brandt v. menard ( 2023 )

STATE OF VERMONT
SUPERIOR COURT (io CIVIL DIVISION
Washington Unit 7h BEC -b 2 t: 5 Docket No. 8-1-16 Wnev
JEFFREY-MICHAEL BRANDT
Plaintiff
. i t oe
v.
LISA MENARD, Commissioner,
Vermont Department of Corrections
Defendant
DECISION
The State’s Motion to Dismiss
Mr. Jeffrey-Michael Brandt is an inmate in the custody of the Defendant Vermont
Department of Corrections who is currently held in an out of state facility in Michigan. He seeks
Rule 75 review of a practice that he alleges occurs in that facility involving certain aspects of the
disciplinary process. At the Department of Corrections level, his grievance was denied for lack
of any “grievable event” on the grounds that there was no underlying disciplinary action at issue.
Mr. Brandt then filed this case.
The State has filed a motion to dismiss for several reasons but the simplest reason that
dismissal is appropriate is that Mr. Brandt lacks standing to raise the issue that he wishes the
court to address. The reason is that he is seeking review of a practice in general rather than as a
result of any specific disciplinary action taken against him. At this time, he has not claimed a
specific consequence to himself as a result of the practice at issue. In order to seek court relief,
he must be able to claim that he has been harmed as a result of a specific event; unless he can
show specific application to himself, he does not have a basis for seeking court review. The
legal term is that he must show that he has “standing” to file a case based on a specific
occurrence. Since he is not complaining about a specific occurrence, he does not have standing,
and this case must be dismissed.
The DOC’s inmate discipline directive has both formal and informal dispute resolution
processes. The informal process is available only for minor violations and only when a decision
is made to use it. See Directive 410.01, Procedural Guidelines § 3 (the informal process). When
those conditions are satisfied, the ensuing process is as follows. When an inmate is believed to
be guilty of a minor violation, a supervisor and the inmate will discuss what the sanction should
be. If they agree, that is the sanction. If they do not agree, the supervisor imposes the sanction
that the supervisor believes should be imposed, without the inmate’s assent or a hearing. The
inmate then may choose to accept that sanction or reject it. A rejection must occur at the time
the sanction is imposed. If the sanction is rejected, a formal DR may be issued based on the
underlying conduct and it may be charged as a major DR as appropriate. Then the formal
process is followed.
One form of major violation is for failing “to carry out any disciplinary sanction order
(whether from informal or formal resolution).” It makes sense that this would be available if an
inmate agreed to a sanction for a minor infraction, or did not object to such a sanction, following
the informal discipline process and then afterwards refused to comply with the terms of the
sanction.
Mr. Brandt claims that, despite the above, there is a practice in his facility as follows.
The informal process for a minor violation is begun. There is no agreement on sanction—there
may be no agreement that there was a violation at all. The supervisor imposes a sanction without
the inmate’s assent. The inmate rejects the sanction in a timely manner and requests a DR and
formal hearing. The DR that is issued is for not carrying out the disciplinary sanction that was
informally imposed rather than for the underlying alleged conduct. In other words, the inmate’s
ability to reject informal resolution and have a hearing on a DR based on the underlying events is
totally illusory.
Mr. Brandt alleges that the corrections officers in his facility were not trained properly to
do what the directive says and, separately, that they were expressly instructed to ignore what the
directive says. The State focuses on these aspects of the allegations, but Mr. Brandt’s claim is
not about training or who said what to whom. It is about a disciplinary practice that Mr. Brandt
claims clearly violates the DOC’s directive.
The threshold problem with Mr. Brandt’s claim is that, for purposes of this case, it is
purely academic. Any decision of the court would be based on generalities and even if it were in
favor of Mr. Brandt’s position, it would not provide him with any specific relief, In short, he
lacks standing to bring this type of claim, at least at this time, when he has no specific and recent
set of facts showing that the practice affected him. “Standing doctrine is fundamentally rooted in
respect for the separation of powers of the independent branches of government.” Hinesburg
Sand & Gravel Co. v, State, 166 Vt. 337, 341 (1997) (noting at 340-41 that “[o]ne of the
‘passive virtues’ of the standing doctrine is to promote judicial restraint by limiting the occasions
for judicial intervention into the political process”); accord Parker v. Town of Milton, 169 Vt. 74,
77 (1998). The courts do not interfere with the manner in which the executive branch carries
out its responsibilities unless and until there is a specific case that a person claims adversely
affects him or her.
The contemporary federal doctrine was described in Lujan v, Defenders of Wildlife, 504
U.S. 555 (1992), as follows:
[T]he irreducible constitutional minimum of standing contains three elements.
First, the plaintiff must have suffered an “injury in fact”—an invasion of a legally
protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) “actual or
imminent, not ‘conjectural’ or ‘hypothetical.’” Second, there must be a causal
connection between the injury and the conduct complained of—the injury has to
be “fairly . . . trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not...
th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court.”
Third, it must be “likely,” as opposed to merely “speculative,” that the injury will
be “redressed by a favorable decision.”
Id. at 560-61 (citations omitted). These federal standing requirements have been adopted in
Vermont. Parker, 169 Vt. at 77-78 (explaining that in Hinesburg Sand & Gravel, the Vermont
Supreme Court adopted the standing test articulated in Lujan).
Mr. Brandt lacks standing in this case because he has not shown that he has received a
recent DR as a result of this practice. No actual or imminent disciplinary action is at issue. Mr.
Brandt asserts that this practice was applied to him at some point in the past, but any such
disciplinary action is not part of the grievance exhausted in relation to this case now. There is no
specific controversy involving Mr. Brandt at this time that gives him standing to ask the court to
determine the legality of the practice.
Thus the court does not address the merit of the practice at all. Because Mr. Brandt does
not have a basis for standing, the case must be dismissed.
ORDER
For the foregoing reasons, the State’s motion to dismiss is granted.
> +h
Dated at Montpelier, Vermont this_@ day of December 2016,
Uae Mb Seacoast
Mary Miles Teachout
Superior Judge