Brown v. Crowley

• Citation: 312 F.3d 782
• Decision Date: 27 November 2002
• Docket Number: No. 01-1541.,01-1541.
• Parties: Cleveland BROWN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Michael J. CROWLEY, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 782

312 F.3d 782

Cleveland BROWN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Michael J. CROWLEY, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 01-1541.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Submitted: August 7, 2002.

Decided and Filed: November 27, 2002.

Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied: January 28, 2003.^*

Patrick J. Wright (briefed), Office of the Attorney General, Corrections Division, Lansing, MI, for Appellee.

Cleveland Brown (briefed), Ionia, MI, pro se.

Before MOORE and GILMAN, Circuit Judges; ROSEN, District Judge.^**

GILMAN, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MOORE, J., joined. ROSEN, D.J., (pp. 792-808), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

GILMAN, Circuit Judge.

After Cleveland Brown, a Michigan prisoner, was transferred from one prison to another, he was informed that he owed a balance on his personal account with the former prison. Funds were then removed from Brown's prison trust account to cover the debt. Yet when Brown was subsequently transferred to other Michigan prisons in later years, he continued to receive notices regarding the same debt. Brown attempted to rectify the situation by filing grievances each time he received a notice, but his efforts were unsuccessful. He finally wrote a Michigan State Police official to request that criminal charges be brought against various prison officials for embezzlement of his funds. His request was referred to the Internal Affairs Department of the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), which decided that his complaint was meritless. Brown was subsequently issued a major misconduct charge for filing a false complaint. He was later acquitted of the charge by a hearing officer.

In June of 1998, Brown filed suit against a number of MDOC officials pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Brown claimed that the defendants violated his constitutional rights under the Equal Protection Clause, the Due Process Clause, the First Amendment, and the Eighth Amendment. The district court dismissed several of Brown's claims sua sponte, and the defendants were later granted summary judgment on the remaining claims. This court, in a prior appeal, vacated the district court's dismissal of Brown's retaliation claim and remanded for further proceedings. On remand, the district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment on the retaliation claim. For the reasons set forth below, we VACATE the judgment of the district court and REMAND the case once again for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual background

In February of 1995, Brown was transferred from Ryan Correctional Facility (Ryan) to the Marquette Branch Prison (Marquette). Brown was later informed that Ryan had sent a notice to Marquette stating that he owed $51.24. After concluding that Brown did in fact owe the $51.24, Marquette Business Office Secretary Susan Bianchi requested Marquette Accountant S. Laine to deduct that amount from Brown's prison trust account. Bianchi subsequently told Brown that the debt had been paid.

Brown was later charged an additional $18.00 for a debt that he allegedly owed to Southern Michigan Prison. He contends, however, that this amount had already been included in the $51.24 that was paid to Ryan. When Brown questioned the debt, Bianchi informed him that the $18.00 debt was part of a different transaction.

After Brown's attempts to obtain records pertaining to his Ryan debt were unsuccessful, he filed a grievance. Brown's grievance was answered by the grievance coordinator at Ryan, Cindy Thorton. Thorton stated that, of the $51.24 paid to Ryan, $4.91 was for an indigent loan, and the remaining $46.33 was the amount that had been overdrawn from Brown's prison account.

Brown was subsequently transferred from Marquette to Standish Maximum Correctional Facility (Standish). When Brown received a second notice regarding the $18.00 debt, he filed a grievance requesting an itemized statement of the amount owed. At Standish, Brown also continued to receive notices that he owed the $51.24 debt that had been paid while he was imprisoned at Marquette.

Brown was then transferred once again, this time from Standish to Baraga Maximum Correctional Facility (Baraga). After he was transferred, the Baraga accounting office informed Brown that Ryan was still claiming that he owed $51.24. In January of 1998, Brown filed still another grievance and wrote to Baraga Case Manager Daniel Lesatz regarding the situation. A few days later he wrote a second letter to Lesatz. He also wrote contemporaneous letters regarding the matter to Baraga Accountant Toni Joki and Baraga Warden Michael Crowley. Two days later, he sent copies of the pertinent records to Baraga Resident Unit Manager William Leutzow to try to resolve the matter. Leutzow, however, returned these documents to Brown and told him that he should contact Ryan directly.

Lesatz later denied Brown's January 1998 grievance on the basis that it was duplicative of grievances that Brown had filed in 1996 and 1997. This caused Brown to send a Step II grievance appeal to Baraga Warden Crowley, contending that his grievance was not redundant because a duplicate deduction had been made from his prison account. After the matter was investigated, Crowley told Brown that the $51.24 debt had been reduced to $6.16, and that the matter would be resolved when that amount was paid. Although Brown requested copies of the investigation reports, he never received a response. Brown then sent a Step III grievance appeal to MDOC Director Kenneth McGinnis, but his appeal was denied.

At this point, Brown wrote Michigan State Police Lieutenant Colonel Alan K. Anderson to request that criminal charges be brought against the above-mentioned prison officials for embezzlement of his funds. Anderson submitted the matter to the Internal Affairs Department of the MDOC. Brown subsequently received a letter from MDOC Internal Affairs Manager Jack L. Hall, stating that his complaint had been investigated and that it lacked merit.

In April of 1998, Regional Prison Administrator Richard E. Johnson wrote a letter to Warden Crowley to request that Brown be issued a major misconduct charge for filing a false complaint. At Crowley's direction, Case Manager Lesatz then issued the charge against Brown for "interference with the administration of rules." The misconduct charge stated that an investigation had determined that Brown still had an outstanding debt. Because Brown was already being housed in administrative segregation, no further restrictions were imposed on him as a result of the misconduct charge.

After a hearing, Brown was found "not guilty" of the charge. The hearing officer concluded that the evidence was insufficient to show that Brown had deliberately filed false allegations. Furthermore, the hearing officer concluded that Brown's belief that someone was improperly taking money from his account was not unreasonable.

B. Procedural background

In June of 1998, Brown filed this suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan against a number of the above-mentioned MDOC officials. Brown claimed that the defendants: (1) discriminated against him because he is African American, (2) denied him due process by overcharging his prison account for amounts due as he was transferred between different facilities within the Michigan prison system, (3) violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment because he had no money left for basic hygiene products such as shampoo or toothpaste, and (4) impeded his First Amendment rights by denying him contact with his family because he could not afford stamps. Furthermore, in the "statement of facts" appended to his pro se complaint, Brown asserted that the major misconduct charge was issued "in retaliation for seeking to get redress for the (MDOC's) violations of my rights." Brown later filed a motion to amend his complaint to add a number of other defendants.

On August 3, 1998, the magistrate judge to whom Brown's case was referred recommended that his claims be dismissed for the following reasons: (1) his equal protection claim was frivolous, (2) he had failed to state a due process claim upon which relief could be granted, and (3) he had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies with regard to his First and Eighth Amendment claims. The magistrate judge apparently did not construe Brown's complaint as setting forth a retaliation claim.

On September 1, 1998, Brown filed objections to the magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation. Brown reiterated his retaliation claim in these objections by arguing that the defendants punished him "in violation of the plaintiff's First Amendment right in retaliation for his reporting their actions." On October 5, 1998, the district court approved in part and rejected in part the magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation. The district court dismissed Brown's equal protection and due process claims, but left standing his First and Eighth Amendment claims. Like the magistrate judge, the district court did not directly address Brown's retaliation claim.

The defendants then filed a motion for summary judgment on Brown's remaining claims. In their motion for summary judgment, the defendants requested dismissal of Brown's complaint on the grounds that they were entitled to qualified and Eleventh Amendment immunity. The defendants specifically denied the "apparent retaliatory conspiracy" that Brown claimed had occurred. Brown filed a cross-motion for summary judgment on April 23, 1999, in which he developed his retaliation claim and addressed the defenses that the defendants had asserted.

In his Report and Recommendation dated July 30, 1999, the magistrate judge concluded that the defendants' motion for summary judgment should be granted. The magistrate judge directly addressed Brown's retaliation claim and concluded that Brown "fails to allege any...