Court Opinion

ID: 9477585
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:26:43.151272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:57.051439
License: Public Domain

PELL, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The court is sending one aspect of this case back to the district court for further proceedings regarding Martin’s contention that while an inmate of a county jail, he was denied access to newspapers, a claim he did not, in the wording of this court’s opinion, “mention” in the amended complaint the pertinent allegation which had been in the original complaint. There is no doubt in my mind that once the underlying facts, which are fairly obvious from our present record, are more explicitly developed, the district court will rule against Martin on this remaining issue and in due course, the case will be back again for a decision by this court. Aside, however, from the waste of valuable judicial resources, it appears to me that this court has given an overly generous reading of Haines v. Kerner, to the record before us. I therefore respectfully dissent.
Martin in his original complaint set forth eleven specific allegations, one of which dealt with the matter of newspapers and was as follows:
My Fourteenth and Fifth Amendment Rights to Equal Protection under the Law were violated when defendants refused Plaintiff Access to daily newspapers.
The original complaint was prepared while Martin had an address at Plymouth, Indiana, was hand printed, and was in confusing order with further supplemental allegations being added by way of additions. It contained, as stated above, eleven allegations. The amended complaint on the other hand, was typewritten in an orderly well-written fashion, citing, and sometimes quoting from, the Indiana Code on duties of custodians of prisoners. It is suggestive either of access to a prison library, he was incarcerated at the time in the Indiana Reformatory, or the assistance of a “jail house lawyer,” or both.
The Amended complaint in its thirteen pages goes into specific detail on ten of the eleven original allegations. The remaining allegation, number nine, is at no place mentioned. It is true that in haec verba he also did not include the specific amount of $350,000 compensatory damages and $350,-000 punitive damages he sought against each defendant, but he did think this was an important enough part of his case to devote the final paragraph to the “plaintiff should be granted all of the relief asked in his original complaint....,” concluding with a final sentence: “In addition all other just and legal compensation this court believes the plaintiff is entitled to receive is asked for and should be granted in the premise.”
It should come as no surprise that the district court in a thorough examination of the ten specific allegations of the amended complaint in its 13 page Memorandum and Order while evidencing that it had reexamined the allegations of the original complaint observed:
*1459Apparently the plaintiff here is not asserting the complaint made in the original complaint but excluded from the amended complaint, with regard to being denied access to a daily newspaper.
The district court had before it the affidavit of Sheriff Richard Tyson, stating in part:
That delivery of daily newspapers is not allowed in the Marshall County Jail, but inmates may receive daily newspapers through the United States mail via their own subscriptions.
Nevertheless, this court’s opinion seizes upon ambiguous language in Martin’s amended complaint in holding that it “suggests that allegation nine was incorporated into the amended pleading.” (emphasis added). Aside from the implicit recognition that there is a complete lack of reference in the amended complaint to allegation nine, although there is a detailed statement of the other ten, I simply do not find ample support, even under Haines v. Kerner, for a conclusion other than that Martin had determined he would abandon the weak claim, perhaps not to dilute the other ten which, to the extent there was merit in them, were the real meat of plaintiff’s grievances. The general statement on the first page of the amended complaint, “to allow the following wording in addition to the wording already contained in the complaint” says nothing more than, “I have missed putting in some detail of the ones I am now pushing, which were in the original complaint, and I want to consider that wording also.” Unless Martin already knew, as the Sheriff stated in his affidavit, the fact that he indeed could subscribe for newspapers through the mails, there was no reason whatsoever for his not repeating explicitly factual allegations to support his conclusory assertion that he had been “denied access.” He was articulate as to the meaty allegations in providing supporting factual data dealing with claims about his alleged treatment while at the jail such as denial of access to law books, segregation, improper housing, lack of proper medical attention, verbal abuse, interference with mail et cetera, et cetera — indeed, nearly the entire panoply of prisoners’ claims of violation of constitutional rights.
This court’s opinion refers to the missing allegation as being “incorporated” in the amended complaint. As I understand the incorporation by reference situation it means the bringing into one document in legal effect, of the contents of another by referring to the latter in such a manner as to adopt it. I can see no justifiable basis, Haines v. Kerner or otherwise, for incorporating a specific claim which is at best conclusory when every other one of the other claims is spelled out in detail.
I have referred to the ninth allegation as conclusory because I so regard it. There was no specific allegation of how, where, or when the claimed “denial of access” occurred, although there was no such lack of detail even in the other parts of the original complaint.
Although we should view pro se pleadings liberally, such pleadings may not be merely conclusory. The complaint must allege facts, which if true, state a claim as a matter of law. Martin v. Aubuchon, 623 F.2d 1282, 1286 (8th Cir.1980).
Although as I have indicated, I regard the ultimate conclusion of this case in view of the Sheriff’s affidavit as foreshadowed, nevertheless I have felt it necessary to record my dissent at this point where the litigation should have ended.