Court Opinion

ID: 9498543
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:20:06.384374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:53.435498
License: Public Domain

JON 0. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
This is a very simple appeal that can be readily affirmed by making one decision concerning the so-called “prison mailbox rule” and one decision concerning equitable tolling. Instead of affirming on available narrow grounds, the majority has needlessly complicated the case in six ways. With respect to the prison mailbox rule, the majority has (1) made one unnecessary and questionable ruling with respect to that rule and (2) held open an issue concerning that rule that can be readily decided; and, with respect to equitable tolling, (3) asserted, without citation of authority, a broad and questionable rule concerning that doctrine, (4) failed to appreciate the realities facing a prisoner who wishes to file a pro se lawsuit, (5) read the papers filed by court-appointed counsel in an extremely narrow fashion, and (6) rejected such tolling on an array of factors premised on that narrow reading. Deeming it more prudent to affirm on the simplest grounds, I concur in the result for the following reasons.
I. The Prison Mailbox Rule
The Appellant contends that the prison mailbox rule, enunciated by the Supreme Court in Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 108 S.Ct. 2379, 101 L.Ed.2d 245 (1988), applies to exclude from the applicable limitations period the entire interval between the date when he handed prison authorities for mailing to a state court a request for documents and the date when he received the requested documents. The majority asserts that to accept the Appellant’s contention we would have to extend Houston in three respects: to apply to delays by parties other than prison officials, to apply to delays that do not concern the mail, and to apply to documents other than those required to be filed. The majority rejects the first two extensions and leaves open the third.6
In my view, the third extension is the most easily rejected. The Supreme Court informed us in Houston that “[t]he question we decide in this case is whether under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1) such notices [of appeal] are to be considered filed, at the moment of delivery to prison authorities for forwarding or *566at some later point.” Id. at 268, 108 S.Ct. 2379 (emphasis added). Houston concerns a filing requirement. It holds that a time limit for filing a document is satisfied by handing the document to prison officials for mailing within the applicable time period. I would not suggest that the filing rule of Houston is limited to the precise document at issue in that case — a notice of appeal. But to extend the decision beyond documents required to be filed would be to ignore not only the holding but the rationale of the holding: a prisoner should be deemed to comply with a filing requirement when he takes the reasonable step of handing to prison officials for mailing the document he wishes to file. Because the Appellant handed to prison officials for mailing a document not required to be filed — a request for documents from a state court — Houston does not apply to exclude any time from the limitations period.
Instead of rejecting the Appellant’s Houston argument on this straightforward and narrow ground, the majority rules that Houston does not help the Appellant because it “does not apply to delays that implicate neither prison officials nor the mails.” [Ante at 563] I can readily agree that Houston does not apply unless a mailing is involved, but this case does involve a mailing — a mailing of a request for court documents — and the Appellant seeks a ruling that the mailing of that request is covered by Houston. I agree that it is not, but the reason is that the mailed request was not required to be filed, not that the mails were not involved. More important, it is far from clear to me that Houston applies only to delays attributable to prison officials. If a person confined to a mental hospital (or in any other governmental custody) handed to an institutional employee concerned with mail a document required to be filed, there would be a strong argument that under Houston that document is deemed filed when handed to the employee.
II. Equitable Tolling
It is a well settled principle that a person claiming the benefit of equitable tolling must act with diligence. See Pace v. DiGuglielmo, - U.S.-, 125 S.Ct. 1807, 1814, 161 L.Ed.2d 669 (2005). In this case, the Appellant waited more than two and three-quarter years of the three year limitations period before handing to prison officials for mailing his request for state court documents. Regardless of why he wanted those documents, his delay was entirely unjustified, and this delay, in and of itself, precludes equitable tolling of the limitation period.
Instead of rejecting the Appellant’s equitable tolling argument on this straightforward and narrow ground, the majority embarks on a complicated analysis that includes several questionable steps. First, the majority states, without citation of authority, that equitable tolling is not applicable unless the information that the Appellant sought from the state court was “necessary to [his] complaint to have been legally sufficient.” [Ante at 564] Why the flexible doctrine of equitable tolling should be limited to a request for documents that are necessary to enable a prospective plaintiff, especially an incarcerated pro se plaintiff, to resist a motion challenging the legal sufficiency of his complaint, is neither explained nor obvious. Second, the majority fails to consider that an incarcerated pro se prisoner might reasonably believe that documents are needed to strengthen his lawsuit or at least to make sure that it can withstand a motion to dismiss, even though he does not understand that, without the documents, his lawsuit would satisfy federal standards of legal sufficiency. Third, the majority focuses narrowly on the argument of the Appellant’s court-ap*567pointed counsel that the Appellant needed the documents because he could not remember certain details of the state court criminal case that underlies his federal civil rights complaint. Such a memory loss is not inherently incredible, and, in any event, is not the only reasonable basis for an incarcerated pro se litigant to have sought state court records of his criminal case. Finally, after limiting the Appellant to a memory loss contention, the majority rejects his equitable tolling argument because such a memory loss is not attributable to the state court’s delay in sending the requested documents. Of course, it is not, but the Appellant should not be limited to a memory loss argument, nor should he be faulted for reasonably thinking that the requested court documents should be obtained before filing his federal lawsuit.
Hi íjí H* # ‡
In sum, the prison mailbox rule, which applies only to documents required to be filed, does not apply to the Appellants’s request for state court documents because the request was not required to be filed within a prescribed time limit, and equitable tolling does not apply to the delay in obtaining the state court records because the Appellant unduly delayed, without justification, in making the request. For these simple reasons, I concur in the Court’s result of affirming the judgment of the District Court.

. Once the majority has rejected the first extension, it is not clear why it continues on to reject the second extension. And by leaving open the third extension issue, which is readily resolved, the Court invites needless litigation endeavoring to apply the prison mailbox rule to all sorts of documents that those in custody might wish to obtain, beyond documents that are required to be filed.