Miller v. Donald

• Decision Date: 29 August 2008
• Docket Number: No. 06-10536.,06-10536.
• Citation: 541 F.3d 1091
• Parties: Tracy Anthony MILLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Commissioner James DONALD, Georgia Department of Corrections, Georgia, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

541 F.3d 1091

Tracy Anthony MILLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Commissioner James DONALD, Georgia Department of Corrections, Georgia, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 06-10536.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

August 29, 2008.

Sarah M. Shalf (Court — Appointed), Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, LLP, Atlanta, GA, for Miller.

Aaron Bradford Mason, Atlanta, GA, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

Before TJOFLAT, BLACK and EBEL,^* Circuit Judges.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

Tracy Anthony Miller is an inmate in the Georgia prison system. He is a frequent litigant, as plaintiff, in the federal courts in Georgia. Since 1992, proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis, he has filed at least thirty cases in district court and has taken nearly as many appeals to this court. The defendants in these cases are, for the most part, officials of the Georgia Department of Correction. In the case now before us, he has sued in the Southern District of Georgia the Commissioner of the Department of Correction and various Department officials (collectively "Commissioner") under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, seeking relief for their continuous infringement of his rights under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. § 12131 et seq., and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794.

On receiving Miller's complaint, the district court, acting sua sponte, took note of the law suits Miller previously has brought against Department of Correction officials, examined the complaint's factual allegations and concluded that they were frivolous, and dismissed the complaint without prejudice under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g).¹ In its order of dismissal, the court, in an effort to curb Miller's litigious activity, enjoined Miller from submitting further filings with the court, except in limited circumstances, without paying the unpaid filing fees he has accrued.² Miller now appeals. We reverse the district court's dismissal of Miller's complaint, vacate the injunctive provision of the court's order regarding future filings, and remand the case for further proceedings.

I

At the time he filed his complaint in this case, Miller was incarcerated in the Augusta State Medical Prison ("ASMP"). His complaint alleges in substance that the officials at ASMP failed to make adequate accommodations for his physical limitations. He is a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair, and as a result of his immobility, he was and continues to be subjected to physical harm. The officials also failed to make accommodations for his ailments. They essentially ignored his kidney condition, which requires catheter treatment and medication, and his chronic high blood pressure, which requires medication. As an example of the officials' disregard of his physical condition, the complaint alleges that the officials confined him for twenty-four hours a day in a cell too small for his wheelchair to move and denied him accessible toilets and urine catheters, thereby forcing him to lie in his own bodily waste.³

Miller lacked the means to pay the $250 fee for filing his complaint, so he sought leave to proceed in forma pauperis ("IFP") pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915. Section 1915(g), as amended by the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("PLRA"), precludes a prisoner from "bring[ing] a civil action ... under this section if the prisoner has, on 3 or more prior occasions," brought an action that was dismissed either as frivolous or because the complaint failed to state a claim for relief, "unless the prisoner is under imminent danger of serious physical injury." 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). It is undisputed that Miller has had enough cases dismissed to fall under this so-called three-strikes provision. See Miller v. Brown, CV 604-100, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 28397, at *3 (S.D.Ga. Sept. 15, 2004) (listing Miller's qualifying prior cases). In this case, Miller argues that his allegations of imminent physical danger from continuing mistreatment qualifies him for the § 1915(g) "imminent danger" exception.

The district court did not overlook Miller's argument that it should entertain his law suit because it fell within the imminent danger exception. After reviewing the cases Miller had previously filed challenging conditions of his confinement in Georgia's prison system, however, the court concluded that Miller was "attempting to use claims of `imminent danger' as a means to force a shotgun blast of other frivolous and duplicative claims into court." The court observed that allegations of the complaint were nearly identical to the allegations Miller had brought against other Georgia prison officials. Two of those cases, Miller v. King, 449 F.3d 1149 (11th Cir.2006) and Miller v. Pryor, CV 505-029 (M.D.Ga. Aug. 11, 2005), had advanced beyond the screening phase, had bypassed the § 1915(g) bar, and were still pending. Although King and Pryor concern the conditions at Georgia State Prison and Men's State Prison, respectively, the court determined that Miller's allegations were duplicative of his complaints in King and Pryor.

The provision of the district court's dismissal order that enjoined Miller's filing activity was drawn from a practice invoked from time to time by the Southern District of Georgia to curb filing abuses in prisoner cases. With three narrow exceptions, a prisoner is prohibited from filing any new papers with the court under § 1915(g) until he has paid all accrued filing fees. The exceptions are that a prisoner may file (1) papers in a criminal proceedings brought against him by the state, (2) a timely motion for reconsideration of the filing bar as applied, and (3) a pleading or paper demonstrating that he has been denied access to state court and has no recourse except to repair to the district court. Noticeably absent from this list of exceptions is a complaint alleging that the prisoner is under imminent danger of serious physical injury.

II

Our first task in this appeal is to consider the appropriateness of the filing injunction and then to consider the dismissal of Miller's complaint as frivolous. We review the injunctive provision under the abuse of discretion standard. See Klay v. United Healthgroup, Inc., 376 F.3d 1092, 1096 (11th Cir.2004).

The propriety of an injunction against IFP filings by a litigant depends on weighing the interest of the court to protect its own jurisdiction to hear meritorious matters against the interest of the IFP litigant presenting his claim for adjudication. Access to the courts is unquestionably a right of considerable constitutional significance, see Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 821, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 1494, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977), particularly when the individual seeks "vindication of fundamental civil rights," Rivera v. Allin, 144 F.3d 719, 724 n. 9 (11th Cir.1998) (quoting Lyon v. Krol, 940 F.Supp. 1433, 1437 (S.D.Iowa 1996)), including the right "to be free of unwarranted `imminent danger of serious physical injury.'" Id. at 724 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g)). When such fundamental interests are at stake, the litigant's inability to pay the filing fee cannot be a barrier to his access to the judiciary. See Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 374, 91 S.Ct. 780, 784, 28 L.Ed.2d 113 (1971).

The right of access to the courts "is neither absolute nor unconditional." Cofield v. Ala. Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 936 F.2d 512, 516 (11th Cir.1991) (quoting In re Green, 669 F.2d 779, 785 (D.C.Cir. 1981)). Conditions and restrictions on each person's access are necessary to preserve the judicial resource for all other persons. Frivolous and vexatious law suits threaten the availability of a well-functioning judiciary to all litigants. As the Supreme Court has noted, filing fees in theory discourage frivolous law suits and thus help allocate judicial resources to more meritorious cases. See In re McDonald, 489 U.S. 180, 184, 109 S.Ct. 993, 996, 103 L.Ed.2d 158 (1989). "But paupers filing pro se are not subject to the financial considerations — filing fees and attorney's fees — that deter other litigants from filing frivolous petitions." Id.; see also In re Sindram, 498 U.S. 177, 179, 111 S.Ct. 596, 598, 112 L.Ed.2d 599 (1991) (directing the clerk of the Court not to accept further IFP extraordinary writ petitions from the petitioner). Absent monetary cost as a constraint, the sheer volume of frivolous IFP suits threatens to undermine the availability of the federal courts to the public. To counter such threat and to protect its jurisdiction, the district courts are authorized by the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a), to restrict access to vexatious and abusive litigants. Reimposing financial considerations in the form of filing fees on indigent litigants is one way the courts can fulfill their "constitutional obligation to protect their jurisdiction from conduct which impairs their ability to carry out Article III functions." Procup v. Strickland, 792 F.2d 1069, 1073 (11th Cir. 1986) (en banc) (per curiam) (quoting In re: Martin-Trigona, 737 F.2d 1254, 1261 (2d Cir.1984)).

Yet to the indigent, a filing fee is a blunt instrument that cannot discriminate between valid and bogus claims. A blanket injunction that prohibits all IFP filings by a given person would be overinclusive; it would screen out legitimate claims of the indigent, even if these claims concerned fundamental interests. For this reason, Congress has been careful to tailor limitations on IFP filings to minimize the exclusion of valid claims that involve fundamental interests. In the context of prisoner litigation, Congress was deliberate in leaving an exception for claims of imminent threat of serious physical injury when it enacted the three-strikes provision that screens out all other IFP suits as part of the PLRA. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). Likewise, when exercising their inherent powers, courts have made sure that indigent litigants are not completely prohibited from seeking judicial...