Garvey v. Vaughn
| Decision Date | 08 April 1993 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 90-8400,91-7205,s. 90-8400 |
| Citation | 993 F.2d 776 |
| Parties | Michael James GARVEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. C. Roland VAUGHN, III, Chief of Police City of Conyers, Georgia, Lew Comans, Sergeant, DeKalb County Police Department, DeKalb County, Georgia, City of Conyers Police Department, DeKalb County Police Department, DeKalb County, Georgia, Defendants-Appellees. Raymond JOHNSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Bruce COOK, National Appeal Board, G. Mackenzie Rast, D.J. Southerland, Brian Ross, Executive Assistant, Billie Hodges, Unit Manager, Bruce Ballard, Counselor, Eva Porter, Case Manager, William Eiston, Lt., M. Hinton, Lt., Peggylene Moore, Correctional Officer, Lawson, Physician Assistant, Federal Correctional Institution, Talladega, AL, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
John R. Parker, Jr., Atlanta, GA, for plaintiff-appellant in No. 90-8400 M. Scott Barksdale, Barksdale and Mobley, Atlanta, GA, for Vaughn and City of Conyers.
Albert Sidney Johnson, Office of DeKalb County Atty., Lisa Anne Foster, Decatur, GA, for Comans & DeKalb County Police Dept.
Edward D. Tumlin, Birmingham, AL, for plaintiff-appellant in No. 91-7205.
Frank W. Donaldson, U.S. Atty., James G. Gann, Winfield J. Sinclair, Asst. U.S. Attys., Birmingham, AL, for defendants-appellees in No. 91-7205.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Before BIRCH, Circuit Judge, JOHNSON, Senior Circuit Judge, and THOMAS *, Senior District Judge.
This consolidated appeal presents the first impression issues for this circuit of whether Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 108 S.Ct. 2379, 101 L.Ed.2d 245 (1988) should be extended to the filing of a pro se prisoner's initial complaint in a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action and claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2671 et seq. The cases arise from a state inmate in Georgia and a federal inmate in Alabama, and respectively involve district courts' granting a motion to dismiss and a motion for summary judgment for the government officials. After review of the record and consideration of the applicable law, we REVERSE and REMAND.
Plaintiff-appellant Michael James Garvey, a Georgia state prisoner, filed a complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against various police departments and officers. Garvey alleged that officers used excessive force in arresting him 1 on March 10, 1983, and challenged the legality of his arrest, trial and conviction. Garvey has been incarcerated since his arrest.
Garvey's complaint is dated February 21, 1985, and he avers that he placed the complaint addressed to District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in the institutional mail receptacle on March 7, 1985. 2 His complaint was not received in the clerk's office for the Northern District of Georgia until March 13, 1985. Following an in forma pauperis determination, his complaint was filed in district court on April 26, 1985. Dependant on prison personnel to mail his court filings, Garvey cannot explain the delay in the receipt of his complaint in federal court. 3
Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d), a magistrate judge dismissed as frivolous Garvey's challenges to his arrest, trial and conviction, but ordered that his claim of excessive force proceed. 4 The district court denied Garvey's motion for appointment of counsel. On defendants-appellees' motion to dismiss, the district court subsequently dismissed Garvey's case because it was barred by the Georgia two-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions. In pertinent part, the district court reasoned:
An action is deemed commenced by filing a complaint with the court. Fed.R.Civ.P. 3. Filing is done by filing the complaint with the Clerk of Court. Fed.R.Civ.P. 5(e). The complaint here was not received by the court until March 13, 1985, beyond the statute of limitations. The fact that it was dated February 21, 1985 is irrelevant to this analysis.
R1-32-3. Judgment for defendants-appellees was entered on March 20, 1990.
The district court granted Garvey's motion to appeal in forma pauperis. The court specifically noted Garvey's good faith questioning of the statute of limitations bar. On appeal, Garvey argues that Houston should be extended to a pro se prisoner whose 42 U.S.C. § 1983 complaint is delivered to prison authorities prior to the expiration of the applicable limitations period, but is not received by the district court until after the limitations period has expired. 5
Plaintiff-appellant Raymond Johnson was an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega, Alabama, when the alleged causes of action arose. Following a report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Johnson's wife had received a letter, postmarked Talladega, threatening his life, Johnson was placed in administrative detention for his protection on November 30, 1988, pending an investigation by the Bureau of Prisons. Although the ensuing investigation by prison officials was inconclusive concerning whether Johnson's safety was in jeopardy, the prison administration requested that he be transferred to another institution.
On February 16, 1989, the Southeast Regional Office of the Bureau of Prisons designated Johnson for transfer to the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, Louisiana, where he presently is incarcerated. Prior to the transfer, a nationwide moratorium on federal prison transfers became effective. Consequently, Johnson was not transferred until April 6, 1989. Therefore, he remained in administrative detention from November 30, 1988, until April 6, 1989.
Johnson filed a pro se complaint in the Northern District of Alabama on February 16, 1989, and alleged violations of his rights under the First, Fifth and Eighth Amendments. 6 He contends that he was placed in detention in retaliation for filing administrative grievances and as part of a plot to conceal subversive communist activity at the prison. While he was detained, Johnson claims that he was mistreated in a variety of ways. 7 His case was referred to a magistrate judge.
The magistrate judge ordered defendants-appellees to respond to Johnson's section 1331 claims in a special report. The special report, essentially denying fault in the treatment of Johnson during his detention, was filed with affidavits from several of the defendant-appellee prison officials and copies of Johnson's administrative claims and the responses. The magistrate judge informed both parties that the defendants-appellees' special report would be construed as a motion for summary judgment.
Johnson subsequently filed a motion to incorporate a tort claim, wherein he alleges that defendant-appellee D.J. Southerland lost Johnson's hobby craft materials valued at $80. Previously, Johnson had filed an administrative claim with the Bureau of Prisons as required under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2675(a). The Bureau of Prisons denied the claim on November 16, 1989. Because, under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b), Johnson had six months from the date of agency denial to file a complaint under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the magistrate judge reasoned that Johnson had until May 16, 1990, to file his action in district court. Since Johnson's motion to incorporate his tort claim was not received by the district court until May 18, 1990, the magistrate judge denied his motion as untimely.
The magistrate judge issued a report and recommendation and concluded that Johnson's complaint should be dismissed. 8 Johnson submitted objections to the magistrate judge's report and recommendation wherein he essentially disagreed with the magistrate judge's legal conclusions, but not the facts and issues presented. 9 The district court adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation, granted defendants-appellees' summary judgment motion, and dismissed Johnson's complaint with prejudice. Johnson appeals the dismissal of his case. The district court issued a certificate of probable cause and allowed Johnson to proceed in forma pauperis.
Johnson's appeal presents only one issue, the timeliness of his motion to incorporate his federal tort claim, that we will address in conjunction with a similar issue in the consolidated case. 10 He contends that the magistrate judge erroneously denied his motion as untimely. Although the district court did not receive his motion until May 18, 1991, Johnson asserts that it should have been considered timely filed when presented to prison officials on May 16, 1991, under the authority of Houston. The government admits that "[a]lthough Plaintiff did not raise the date of filing issue below in the district court, defendants concede it is reasonable to presume Plaintiff presented his motion for mailing on May 16, 1990." Appellees' Brief at 8 n. 4.
In Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 108 S.Ct. 2379, 101 L.Ed.2d 245 (1988), the Supreme Court held that a notice of appeal by a pro se prisoner is filed when it is delivered to prison authorities for forwarding to the district court, rather than filing with the clerk of court. Houston involved a pro se state prisoner who gave a notice of appeal from the dismissal of his habeas corpus petition to prison authorities to mail to district court twenty-seven days after the adverse judgment was entered. The district court clerk stamped the notice filed thirty-one days after the district court judgment, or one day outside the thirty-day filing period of Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1). The Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit's dismissal of the appeal based on the untimely filing and found that the notice of appeal was filed when the petitioner relinquished it to the prison officials for mailing to the district court.
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