Court Opinion

ID: 9479139
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:09:26.12895+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:50.991394
License: Public Domain

*100SENTELLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
While I agree with much of the majority’s opinion, I respectfully dissent from its conclusions. I join in all of the majority’s analysis on ripeness and agree that the Eighth Amendment claim is wholly unripe, largely for the reasons the majority sets forth. My disagreement on the Eighth Amendment claim is largely a matter of semantics. I cannot agree that the District Court’s dismissal of the Eighth Amendment claim with prejudice by way of summary judgment amounted to legal error. As the District Court viewed this matter, I think correctly, Askins could not prevail on an Eighth Amendment claim because “[p]laintiff cannot demonstrate that District officials acted with ‘deliberate indifference’ because they have not acted at all.” Askins v. District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 87-2110, slip op. at 9 (D.D.C. Nov. 13, 1987).
As the majority notes, the lack of ripeness in the present case is not the sort that deprives this Court of jurisdiction in any constitutional sense. “We do not mean to suggest that there is no case or controversy between the parties, for there is one.” Majority Opinion (“Maj. Op.”) at 98. Nor is this a lack of ripeness that is evident from the face of the complaint. What puts the plaintiff out of court in this case is that he is unable “to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to [his] case, and on which [he] will bear the burden of proof at trial.” Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2552, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). The disclosure of such a defect in the plaintiff’s case is precisely the office of a summary judgment motion under Rule 56(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. When that rule is employed by motion of the defendant, and the plaintiff is unable to present support by way of affidavit or other acceptable evidence for an essential element of his claim, then the duty of the District Court is to do precisely what the District Court did here, that is enter judgment in favor of the defendant. Granted, this will bar the plaintiff from returning to court on the present claim. However, that is precisely what it should do. As the Supreme Court taught us in Celotex, Rule 56 is designed to facilitate the vindication of “the rights of persons opposing ... claims and defenses to demonstrate in the manner provided by the Rule, prior to trial, that the claims and defenses have no factual basis.” Id. at 327, 106 S.Ct. at 2555.
If plaintiff is later able to come to court with a claim for violation of his Eighth Amendment rights based on a transfer or some other new act, it will not be because any claim has ripened on the present facts but because new facts have developed since the granting of the summary judgment— because the District has “done something.” The dismissal with prejudice of his claim on the present allegations upon which he could prove no right to relief could hardly then be taken to bar litigation based on new further events occurring after the grant of the dismissal. Therefore, while I agree with the majority that the claim is “unripe,” I cannot join its conclusion that the unripeness is of a sort that precludes the dismissal on the merits, entered here by way of summary judgment.
As to the First Amendment claim, I would likewise affirm the dismissal by the District Court. While, concededly, incarcerated convicts retain First Amendment rights, see O’Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 352, 107 S.Ct. 2400, 2406, 96 L.Ed.2d 282 (1987), Askins has not in the face of the Rule 56(b) motion produced any support for a claim that his First Amendment rights were violated. Askins’ claim is based on convoluted reasoning that the prison by engaging in testing of him was curtailing his access to the courts. Otherwise put, he claims that he had a First Amendment right to interfere with the Prison Administrators’ decision to test its inmates for “valid penological objectives,” O’Lone, 482 U.S. at 348. This is patently frivolous. In the face of the summary judgment motion, Askins offered no support of any sort for the proposition that prison officials were improperly curtailing his access to the courts or any other First Amendment right. Again, I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.