Miller v. Tanner

• Decision Date: 18 November 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-9153,98-9153
• Citation: 196 F.3d 1190
• Parties: (11th Cir. 1999) TRACY ANTHONY MILLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CHARLIE POOLE TANNER, LT., et al., Defendants-Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1190

196 F.3d 1190 (11th Cir. 1999)

TRACY ANTHONY MILLER, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CHARLIE POOLE TANNER, LT., et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 98-9153

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

Nov. 18, 1999

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 96-00148-4-CV-HLM

Before ANDERSON, Chief Judge, TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge, and FAY, Senior Circuit Judge TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

Tracy Miller, a Georgia prison inmate, appeals the district court's dismissal of his 42 U.S.C. 1983 claim because he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act, see 42 U.S.C. 1997e(a) (Supp. II 1996). We find that Miller did exhaust the administrative remedies set forth in the Georgia Department of Corrections' (the "GDC") procedures.¹ Accordingly, we reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment.

I.

In his complaint, filed with the district court on May 22, 1996, Miller alleged that upon arriving at Hays State Prison ("Hays") on April 18, 1996, appellee Tanner and eleven prison guards, including appellees Poole, Blalock, and Martin, dragged him from the transport van and beat him for being a "troublemaker" who filed numerous grievances at his former prison.² Miller further alleged that after being beaten, he was taken to the prison infirmary where appellee Dr. Derrick refused to treat him, forcibly x-rayed him and ordered him shackled to a metal bed. Lastly, Miller alleged that appellees were indifferent to his medical needs as a paraplegic with a neurogenic bladder. Instead of treating him, appellees housed him in an unaccommodated unit, left him on the concrete floor of his cell, allowed him to become covered in feces and urine, denied him the use of a wheelchair or leg braces, and denied him physical therapy.³

On November 12, 1996, Miller amended his complaint, presenting the following additional allegations: that on April 22, 1996 he obtained an inmate grievance form from his counselor at Hays, and that he filed that grievance on April 25. Miller failed to sign or date the grievance form. On May 2, 1996, Kyla Wilbanks, the Hays grievance clerk, sent Miller a memorandum stating that his grievance was denied because "[he] did not sign or date [his] grievance form." This memorandum also stated that "[w]hen any grievance is terminated at the institutional level you do not have the right to appeal. The above listed grievance(s) is closed."⁴ After his grievance was denied, Miller filed a section 1983 civil rights action, alleging that appellees violated his Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment by using excessive force against him and being deliberately indifferent to his medical needs.

Appellees moved the district court to dismiss Miller's complaint, as amended, for failure to allege a constitutional violation. The district court denied their motion. After filing an answer, appellees filed a motion, styled "Defendants' Motion to Dismiss and Motion for Summary Judgment," in which they argued that appellant failed to exhaust his administrative remedies before bringing suit. Appellees contended that Miller failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, as required by 42 U.S.C. 1997e(a), because he did not sign and date the grievance form.

On August 28, 1998, the district court granted appellees' motion and dismissed Miller's case without prejudice.⁵ The court found that Miller failed to exhaust his administrative remedies because he did not follow the GDC's grievance procedures, which required that he sign and date his grievance form. This appeal followed.

II.

We review de novo dismissals for failure to exhaust administrative remedies under section 1997e(a). See Alexander v. Hawk, 159 F.3d 1321, 1323 (11th Cir. 1998).

Prison inmates have a constitutional right of access to the courts. See Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 351, 116 S. Ct. 2174, 2180, 135 L. Ed. 2d 606 (1996) (stating that prisoners must be afforded "a reasonably adequate opportunity to present claimed violations of fundamental constitutional rights to the courts") (internal quotation marks omitted). Section 1997e(a) sets forth the procedures prisoners must follow in exercising their fundamental right of access to the courts. Under this provision, prisoners must exhaust any administrative remedies available to them before filing a suit in federal court based on violations of constitutional rights. Specifically, section 1997e(a) provides that:

[n]o action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under Section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.

42 U.S.C. 1997e(a). An inmate incarcerated in a state prison, thus, must first comply with the grievance procedures established by the state department of corrections before filing a federal lawsuit under section 1983.

In deciding if Miller exhausted his administrative remedies, we do not review the effectiveness of those remedies, but rather whether remedies were available and exhausted. See Alexander, 159 F.3d at 1326. There is no dispute that the GDC made administrative remedies available to prisoners. Before deciding whether Miller followed the proper procedures to exhaust those remedies, we must first determine what the procedures were that he had to follow.

The GDC has a detailed set of Standard Operating Procedures (the "SOPs") relating to inmate grievances. These procedures provide inmates and their counselors a step-by-step guide to filing a grievance. For instance, the "Jurisdiction" section of the SOPs explains what kinds of harms can form the basis of a grievance, what kinds of harms cannot be grieved, and what kinds of harms must be grieved through more specialized processes such as the Administrative Segregation appeal process. See Georgia Dep't of Corrections, SOPs, at 3-4 (1996). The "Procedures for Filing a Grievance" section of the SOPs is similarly specific.

The procedures section first sets forth the hierarchy for running the grievance system at each Georgia prison. At the top is the warden/supervisor, followed by the Grievance Coordinator, and then the counselors. See SOPs at 5. The counselors assist inmates in filing their grievances by distributing grievance forms, assisting prisoners in preparing such forms (particularly prisoners for whom English is a second language), and receiving completed forms. See id. at 5-6. When a counselor receives a grievance form, he or she is required to "complete the receipt portion of the form indicating the inmate's name, I.D. Number, and the date the inmate submitted the grievance." Id. at 6 (emphasis in original). Next, the counselor signs the receipt portion of the grievance form and returns one copy to the inmate. See id. A counselor is also required, by the next business day, to submit to the Grievance Coordinator the information necessary to enter the grievance into the Inmate Grievance Management System database. Id. This information includes the inmate's name and the date on which the inmate filed his or her grievance. Thus, once the Grievance Coordinator enters the grievance into the database, which presumably occurs within a few days, anyone in the GDC is able to find out that a grievance was filed, by whom, and on what date.

The SOPs do not require that an inmate sign or date a grievance form when submitting it to his or her counselor. The only time the SOPs require a signature from an inmate is when the inmate receives a response from the warden/supervisor. At that time, the inmate is required to sign the grievance form confirming that a response was received. See id. at 12. Further, the SOPs do not require that inmates file their grievances under penalty of perjury.⁶

Appellees argue that the GDC's grievance procedures required that Miller sign and date his grievance form. According to appellees, this is "a common sense procedural requirement" because otherwise the GDC would have no way of knowing who filed the grievance or when it was filed. If the GDC thought signing and dating the form was a common sense requirement, it should have included the requirement in its grievance SOPs. The SOPs require many other specific steps, such as that the form be completed in blue or black ink, that the counselor...