Stockenauer v. DeLeeuw

• Decision Date: 02 June 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94-1215,94-1215
• Citation: 57 F.3d 1070
• Parties: NOTICE: Sixth Circuit Rule 24(c) states that citation of unpublished dispositions is disfavored except for establishing res judicata, estoppel, or the law of the case and requires service of copies of cited unpublished dispositions of the Sixth Circuit. Gordon Lynn STOCKENAUER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Paul DELEEUW, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 1070

57 F.3d 1070

NOTICE: Sixth Circuit Rule 24(c) states that citation of unpublished dispositions is disfavored except for establishing res judicata, estoppel, or the law of the case and requires service of copies of cited unpublished dispositions of the Sixth Circuit.

Gordon Lynn STOCKENAUER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Paul DELEEUW, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 94-1215.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

June 2, 1995.

Before: MERRITT, Chief Judge; GUY and SILER, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

Plaintiff, Gordon Stockenauer, a Michigan state prison inmate, claimed in a 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 action that his constitutional right of access to the courts had been violated because certain legal papers and documents were confiscated by the defendant and never returned to him. The papers and documents related to a federal court action, Stockenauer v. Putnam, No. 87-71879 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 21, 1989), then pending against another prison official. Plaintiff tried his case to a jury, and the jury found for the defendant. On appeal, the only issue raised concerns the jury instructions. The trial judge instructed the jury that one of the elements that plaintiff must prove was:

As a result of defendant's confiscating and refusing to return plaintiff's legal papers, plaintiff was prejudiced in his lawsuit Stockenauer v Putnam. By being "prejudiced" I mean that plaintiff must have suffered an actual injury to his litigation.

(App. 95.)

It is plaintiff's contention that this placed too great a burden on him and that the court should have given his requested instruction:

It is not necessary for Plaintiff to prove that he was prejudiced in his lawsuit for there to be a constitutional violation. It is enough if the Plaintiff proves by a preponderance of the evidence that he was deprived of the ability to possess the legal materials.

If you are satisfied that the Plaintiff has met this burden of proof, then you may infer that the Defendant violated Mr. Stockenauer's constitutional rights.

(App. 79.)

After reviewing the record and the applicable case law, we conclude that the trial judge properly instructed the jury. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment in favor of the defendant.

I.

At all times relevant to these proceedings, plaintiff was an inmate housed at the Huron Valley Men's Facility (HVMF), which is a high security Michigan prison. Plaintiff also was in administrative segregation at the time the acts complained of occurred.

Several of the inmates had their own typewriters, and prison staff had been assaulted by homemade weapons that had been constructed from typewriter parts. Accordingly, a determination was made to search all of the cells containing a typewriter, to see if the typewriters had been altered or used in some manner for the construction of a weapon.

Plaintiff had a typewriter in his cell, and when the cell was searched, plaintiff was removed from the cell. Although it was against regulations to do so, plaintiff insisted on taking his file of legal papers with him. When plaintiff observed that it appeared that his typewriter was going to be confiscated, he began to create a disturbance. Ultimately the disturbance escalated to the point where a response team was called in, tear gas was used, and plaintiff was taken away handcuffed without his legal papers. The papers related to the pending lawsuit that the plaintiff had filed against Inspector Leland Putnam, an officer at HVMF. Stockenauer v. Putnam, No. 87-71879 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 21, 1989).

Plaintiff claims that his legal papers were never returned to him. Conversely, one of the officers at HVMF testified that he personally had gathered up plaintiff's papers and returned them to plaintiff's cell. The Putnam case ultimately went to trial, and plaintiff was represented by counsel in that trial. The jury returned a verdict for Putnam.

Stockenauer subsequently instituted this litigation naming Captain DeLeeuw and Sergeant Jungling as defendants. Stockenauer claimed that 1) the defendants had violated his Eighth Amendment rights by administering cruel and unusual punishment, 2) prison officials had shown deliberate indifference to his medical needs, and 3) his First Amendment right of access to the courts had been denied as a result of the confiscation of his legal materials. The complaint filed primarily addresses the alleged physical abuse that plaintiff was subjected to while his cell was being searched and the subsequent indifference to the injuries resulting from this physical abuse. Little is said about the confiscation of legal papers. After the defendants filed an answer, the plaintiff filed a response in which he alleged that the reason he was taken from his cell in the first instance was so that prison officials could copy his legal papers.

The defendants later moved for summary judgment, and, in plaintiff's response, he abandoned his cruel and unusual punishment claim and asserted that genuine issues of fact existed in connection with his access to the courts claim, as well as his Eighth Amendment claim of deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The summary judgment motion was referred to a magistrate judge for a report and recommendation. The magistrate judge concluded there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether any legal documents were confiscated, and, if they were, whether plaintiff suffered injury in the presentation of his Putnam case as a result of the confiscation. ¹ The magistrate judge also recommended that summary judgment be granted to the defendants with regard to plaintiff's claim of deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The district judge accepted those portions of the magistrate judge's report recommending summary judgment, but rejected that portion of the report recommending that plaintiff's access to the courts claim was still viable. The district judge then went on to grant full summary judgment to the defendants.

Stockenauer appealed to this court and by order dated January 22, 1993, we affirmed the grant of summary judgment on his Eighth Amendment claim, but reversed the grant of summary judgment to defendant DeLeeuw on plaintiff's access to the courts claim. We stated: "Stockenauer has shown that a genuine issue of material fact exists as to whether his legal papers were confiscated by defendant DeLeeuw, and whether he suffered prejudice as a result of this conduct." (App. 56.)

The case ultimately went to trial solely on the issue of the alleged First Amendment violation concerning the confiscation of defendant's legal papers which related to his suit against Putnam.

At trial, plaintiff was represented by counsel and at the conclusion of the trial the jury returned a verdict in favor of the defendant. This timely appeal followed.

II

As stated earlier, the only issue presented by this appeal is whether the district court correctly instructed the jury that, if they found that plaintiff's legal papers had been confiscated and not returned to him, they must further find that "plaintiff was prejudiced in his lawsuit Stockenauer v. Putnam." (App. 95.) Plaintiff contends that the jury should have been instructed that, if the plaintiff "was deprived of the ability to possess the legal materials," that is all that is necessary to prove a constitutional violation. (App. 79.)

Prison inmates have a constitutional right of meaningful access to the courts. Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817 (1977). Since the decision in Bounds there has been a plethora of litigation concerning what constitutes meaningful access to the courts. Several of these cases involve the confiscation or taking of papers and documents relating to legal matters. Both sides have cited to a number of cases, allegedly in support of their respective positions. We have reviewed these cases as well as a host of other cases not cited by the parties, many of which are very recent. We find it unnecessary to review these cases in detail, because in general they are all distinguishable from the facts presented here.

The cases relied upon by the plaintiff, see, e.g., Morello v. James, 810 F.2d 344 (2d Cir. 1987), universally deal with situations in which an order of dismissal or an order of summary judgment was entered against a plaintiff. In these cases, the plaintiff claimed that legal papers relating to pending or proposed litigation had been confiscated, thus resulting in a denial of the constitutional right to meaningful access to the courts. The cases relied upon by the plaintiff hold that such an allegation by a plaintiff is sufficient to state a cause of action. However, as was stated by the court in Morello: "Whether the deprivation of Morello's work product ultimately violated his right of access to the courts under the circumstances of this case is a factual question yet to be resolved. We merely hold that plaintiff has pleaded the violation of a substantive constitutional right." Id. at 347.

The case at bar is distinguishable from Morello and others relied upon by the plaintiff in that we are not dealing with a dismissal of a plaintiff's complaint. Here, Stockenauer went to trial and with the assistance of counsel presented his case to the jury. Thus, any abstract claim relative to access to the courts is simply not present under these facts. Unlike all of the other cases relied upon by the plaintiff, Stockenauer had his day in court.

We note in this regard that it is not just access to the courts but meaningful access to the courts that is required. There can be little doubt that, if state action somehow resulted in...