Bell v. Johnson
| Decision Date | 20 April 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-2634.,03-2634. |
| Parties | Florence BELL and Earnest Bell, Sr., as personal representatives for Earnest Bell, Jr., deceased, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Robert JOHNSON et al., Defendants, Allen Blatter, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ARGUED: Paul D. Reingold, Michigan Clinical Law Program, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for Appellees. John L. Thurber, Office of the Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant. ON BRIEF: Paul D. Reingold, Michigan Clinical Law Program, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for Appellees. John L. Thurber, Office of the Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant.
Before: MOORE and GILMAN, Circuit Judges, GWIN, District Judge.*
This First Amendment retaliation claim relates to a series of events that we have addressed in three prior published decisions. Two of those decisions came in a related case, Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 110 F.3d 1233 (6th Cir.1997), vacated on grant of rehearing en banc and aff'd in part by en banc court, Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 175 F.3d 378 (6th Cir.1999) (en banc), and one in a prior appeal in this case, Bell v. Johnson, 308 F.3d 594 (6th Cir.2002) ("Bell I"). Following our order of remand in Bell I, the First Amendment retaliation claim went to trial, and the jury returned a verdict in favor of Plaintiff-Appellee Earnest Bell, Jr. ("Bell")1 and against Defendant-Appellant Allen Blatter ("Blatter"), awarding $1,500 in compensatory damages but no punitive damages. The district judge granted a new trial on the issue of damages and declined to recuse himself after allegedly making several challenged comments at an off-the-record status conference. This new trial resulted in a verdict of $6,000 in compensatory damages and $28,000 in punitive damages against Blatter. The two issues presented in this appeal are (1) whether the district judge abused his discretion in granting the new trial on damages; and (2) whether the district judge abused his discretion in declining to recuse himself from the case. We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
In Bell I, we summarized much of the factual background to this case as follows:2
Bell is a former prisoner at the State Prison for Southern Michigan in Jackson. In 1993-94, Bell was serving a sentence for armed robbery. He was assigned to administrative segregation during his stay at Jackson because he was diagnosed with AIDS and had engaged in consensual sex with another inmate. Bell was paroled in 1994. Bell returned to Jackson later that year after he violated his parole by failing a drug test. When he returned to prison, Bell was once again assigned to administrative segregation based upon his prior sexual misconduct.
In administrative segregation, prisoners are housed alone in cells with steel doors. Prisoners in segregation are locked in their cells for twenty-three hours each day, but are allowed to spend one hour in the prison yard, where the inmates are placed in cages to isolate them. Because prisoners in segregation are not allowed to congregate, the prisoners communicate with each other by yelling through cracks under the cell doors, passing notes through guards, or sliding notes between cells using paper and string.
In April 1994, Bell sought legal assistance in pursuing a variety of civil rights claims from a jailhouse lawyer named Thaddeus-X who was housed in a nearby cell. On April 20, 1994, Bell and Thaddeus-X signed a legal assistance agreement, which was approved by a deputy warden. With Thaddeus-X's assistance, Bell filed a lawsuit against seventeen prison guards and administrators, including Sgt. [Allen] Blatter and Officer Mark Stimpson. Bell's suit alleged a number of claims, including a challenge to his placement in administrative segregation. Before the lawsuit was filed, prison guards assisted Bell by providing him with writing materials and by passing papers and legal materials between Bell and Thaddeus-X.
Bell claims that the guards began treating him differently after the lawsuit was filed. The guards began refusing to provide Bell with writing supplies or to pass legal materials between Bell and Thaddeus-X. According to Bell, and fellow inmate Eric Waddell, Bell's lawsuit was common knowledge among the guards because Thaddeus-X frequently boasted about the suit, and because the prisoners on the floor had discussed the suit by shouting from cell to cell. In response to what he perceived to be undue harassment by several of the prison guards, Bell sent a "Notice of Litigation" to the seventeen named defendants in his lawsuit on June 3, 1994. The notice explained that Bell had filed a federal lawsuit against the named defendants and warned that "[a]ny further harassment or retaliation will be reported immediately to [the district judge] by plaintiff."
On June 6, 1994, Sgt. Blatter conducted a search of Bell's cell while Bell was in the prison yard for his daily hour of "yard time." When Bell returned to his cell, he found the cell in disarray, and he noticed that some of his legal papers and his medical diet snacks had been taken. Waddell, whose cell was directly across the hall from Bell's, saw Blatter enter the cell and leave with papers and Bell's snacks. Bell testified that he was allowed to keep the medical snacks in his cell because he had AIDS and he needed extra food to slow his weight loss. At trial, Blatter admitted to conducting the cell search and to removing Bell's medical snacks, although he denied taking any legal papers. Blatter also acknowledged that the food was given to Bell for medical reasons.
Bell filed two grievances concerning the June 6 search of his cell. On June 7, 1994, Bell spoke with Sgt. Blatter and asked him about the legal materials. According to Bell, Blatter responded by telling Bell that "if [he] knew what was good for him, that [he] better write the courts [and] have the litigation dismissed." On June 8, the prison staff moved Thaddeus-X from the second floor to the base level of administrative segregation, making it very difficult for Bell to communicate with him about the lawsuit. That day, Bell filed an amended complaint describing the retaliatory cell search on June 6.
On June 15, 1994, notice of Bell's lawsuit was officially received by the prison litigation coordinator on behalf of defendants Blatter and Stimpson. On June 20, 1994, Officer Stimpson allegedly came to Bell's cell and told Bell that he "was going to pay" for filing the lawsuit. While Bell was in the prison yard on June 20, Sgt. Blatter and Officer Stimpson again searched Bell's cell. Bell returned to find that more of his legal materials were missing. Waddell observed this search from his cell and saw Blatter and Stimpson confiscate Bell's food and legal papers. Bell filed another grievance four days later seeking the return of his property.
Michigan Department of Corrections ("MDOC") policy regulates shakedowns of prisoners' cells. MDOC Policy Directive 04.04.110 provides that "no search shall be conducted for the purpose of harassing or humiliating a prisoner." The policy further instructs prison staff to "use reasonable care in conducting the search to protect and safeguard the prisoner's property and ... attempt to leave searched areas in a similar condition to what they were prior to the search." Prison staff are also directed to enter the cell search into the cell-search log and to complete a contraband-removal record and a notice of intent to conduct an administrative hearing whenever non-dangerous contraband is removed from a prisoner's cell. No entry was made in the cell-search log, nor was any notice of intent filed, in connection with either the June 6 or the June 20 search of Bell's cell.
Bell stated that his legal materials were never returned to him. He eventually was able to obtain copies from his sister, who had kept duplicates of some of his filings. Bell testified that he became angry and afraid as a result of the actions of prison officials regarding his lawsuit. He explained:
Bell I, 308 F.3d at 597-98 (citations and footnote omitted, alterations in Bell I). A magistrate judge recommended that Bell's other claims be dismissed, but that his First Amendment retaliation claim (relating to the June 6, 1994 and June 20, 1994 searches) be allowed to go forward, and the district judge adopted this recommendation. The case was held pending our decision in a related case, Thaddeus-X, 175 F.3d 378, involving a separate claim by Bell and "his jailhouse lawyer, Thaddeus-X." Bell I, 308 F.3d at 600. Following our en banc decision in Thaddeus-X, Bell's First Amendment retaliation claim went to jury trial ("Trial No. 1") from January 17 to January 18, 2001. At the close of Bell's case, the defendants moved for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(a), and the district judge granted that motion. We reversed the district court's decision to enter judgment as a matter of law and remanded the case for further proceedings. The chief district judge then ordered the case reassigned, for reasons of docket efficiency, to another district judge. The case was then retried before another jury ("Trial No. 2") from February 18 to February 19, 2003. The jury did not find Stimpson to be liable, but found Blatter to be liable for $1,500 in compensatory damages, but no punitive damages. The district judge entered judgment on February 26, 2003, and the next day Bell timely filed a motion for new trial on the issue of damages. On August 25, 2003, the district judge granted the motion, finding as follows:
The damage award of $1500.00 in compensatory damages with no award for punitive damages was against the great...
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