Wyatt v. Leonard, Et Al

• Decision Date: 12 August 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-4161,98-4161
• Citation: 193 F.3d 876
• Parties: (6th Cir. 1999) George Wyatt, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Michael Leonard; Geri Mangas; Mario Marroquin; Lt. Pierce; Burton L. Cronk; B.G. Hummel; C/O Walters, Defendants-Appellees, Sgt. Hefner, et al., Defendants. Argued:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 876

193 F.3d 876 (6th Cir. 1999)

George Wyatt, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Michael Leonard; Geri Mangas; Mario Marroquin; Lt. Pierce; Burton L. Cronk; B.G. Hummel; C/O Walters, Defendants-Appellees, Sgt. Hefner, et al., Defendants.

No. 98-4161

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

Argued: August 12, 1999

Decided and Filed: October 6, 1999

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio at Toledo. No. 96-07438--Vernelis K. Armstrong, Magistrate Judge.

COUNSEL ARGUED: Lisa T. Meeks, NEWMAN & MEEKS, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellant. Todd R. Marti, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, CORRECTIONS LITIGATION SECTION, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Lisa T. Meeks, NEWMAN & MEEKS, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellant. Robert C. Angell, OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, CORRECTIONS LITIGATION SECTION, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellees. OPINION

Before: MERRITT, KENNEDY, and DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judges

OPINION

MERRITT, Circuit Judge.

It is undisputed that on August24, 1995, while in segregation, plaintiff George Wyatt was raped by a fellow inmate. A year later he filed this §1983 civil rights action against prison employees seeking damages for cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Specifically, plaintiff alleges that the defendant prison employees were deliberately indifferent to his safety when they placed him in a cell with a known sex offender and then provided inadequate medical and psychological care after the rape.

Plaintiff's suit was dismissed below for failure to exhaust intra-prison administrative remedies, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), the recently-enacted, mandatory requirement that prisoners exhaust "available" administrative remedies before coming to federal court. ¹ The statute says literally that there shall be "no action brought" until whatever remedies are available are tried and exhausted.

Plaintiff's § 1983 case is for damages, and the principal question before us is whether prisoners must exhaust their administrative remedies in actions for damages in order to comply with the 1996 Act, even though the applicable intra-prison administrative process in Ohio does not allow recovery of damages as an "available" administrative remedy. For the reasons that follow we hold that prisoners must exhaust the prison's grievance procedures before filing suit in federal court even though the damages remedy sought is not an available remedy in the administrative process. We conclude in this case, however, that the plaintiff substantially complied with the new exhaustion requirement as a result of the numerous complaints he filed with prison officials and the contacts that he had with prison officials about the injury that he suffered. We therefore reverse and remand to the district court for adjudication on the merits of plaintiff's action.

The circuits are in some conflict on the issue of whether prisoners must exhaust under the 1996 Act if they seek monetary damages. Two circuits have held in Bivens-type actions by federal prisoners that exhaustion in money damages cases is unnecessary because federal prison regulations do not allow for administrative review at all if the federal prisoner seeks damages. Whitley v. Hunt, 158 F.3d 882 (5th Cir. 1998); Garrett v. Hawk, 127 F.3d 1263 (10th Cir. 1997). On the other hand, the Eleventh Circuit has held that even where the federal prison system denies review in such money damages cases, the federal prisoner must still attempt to have his complaint reviewed. Alexander v. Hawk, 159 F.3d 1321, 1325 (11th Cir. 1998). Although it makes sense to excuse exhaustion of the prisoner's complaint where the prison system has a flat rule declining jurisdiction over such cases, it does not make sense to excuse the failure to exhaust when the prison system will hear the case and attempt to correct legitimate complaints by providing some remedy, even though it will not pay damages. In Perez v. Wisconsin Dep't of Corrections, 182 F.3d 532 (7th Cir. 1999), the Seventh Circuit made this distinction in a state prisoner medical case. It held a prisoner must exhaust in a money damages case unless administrative action could provide no remedy of any kind.

In Brown v. Toombs, 139 F.3d 1102, 1104 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 119 S. Ct. 88 (1998), we held that "prisoners filing §1983 cases involving prison conditions must allege and show that they have exhausted all available state administrative remedies. A prisoner should attach to his §1983 complaint the administrative decision, if it is available, showing the administrative disposition of his complaint." In the present case the prisoner has attempted to show that he has exhausted the Ohio prison's administrative process.

So long as the prison system has an administrative process that will review a prisoner's complaint even when the prisoner seeks monetary damages, the prisoner must exhaust his prison remedies. The prisoner must do so for the following three reasons:

1. Prisoners could easily avoid the administrative process in prison condition cases by the simple expedient of asking for damages, a loophole the 1996 Act does not appear to allow. A purpose of the Act was to insure that prisons have notice of complaints and are given the opportunity to respond to prisoner complaints, particularly legitimate complaints, so that such injuries are prevented in the future.

2. The 1996 Act is designed to deter frivolous lawsuits and this purpose would be undermined if prisoners could avoid the law by simply asking for monetary damages.

3. In Brown v. Toombs we required the prisoner to file with his § 1983 complaint a copy of the administrative decision. Such administrative review, along with a record of the administrative decision, is helpful to federal courts in weeding out the frivolous prisoner cases from the ones that may have merit so that they can concentrate on the latter. Courts will "conserve time and effort as a result of any factfinding" during the administrative process, as the Eleventh Circuit observed in Alexander. 159 F.3d at 1328.

Hence, in light of these reasons and the literal language of the statute (no action may be brought until "such administrative remedies as are available" are tried), we hold that prisoners must exhaust administrative remedies even in money damages cases if the prison system does not altogether refuse to review the prisoner's allegations on which the claim is based.

Plaintiff's second argument is that this Court may, in the exercise of its equitable powers, grant plaintiff the requested relief because the exhaustion requirement is not jurisdictional and therefore his efforts to contact prison officials should be found sufficient to satisfy the exhaustion requirement. First, we wish briefly to address the jurisdictional question raised by plaintiff as it has caused some confusion within courts in our own circuit. As explained above, the exhaustion requirement is now a necessary prerequisite to filing prisoner claims in federal court, and the district court no longer has the discretion to "waive" exhaustion as it did before passage of the 1996 Act. E.g., Brown v. Toombs, 139 F.3d at 1104; Alexander v. Hawk, 159 F.3d at 1325. However, as we have previously held, the exhaustion provision is not jurisdictional. Tucker v. McAninch, 162 F.3d 1162 (6th Cir. Aug. 13, 1998) ("While the provisions of § 1997e(a) are mandatory, the statute does not deprive the district court of subject matter jurisdiction, but merely directs dismissal of a complaint for lack of exhaustion."). Accord Perez v. Wisconsin Dep't of Corrections, 182 F.3d 532, 535 (7th Cir. 1999); Basham v. Uphoff, 1998 WL 847689 at *3 (10th Cir. Dec. 8, 1998). But see Morgan v. Arizona Dep't of Corrections, 976 F. Supp. 892, 895 (D. Ariz. 1997) (explaining rationale for finding exhaustion requirement to be...