Court Opinion

ID: 9931614
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-09 16:01:54.750659+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:24:32.616686
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USCA11 Case: 21-10989   Document: 55-1     Date Filed: 02/09/2024   Page: 1 of 14

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                  In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                               No. 21-10989
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

        DAVID ZAVALA,
                                                     Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
        versus
        COMMISSIONER TIMOTHY C. WARD,
        In his individual and oﬃcial capacity,
        ASST COMMISSIONER RICKY MYRICK,
        ROBERT TOOLE,
        Director of Field Operations,
        REGIONAL DIRECTOR TAYLOR,
        GD&CP/SMU,
        WARDEN BENJAMIN FORD,
        GD&CP/SMU, et al.,
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        2                      Opinion of the Court                 21-10989

                                                      Defendants-Appellees.

                             ____________________

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                        for the Middle District of Georgia
                    D.C. Docket No. 5:19-cv-00383-TES-CHW
                             ____________________

        Before WILSON, JORDAN, and BRANCH, Circuit Judges.
        PER CURIAM:
                David Zavala, a state prisoner proceeding pro se, appeals the
        district court’s order dismissing his complaint for failure to exhaust
        administrative remedies. Zavala brought suit against Georgia
        Department of Corrections (“GDOC”) prison officials (hereinafter
        “the GDOC Officials”) under 42 U.S.C. § 1983—alleging excessive
        force, retaliation, conditions of confinement, due process
        violations, inadequate medical treatment, denial of access to
        GDOC’s grievance procedures, and loss of personal property. He
        also appeals the district court’s denial of his post-judgment motions
        under Rules 59(e) and 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
        and asserts that the district court improperly converted a motion
        to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment. The heart of
        Zavala’s appeal, however, is that the district court erred in
        determining that he failed to exhaust administrative remedies for
        his claims. Because we agree with the district court as to all but
        one of Zavala’s claims, we affirm in part and reverse in part.
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        21-10989              Opinion of the Court                        3

                                I.    Background
               In 2019 Zavala filed eight grievances with GDOC related to
        five categories of claims: (1) excessive force; (2) due process; (3)
        conditions of confinement; (4) retaliation; and (5) inadequate
        medical care. The warden rejected these grievances, finding in
        some instances that there was no evidence to support Zavala’s
        allegations and determining in others that Zavala had raised more
        than one issue in a grievance, thus violating the single-issue rule
        which requires prisoners to limit each grievance to one issue only.
        Zavala subsequently filed a pro se complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
        against the GDOC Officials relating to these grievances in U.S.
        District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.
               The GDOC Officials moved to dismiss Zavala’s complaint,
        arguing that Zavala failed to comply with GDOC’s procedures in
        filing most of these grievances, resulting in Zavala failing to
        exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the Prison
        Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”). Although the GDOC Officials
        moved to dismiss seven of the claims primarily on exhaustion
        grounds, they conceded that Zavala “properly exhausted the
        grievance procedure” for Grievance Number 281515 because this
        grievance was forwarded to the GDOC Criminal Investigations
        Division for further review. Thus, they asserted below that “the
        only claims [Zavala] exhausted prior to the filing of this lawsuit”
        were those found in Grievance Number 281515 which claimed (1)
        that Zavala “was subjected to an excessive [use] of force during a
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        4                         Opinion of the Court                      21-10989

        cell extraction[;]” and (2) “that his constitutional [due process]
        rights had been violated in various ways,” including being denied
        meals, showers, and proper cell sanitation. 1 Accordingly, instead
        of moving to dismiss the claims related to Grievance Number
        281515 on exhaustion grounds, the GDOC Officials argued only
        that the due process claims in this grievance should be dismissed
        for failing to state a claim. The GDOC Officials did not argue that
        the excessive force claim raised in Grievance Number 281515
        should be dismissed on any ground.
              The magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation,
        recommending that the district court dismiss Zavala’s complaint
        because he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies for all
        eight of his grievances. For three of the grievances, including
        Grievance Number 281515, the magistrate judge determined that
        Zavala had failed to properly exhaust administrative remedies
        because he violated GDOC’s single-issue rule by submitting more
        than one issue in each grievance. The magistrate judge’s report

        1 As discussed later in this opinion, it is unclear if Grievance Number 281515

        actually raised any due process claims or if it raised only an excessive force
        claim. The face of Grievance Number 281515 that was attached to Zavala’s
        complaint raises an excessive force claim only. In their motion to dismiss, the
        GDOC Officials submitted what they assert was an attachment to Grievance
        Number 281515, which raised the due process claims. The signature date on
        this attachment is four days after the signature date on Grievance Number
        281515, and Zavala argued below that this attachment was sent with a
        different grievance and did not pertain to Grievance Number 281515. If
        Zavala is correct, then Grievance Number 281515 would not violate the single-
        issue rule.
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        21-10989                Opinion of the Court                            5

        never referenced the GDOC Officials’ concession that Zavala
        properly exhausted Grievance Number 281515. As to the five
        remaining grievances, the magistrate judge determined that Zavala
        failed to properly exhaust his administrative remedies because he
        did not timely file a central office appeal for these grievances. The
        district court adopted the magistrate’s report and recommendation
        and dismissed Zavala’s complaint. Accordingly, it determined that
        Zavala failed to exhaust his claims. 2 Notably, the district court, like
        the magistrate judge, never referenced the GDOC Officials’
        concession that Zavala exhausted Grievance Number 281515.
               After the district court dismissed Zavala’s complaint
        without prejudice and entered judgment in favor of the GDOC
        Officials, Zavala moved to alter the judgment under Rule 59(e),
        which the district court denied. Zavala moved again for post-
        judgment relief under Rule 60(b), which the district court also
        denied. This appeal followed.
                               II.    Standard of Review
               We review the granting of a motion to dismiss de novo.
        Georgia Elec. Life Safety & Sys. Ass’n, Inc. v. City of Sandy Springs, 965
        F.3d 1270, 1274 (11th Cir. 2020). The district court’s interpretation
        and application of the PLRA’s exhaustion requirements are also
        reviewed de novo. Whatley v. Smith, 898 F.3d 1072, 1082 (11th Cir.

        2 The district court determined that Zavala failed to exhaust Grievance
        Numbers 281515, 293815, and 285957 for violating the single-issue rule. It
        determined that Zavala failed to exhaust Grievance Numbers 283697, 282680,
        285962, 288104, and 290298 for failing to file a central office appeal.
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                21-10989

        2018). “However, we review the district court’s factual findings on
        the issue of exhaustion for clear error.” Id. We review the denial
        of post-judgment relief for abuse of discretion. Jackson v. Crosby,
        437 F.3d 1290, 1295 (11th Cir. 2006).
                                  III.   Discussion
               On appeal, Zavala raises several arguments. He argues that
        the district court improperly converted the GDOC Officials’
        motion to dismiss to a motion for summary judgment and that the
        magistrate judge improperly granted the GDOC Officials’ motions
        to stay discovery. He also argues that the district court erred in
        determining that he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies.
        We disagree with Zavala on all points except one. We agree that
        the district court erred in determining that Zavala failed to exhaust
        administrative remedies for the excessive force claim contained in
        Grievance Number 281515. The district court did not err,
        however, in determining that Zavala failed to exhaust his
        administrative remedies for the remainder of his claims.
        Accordingly, we reverse in part and affirm in part for the reasons
        below.
                We begin by addressing Zavala’s argument that the district
        court improperly converted the GDOC Officials’ motion to dismiss
        to a motion for summary judgment without providing notice to
        Zavala by considering facts outside of his pleading. This argument
        is without merit. Neither the magistrate judge’s report nor the
        district court’s order adopting the report made any indication that
        the district court converted the motion to dismiss to a motion for
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        21-10989               Opinion of the Court                        7

        summary judgment. And the district court’s order did not grant
        judgment in favor of the GDOC Officials. Instead, it dismissed
        Zavala’s claims without prejudice for failure to exhaust
        administrative remedies. Furthermore, because PLRA exhaustion
        is treated as a matter in abatement rather than a judgment on the
        merits, a district court may consider documents outside the
        pleadings in resolving factual disputes at the motion to dismiss
        stage. Bryant v. Rich, 530 F.3d 1368, 1376 (11th Cir. 2008). Thus, to
        the extent Zavala takes issue with the fact that the district court
        considered documents outside of the pleadings in ruling on the
        motion to dismiss, the district court properly considered these
        documents.
                Turning to Zavala’s argument that the magistrate judge
        erred in granting the GDOC Officials’ motion to stay discovery, we
        conclude that Zavala failed to preserve this argument because he
        did not object to the magistrate judge’s orders staying discovery.
        We have held that “where a party fails to timely challenge a
        magistrate’s nondispositive order before the district court, the
        party waived his right to appeal those orders in this Court.” Smith
        v. Sch. Bd. of Orange Cnty., 487 F.3d 1361 (11th Cir. 2007). Because
        Zavala never challenged the magistrate judge’s discovery rulings
        with the district court, he waived his right to challenge these
        rulings in this Court.
               We now turn to the heart of Zavala’s appeal; his argument
        that the district court improperly determined that he failed to
        exhaust his administrative remedies under the PLRA.
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        8                      Opinion of the Court                21-10989

                We begin, as we must, with the statute. The PLRA provides
        that “[n]o action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions
        under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a
        prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility
        until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.”
        42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). In explaining the PLRA, we have said that
        “when a state provides a grievance procedure for its prisoners, as
        Georgia does here, an inmate alleging harm suffered from prison
        conditions must file a grievance and exhaust the remedies available
        under that procedure before pursuing a § 1983 lawsuit.” Varner v.
        Shepard, 11 F.4th 1252, 1257 (11th Cir. 2021) (quotations omitted),
        cert. denied, 142 S. Ct. 1172 (2022).
               The GDOC employs a two-step grievance procedure as set
        out in their Standard Operating Procedure No. 227.02. First,
        within ten days of the date the prisoner knew or should have
        known of the facts giving rise to his claims, a prisoner must
        complete a signed grievance form that legibly states the complaint
        and requested relief. The grievance must relate to a single issue or
        incident. If the grievance has more than one issue or incident, then
        the prison’s Grievance Coordinator should reject the grievance for
        being procedurally barred. If the grievance is accepted, then it is
        investigated and reviewed by the Warden, who has forty days to
        render a decision. Second, if the Warden rejects the grievance, or
        does not render a decision within forty days, the prisoner may
        appeal that decision with the central office within seven days. The
        Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections must
        render a decision on that appeal within 120 calendar days.
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        21-10989                 Opinion of the Court                             9

               The above procedure is slightly different for grievances that
        allege physical force. Even when a grievance violates the single-
        issue rule and is therefore rejected by the Grievance Coordinator,
        the grievance is still forwarded to the Criminal Investigation
        Division (CID) for further investigation. When grievances are
        rejected but forwarded to the CID, the prisoner will receive the
        following form: “Attachment 12, Rejected: Notification of Referral
        to the Office of Professional Standards.” When a grievance alleging
        physical force is accepted, however, instead of receiving
        Attachment 12, the prisoner will receive: “Attachment 6, Accepted:
        Notification of Referral to the Office of Professional Standards.”
        Any accepted grievance forwarded to the CID is essentially
        exhausted. 3
                We have established a two-step process for district courts to
        analyze a motion to dismiss for failure to exhaust administrative
        remedies under § 1997e(a). Turner v. Burnside, 541 F.3d 1077, 1082
        (11th Cir. 2008). At step one, a complaint is subject to dismissal if
        the plaintiff’s factual allegations, taken as true, demonstrate a
        failure to properly exhaust administrative remedies. Id. If dismissal
        is not warranted at step one, the district court moves to step two
        and makes specific findings to resolve factual disputes and
        determines based on these findings whether the prisoner exhausted
        administrative remedies. Id.

        3 Pursuant to Standard Operating Procedure 227.02, prisoners “may not appeal

        accepted grievances forwarded to [CID].”
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                 21-10989

                With these principles established, we turn to Zavala’s
        argument and determine that the district court did not err in
        holding that Zavala failed to exhaust his administrative remedies
        for seven of his grievances: Grievance Numbers 293815, 285957,
        283697, 282680, 285962, 288104, and 290298. With respect to two
        of his grievances—Grievance Numbers 293815 and 285957—the
        district court adopted the magistrate judge’s finding at step one of
        the Turner analysis that these grievances were properly rejected by
        the prison for violating the single-issue rule. Indeed, the face of
        these grievances firmly establishes that they violate the single-issue
        rule because they both raise more than one issue. Grievance
        Number 293815 raises multiple grievances, including Zavala’s
        assertion that he is improperly housed in an isolation cell, has had
        inmates throw feces on him, and the air temperature is too cold.
        Similarly, Grievance Number 285957 raised an excessive force
        claim as well as claims relating to Zavala being denied out-of-cell
        time, proper sanitation, and having his property taken from him at
        a facility where he was previously housed. Accordingly, the district
        court correctly determined at step one of the Turner analysis that
        Zavala failed to exhaust his administrative remedies for Grievance
        Numbers 293815 and 285957. We thus affirm the district court’s
        order with respect to these grievances.
               With respect to the other five grievances—Grievance
        Numbers 283697, 282680, 285962, 288104, and 290298—the district
        court adopted the magistrate’s report and determined at step-two
        of the Turner analysis that Zavala failed to exhaust his
        administrative remedies because he never filed a central office
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        21-10989               Opinion of the Court                       11

        appeal for these grievances. In doing so, the district court found
        that the affidavit of Officer Johannes Goody was credible. The
        district court relied on Goody’s declaration that he never received
        the appeals forms for these grievances. Based on this declaration
        and Zavala’s history of filing grievances, the district court
        determined that Zavala forged the receipts of central office appeals
        for these grievances and “did not appeal any of these five
        grievances to the central office.” Accordingly, the district
        determined that Zavala failed to exhaust his administrative
        remedies as to these grievances.
               Upon an examination of the evidence, we determine that
        the district court did not commit clear error in its factual finding
        that Zavala did not appeal Grievance Numbers 283697, 282680,
        285962, 288104, and 290298 to the central office. The district court
        found that Goody’s affidavit was facially credible, and that Zavala
        had forged Goody’s signature on the appeal receipts. While Zavala
        takes issue with these determinations and argues that the district
        court should have afforded him an evidentiary hearing where he
        could have called a handwriting expert, he never moved for an
        evidentiary hearing below and instead merely asserted that “[a]
        careful[] analysis of [his] hand writ[]ing compared to Mr. Goody’s
        should at least [give] [him] the benefit of [the] doubt weather [sic]
        [Goody’s] signature was forged or not” and that he was “more than
        willing to submit[] to a lie detector test.” “[I]n the absence of a
        timely request for an evidentiary hearing and where the resulting
        order is to be a dismissal without prejudice, a district court may
        resolve material questions of fact on submitted papers for the
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        12                    Opinion of the Court                 21-10989

        PLRA’s exhaustion of remedies requirement.” Bryant v. Rich, 530
        F.3d 1368, 1377 n.16 (11th Cir. 2008). Because Zavala never moved
        for an evidentiary hearing, the district court was free to make its
        factual determinations based on the papers submitted, and it did
        not clearly err in reaching its conclusion that Zavala never filed
        appeals for Grievances 283697, 282680, 285962, 288104, and
        290298. We affirm the district court’s order with respect to these
        grievances.
                The district court did err, however, with respect to
        Grievance Number 281515.           Despite the GDOC Officials
        conceding below that Zavala “properly exhausted the grievance
        procedure” for Grievance Number 281515, the magistrate judge
        found that this grievance violated the single-issue rule because it
        contained claims for excessive force and due process violations.
        Grievance Number 281515, however, facially raises an excessive
        force claim only and was signed by Zavala on January 3, 2019. The
        due process claim comes from an alleged attachment to Grievance
        Number 281515 that Goody submitted with his affidavit. This
        alleged attachment to Grievance Number 281515 was signed by
        Zavala on January 7, 2019, four days after Zavala submitted his
        initial grievance. Zavala argued in his objections to the magistrate
        judge’s report that this attachment was not part of Grievance
        Number 281515, but the district court failed to address this
        objection. And, like the magistrate judge, the district court failed
        to acknowledge the GDOC Officials’ concession that Zavala
        properly exhausted this grievance.
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        21-10989               Opinion of the Court                       13

               Upon review of the record as relates to Grievance Number
        281515, we determine that Zavala properly exhausted his
        administrative remedies with respect to his excessive force claim in
        this grievance. As an initial matter, the GDOC officials conceded
        that Zavala had properly exhausted his administrative remedies
        with respect to this grievance. Furthermore, the “Notification of
        Referral to the Criminal Investigation Division” that GDOC
        submitted to Zavala was Attachment 6, as opposed to Attachment
        12, which indicates that GDOC accepted his grievance and did not
        reject it for violating the single-issue rule. And because GDOC
        accepted and submitted Grievance Number 281515 to the CID, it
        was exhausted. Thus, the district court erred in dismissing Zavala’s
        excessive force claim in Grievance Number 281515 on exhaustion
        grounds. Accordingly, we reverse with respect to this claim.
               Finally, Zavala appeals the denial of his Motion to Alter or
        Amend Judgment under Rule 59(e) and Motion for Relief from a
        Final Judgment under Rule 60(b). Except for Grievance Number
        281515, for which we have already granted relief to Zavala, we find
        no abuse of discretion in the district court’s orders denying these
        motions as relates to every other grievance. Litigants cannot use
        Rule 59(e) motions “to relitigate old matters, [or to] raise argument
        or present evidence that could have been raised prior to the entry
        of judgment.” Berry v. Crestwood Healthcare LP, 84 F.4th 1300, 1313
        (11th Cir. 2023) (brackets in original) (quotations omitted).
        Because Zavala’s Rule 59(e) motion was merely a rehashing of the
        exhaustion arguments that he raised in opposing the motion to
        dismiss, the district court properly denied it. With respect to
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        14                     Opinion of the Court                 21-10989

        Zavala’s Rule 60(b) motion, the decision of whether to grant such
        a motion is “a matter for the district court’s sound discretion.”
        Aldana v. Del Monte Fresh Produce N.A., Inc., 741 F.3d 1349, 1355
        (11th Cir. 2014) (quotations omitted). The district court construed
        Zavala’s Rule 60(b) motion as a motion for relief from its order
        denying Zavala’s Rule 59(e) motion. It determined that Zavala’s
        motion “contain[ed] the same recycled argument that he[] made
        several times during the process of [the] litigation: that his failure
        to exhaust administrative remedies should be excused.” Our
        review of Zavala’s Rule 60(b) motion confirms the district court’s
        conclusion. Accordingly, for the same reasons discussed above, we
        conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in
        denying Zavala’s Rule 59(e) and 60(b) motions.
            AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED AND REMANDED IN
        PART.