Court Opinion

ID: 9478235
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:43:37.640343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:18.759879
License: Public Domain

GARWOOD, Circuit Judge,
with whom CLARK, Chief Judge and EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge, joins specially concurring:
I concur in the dismissal of Gillespie’s claims for equitable and declaratory relief on grounds of mootness. Gillespie’s suit is not a class action and there is no “realistic likelihood” that he will again be subjected to the conditions of which he complains. See Brown v. Edwards, 721 F.2d 1442, 1446-47 (5th Cir.1984). However, having properly dismissed these claims as moot, the majority nevertheless proceeds, “exercising its supervisory power,” to announce that henceforth “[sjeparate individual suits may not be maintained for equitable relief from allegedly unconstitutional Texas prison conditions.” I would not thus reach out to resolve that matter. The decision in Johnson v. McKaskle, 727 F.2d 498 (5th Cir.1984), has been in effect for over four and a half years without causing any noticeable enhancement of the considerable administrative and judicial difficulties inherent in the Ruiz litigation (and without occasion for the issue to even present itself to us in the form of a still live controversy). And, separate, individual damage actions will continue to be heard, which will necessarily result in separate resolution of the very same legal and factual merits issues *1104that are involved in individual equitable claims. Just what mechanisms the Ruiz court will use to resolve these individual equitable claims is unclear.1 At least in the absence of strong evidence that the Johnson system has in fact added significantly to the burdens inherent in the Ruiz litigation, I would not consider whether we should disturb the normal pattern of proceeding, recognized in Johnson, until we have a live, concrete case before us presenting that issue.

. The Ruiz litigation has been pending for over fifteen years, and trial on the merits was concluded more than nine years ago. While the remedial portions of that action remain ongoing, I do not understand the majority to suggest that the underlying merits issues in the Ruiz class action are subject to being reopened. It seems plain to me that that phase of the class action has long since concluded. At least as to prisoners who first came into the Texas Department of Corrections after the decree on the merits was issued, the situation is thus distinct from that presented in Goff v. Menke, 672 F.2d 702, 704 (8th Cir.1982), and, apparently, in Groseclose v. Dutton, 829 F.2d 581 (6th Cir.1987) (relying on Goff).
Of course, I address, as does the majority, claims of constitutional violations not merely of violations of the Ruiz decree itself. We have long recognized that the latter belong in the Ruiz case.