 29, 2006; and March 9, 2007). With respect to the first group, the district court was correct to find them unexhausted. The PLRA's exhaustion requirement, contained in 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), requires proper exhaustion, which includes compliance with a state agency's timeliness deadlines. See Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 90-91, 126 S.Ct. 2378, 165 L.Ed.2d 368 (2006) (Proper exhaustion demands compliance with an agency's deadlines and other critical procedural rules because no adjudicative system can function effectively without imposing some orderly structure on the course of its proceedings.); see also id. at 93, 126 S.Ct. 2378 ([W]e are persuaded that the PLRA exhaustion requirement requires proper exhaustion.). P.D. 03.02.130 requires an individual to attempt to resolve a potentially grievable issue with staff within two business days after becoming aware of the issue, unless prevented by circumstances beyond his/her control, P.D. 03.02.130, ¶ R, and if that doesn't work, to file a grievance within five business days after attempting to resolve the issue with the staff member, id. at ¶ X. It is undisputed that Siggers did not file a grievance for any of these Notices within this time frame. [7] Consequently, Siggers's claims with respect to the Notices from September 6, 2005; October 10, 2005; October 11, 2005; and October 24, 2005, are unexhausted. We affirm the district court's dismissal of these claims. We also affirm the district court's decision on the second group of Notices, those from September 15, 2006; September 29, 2006; and March 9, 2007. Siggers argues that his September 16, 2006, grievance put the defendants on notice of a continuing violation. Siggers Br. at 10-13 (citing Ellis v. Vadlamudi, 568 F.Supp.2d 778 (E.D.Mich.2008), and Johnson v. Johnson, 385 F.3d 503, 520-21 (5th Cir.2004)). Ellis and Johnson are distinguishable, and therefore unpersuasive. In Ellis, a case from the Eastern District of Michigan, a Michigan prisoner argued that prison medical personnel were deliberately indifferent to his medical conditions that caused chronic pain. Ellis, 568 F.Supp.2d at 783. The prisoner filed a grievance complaining of deliberate indifference in failing to treat his chronic condition, and after noting Michigan's two- and five-day deadlines for filing grievances, the district court held that a grievance that identifies the persistent failure to address that condition must be considered timely as long as the prison officials retain the power to do something about it. Id. at 783-84. Furthermore, because the condition was ongoing, the grievance was timely for all claims that could be filed regarding the condition, not just those that occurred within the seven days prior to the filing of the grievance; so, for example, the claim that several nurses  whom the prisoner saw long before the seven-day window  conspired against the prisoner was timely because it stemmed from the ongoing condition. Id. at 784-85. Ellis is therefore distinguishable because it deals with an ongoing medical condition and the claim that the state stood by and did nothing in the face of that ongoing condition. In such circumstances, determining when to apply the seven-day filing period can be difficult because there is not one discrete harm-causing act by the government. Here, however, Siggers was not suffering from one, continuing harm and government indifference. Rather, the Notices of mail rejection that Siggers identifies are each discrete events, and each Notice involves separate facts and circumstances  and even different policy directives. Furthermore, a grievance on each would have permitted an investigation into the reasons for each rejection, based on the different contents of each rejected piece of mail. Consequently, Ellis is not persuasive. Johnson is also not persuasive. In Johnson, a Fifth Circuit case, a prisoner who was subjected to repeated sexual assaults complained that prison officials failed to protect him over the course of eighteen months. Johnson, 385 F.3d at 519. Texas had a rule that grievances must be filed within fifteen days of the alleged conduct to be timely, and the Fifth Circuit held the plaintiff's grievance to suffice with respect to all assaults that occurred after the grievance was filed, in addition to those within the fifteen-day pre-grievance window. Id. at 519-20. The Fifth Circuit found it unrealistic to expect Johnson to file a new grievance every fifteen days, or every time an assault occurred; indeed, the prison regulations threaten sanctions for excessive use of the grievance process. Id. at 521. Johnson is therefore similar to the present case in that it involves repeated instances of discrete acts of harm. Nonetheless, the theory behind Johnson does not apply in this case. In Johnson, the prisoner complained of a single government failure (the failure to protect the inmate from harm) and harms that occurred to the prisoner on a repeated basis due to that failure (the sexual assaults). Johnson's grievance complaining of this one government failure properly sufficed to exhaust subsequent harms because the government was put on notice of its failure, and any subsequent grievance filed would have complained of the exact same government failing. Here the September 12, 2006 Notice  the only part of Siggers's grievance that can be said to excuse his need to file subsequent grievances  was based on P.D. 04.07.112, regarding prisoner personal property, and two of the three subsequent Notices were not based on this policy directive. The September 15, 2006 Notice was based on P.D. 05.03.118, ¶ D.3., regarding improper receipt of a self-addressed stamped envelope; the September 29, 2006 Notice was based on P.D. 04.07.112, and the March 9, 2007 Notice was based on P.D. 05.03.118, ¶ D.7., regarding mail used to operate a business from within the facility. The September 15, 2006 Notice therefore did not put the state on notice of an ongoing problem regarding P.D. 04.07.112. It also is not clear that Siggers would have faced sanctions for filing grievances regarding these additional Notices. Policy Directive 03.02.130 provides that [a] prisoner ... who files an excessive number of grievances which are frivolous, vague, duplicative, [or] raise nongrievable issues ... may have access to the grievance process limited.... If the prisoner ... continues to file such grievances while on modified access, the Warden or FOA Area Manager may extend the prisoner's ... modified access status.... P.D. 03.02.130, ¶ JJ (effective 12/19/2003). Filing three additional grievances, two of which would be based on different policy directives, would not have exposed Siggers to a threat of sanctions. We therefore affirm the district court's holding that Siggers failed to exhaust all of this mail-rejection claims except for that based on the September 12, 2006 Notice. 2. The Major Misconduct Tickets Siggers argues that the district court erred in its finding that, although he did exhaust his claims arising out of the two major misconduct tickets by proceeding through a hearing, he did not complain that the major misconduct tickets constituted retaliation in the hearing. Specifically, Siggers points to the hearing on the November 4, 2005 misconduct, and the fact that the district court noted that the record reveals only that Siggers submitted a statement in this hearing, in which Siggers attempted to explain why he had committed the acts resulting in the major misconduct ticket. Doc. 46 (Opinion and Order at 9). Siggers now points to the actual statement he gave at the hearing, which was apparently unavailable at the time the district court issued its opinion. He quotes a portion of this statement in the motion to amend or reconsider the judgment that he filed after the district court's order in which he stated that his mail was intercepted and not delivered, as an act of retaliation, and he argues that this shows that the district court erred in stating that he did not claim that the November 4 misconduct report was an act of retaliation. Siggers Br. at 13 (quoting Doc. 48 (Motion to Alter or Amend the Judgment and/or for Reconsideration at 17)). It appears, however, that Siggers's motion for reconsideration was denied by the district court for two reasons. First, reconsideration would be improper because the statement should have been provided before the district court's ruling. Doc. 54 (Order at 4). Second, the retaliation complained of in the statement is not said to be the issuance of a major misconduct ticket; it is said to consist of intercept[ing] and not deliver[ing] Siggers's mail. Id. Thus, this statement does not establish that Siggers claimed, in the hearing, that a misconduct report was an act of retaliation. We affirm the district court's decision based upon both of these reasons. 3. The April 8, 2007 Grievance With respect to his April 8, 2007, Step I grievance, Siggers argues that he should be excused from having to file a Step II and a Step III grievance because he requested a Step 2 grievance form while in the hole, but never received a response from the grievance coordinator.... Had Plaintiff pursued the matter further, he risked being sanctioned and placed on Modified Grievance Access. Siggers Br. at 14. There is no merit in this argument. This grievance relates to the issuance of major misconduct reports, and Michigan's rules provide that the only avenue for challenging such reports is a hearing: Decisions made in hearings conducted by hearing officers of the Hearings and Appeals Division of the Office of Policy and Hearings (OPH) are non-grievable and shall be rejected by the Grievance Coordinator. P.D. 03.02.130, ¶ F.1. Thus, a Step II or a Step III grievance would have been rejected as non-grievable, as well. The April 8, 2007 grievance is irrelevant and was properly dismissed by the district court. We therefore reject Siggers's argument that the April 8, 2007 grievance was properly exhausted.