Clayton v. United States Department of Justice

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 05a0496n.06
Filed: June 10, 2005
No. 04-5536
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
EARL CLAYTON III, )
)
Plaintiff-Appellant, )
)
v. ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
) STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ) EASTERN DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY
JUSTICE; BUREAU OF PRISONS; )
KATHLEEN HAWK SAWYER, Former )
FMC-Lexington Warden; GEORGE )
SNYDER, Former FMC-Lexington Warden; )
M. SEVIGNTY, FMC-Lexington Director of )
Safety, )
)
Defendants-Appellees.
Before: SILER and SUTTON, Circuit Judges; O’MEARA, District Judge.*
SUTTON, Circuit Judge. The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e,
imposes a heightened pleading requirement on inmates who bring lawsuits about the conditions of
their confinement, requiring them (among other things) to plead with specificity that they have
exhausted administrative avenues for relief. Because Earl Clayton III, a federal prisoner, failed to
*
The Honorable John Corbett O’Meara, United States District Judge for the Eastern District
of Michigan, sitting by designation.
No. 04-5536
Clayton v. DOJ
plead with specificity the subject matter of the claims he presented in the administrative proceedings,
we affirm the district court’s dismissal of his claims without prejudice.
I.
Earl Clayton III, a prisoner at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky, was
diagnosed on April 25, 2001, as having histoplasmosis, a fungal disease that primarily affects the
lungs. According to Clayton, he contracted the disease from exposure to bat and pigeon droppings
at the prison facility. Physicians treated him for the disease and verified by x-ray examinations on
July 5, 2001, and January 2, 2002, that he no longer had the illness or any other lung problems.
On November 10, 2003, Clayton filed a federal complaint against the Department of Justice,
the Bureau of Prisons and various individual officials claiming that they had violated the following:
(1) his federal constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth
Amendments, (2) his statutory rights under the Federal Tort Claims Act, (3) his state constitutional
rights under unspecified provisions of the Kentucky Constitution and (4) his rights under unspecified
“pendent” state laws. Although his complaint did not address whether he had pursued any
administrative remedies to seek redress for his alleged injuries, he filed with the complaint a form
provided by the district court requesting information from prisoners filing § 1983 or Bivens claims.
On the form he noted that he had “filed an Administrative Tort Claim on April 17, 2003.” Two
weeks after filing the complaint and original form, he filed an amended form that provided further
explanation: “I filed an Administrative Remedy concerning my health and the sanitation of this
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facility. Complaint Denied.” On the amended form, he also indicated (by placing X marks on the
form) that he presented his claims to the Warden, appealed the Warden’s response to the Regional
Director and appealed the Regional Director’s response to the Office of General Counsel.
Responding to the form’s question about the result of his administrative claims, he said that “[m]y
claim was partially denied, and some of my issues were not addressed at all.” Clayton did not attach
the decisions denying his claims to the complaint.
The district court sua sponte dismissed the claims without prejudice because Clayton had
failed adequately to describe the administrative proceeding and therefore had failed to show that he
had exhausted his claims.
II
The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) prevents prisoners from bringing any action “with
respect to prison conditions under . . . Federal law, . . . until such administrative remedies as are
available are exhausted.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). This exhaustion requirement “applies to all inmate
suits about prison life, whether they involve general circumstances or particular episodes, and
whether they allege excessive force or some other wrong.” Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 532
(2002). To meet the exhaustion requirement, a prisoner must “plead his claims with specificity and
show that they have been exhausted by attaching a copy of the applicable administrative dispositions
to the complaint or, in the absence of written documentation, describ[ing] with specificity the
administrative proceeding and its outcome.” Boyd v. Corrections Corp. of Am., 380 F.3d 989, 994
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(6th Cir. 2004) (brackets in original). Describing the proceeding with specificity includes describing
the subject matter of the proceeding, for details about the claim are “necessary for the district court
to determine what, if any, claims have been exhausted.” Knuckles El v. Toombs, 215 F.3d 640, 642
(6th Cir. 2000); see also Boyd, 380 F.3d at 994 (requiring that a prisoner “plead his claims with
specificity and show that they have been exhausted”) (emphasis added). In contrast to cases
governed by the more lenient Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (where notice pleading is sufficient,
see Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a), and where leave to amend is freely given when justice requires, see Fed.
R. Civ. P. 15(a)), “a plaintiff in a case covered by the PLRA may not amend his complaint to avoid
a sua sponte dismissal.” Baxter v. Rose, 305 F.3d 486, 489 (6th Cir. 2002). Indeed, the PLRA
requires district courts to screen prisoner claims “before docketing, if feasible or, in any event, as
soon as practicable after docketing” for, among other things, frivolousness or targeting parties
immune from monetary claims. 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a) & (b). We review de novo the district court’s
dismissal of a suit under the PLRA for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. Curry v. Scott,
249 F.3d 493, 503 (6th Cir. 2001).
Because Clayton did not attach a copy of the administrative dispositions of his case, the
debate in this case centers on whether Clayton described with specificity the administrative
proceedings and their outcome. Clayton, it is clear, fulfilled part of that requirement, for he did
specify which proceedings he exhausted and their outcomes. He indicated that he filed an
“Administrative Remedy” on April 17, 2003, which was denied. And he indicated that he pursued
this complaint first to the Warden’s level, then appealed the Warden’s response to the Regional
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Clayton v. DOJ
Director, and finally appealed the Regional Director’s response to the Office of General Counsel.
This process, he stated, resulted in his claim being denied—or being, as he says later in the form,
“partially denied,” apparently because “some of [his] issues were not addressed at all.” The outcome
of the complaints to the Warden and the Regional Director are apparent from the fact that he
appealed each of them. The process that he describes in his complaint tracks the “Administrative
Remedy Program” set out at 28 C.F.R. §§ 542.10–542.19: Clayton initially complained to an
institution staff member, see § 542.14(c)(4), and he appealed to the correct individuals, see
§ 542.15(a).
The problem, however, is that Clayton did not describe which claims he brought in those
administrative proceedings. He said only that he brought a tort claim “concerning my health and
the sanitation of this facility.” This general complaint about health and sanitation does not provide
enough information for a district judge tasked with (1) comparing Clayton’s federal complaint to
the claims Clayton brought through the administrative process and (2) determining whether the
federal claim was presented in the administrative proceeding. See Baxter, 305 F.3d at 488 (“[T]he
heightened pleading standard permits federal courts to determine whether the claim can be decided
on the merits, without inefficiently expending judicial resources on evidentiary hearings and
responsive pleadings.”). A health-and-sanitation claim against a prison could rest on any number
of grounds. It could relate to another health problem (such as not getting medical assistance when
requested) or to another sanitation problem (such as unclean bathrooms or an unsanitary cafeteria).
See, e.g., Dellis v. Corrections Corp. of Am., 257 F.3d 508, 511 (6th Cir. 2001) (prisoner alleging
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No. 04-5536
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he was subjected to a flooded cell and deprived of a working toilet); Brown v. Brown, No. 01-3880,
2002 WL 31072072, at *1 (6th Cir. Sept. 16, 2002) (prisoner alleging he was prevented from
purchasing personal hygiene items); Curtis v. Curtis, No. 01-6016, 2002 WL 926972, at *1 (6th Cir.
May 6, 2002) (prisoner alleging deliberate indifference to medical needs and denial of personal
hygiene items); White v. Caruso, No. 00-2257, 2002 WL 554488, at *1 (6th Cir. Apr. 12, 2002)
(prisoner complaining of prison officials’ failure to enforce smoking regulations and alleging he
suffered various health problems as a result); Abdur-Reheem-X v. McGinnis, No. 99-1075, 1999 WL
1045069, at *1–2 (6th Cir. Nov. 12, 1999) (prisoner alleging “claims [that] all concern the issue of
sanitation,” such as being issued underwear that were too small and soiled, being placed in a cell
with no sink or toilet and being housed next to a mentally ill patient who smeared feces on cell
walls). Given the wide range of claims that could be described as health-and-sanitation claims,
Clayton’s complaint does not provide enough information to tell whether he brought his current
claim (concerning histoplasmosis allegedly caused by bat and bird droppings) in the administrative
proceedings. See Knuckles El, 215 F.3d at 642 (affirming dismissal for lack of specificity where
prisoners “simply state[d] in their complaint that certain claims have been exhausted without
providing the documentation or other details required”); Thomas v. Woolum, 337 F.3d 720, 733–34
(6th Cir. 2003) (affirming dismissal for lack of specificity where the grievance “mention[ed] neither
the defendants themselves nor any facts suggesting that officers other than Woolum knew anything
of the incident”); Arbuckle v. Bouchard, No. 03-1975, 2004 WL 542170, at *1 (6th Cir. Mar. 16,
2004) (affirming dismissal for lack of specificity where prisoner attached a grievance that did “not
name anyone in particular as being responsible for his mistreatment”); Gallagher v. Wilkinson, No.
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03-3193, 2003 WL 22170649, at *1 (6th Cir. Sept. 17, 2003) (affirming dismissal where prisoner
“did not describe the subject of any grievance, against whom he filed any grievance, or why any
such grievance was denied”).
Nor does Boyd v. Corrections Corp. of America, 380 F.3d 989 (6th Cir. 2004), alter this
conclusion. There, we concluded that a prisoner satisfied the heightened pleading standard by
alleging that the grievance “covered ‘the events of the evening of August 11, 1998.’” Id. at 996.
Boyd’s reference to events, however, is much more detailed than Clayton’s general reference to
“health and [ ] sanitation”—both because Boyd described the events more particularly and because
he circumscribed the scope of events by specifying a discrete period of time when the incidents
occurred. At some point along the pleading spectrum, as Boyd suggests, requiring more than
references to particular events changes the requirement from specificity in pleading to exactness in
pleading. But Clayton’s description does not approach that point because of the wide range of
potential claims covered by a prisoner’s health-and-sanitation complaint.
As the district court dismissed the complaint without prejudice, however, this conclusion is
not the end of the road for Clayton’s complaint. He may, if he wishes, cure this problem by refiling
his federal complaint and either providing the requisite information about the claims he brought
administratively or attaching the administrative dispositions themselves.
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III.
For these reasons, we affirm the dismissal of Clayton’s claims without prejudice.
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