Mitchell v. Moore

• Decision Date: 12 April 2001
• Docket Number: No. SC95299.,SC95299.
• Parties: Marshall MITCHELL, Petitioner, v. Michael W. MOORE, Respondent.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

786 So.2d 521

Marshall MITCHELL, Petitioner, v. Michael W. MOORE, Respondent.

No. SC95299.

Supreme Court of Florida.

April 12, 2001.

Rehearing Denied May 16, 2001.

Susan L. Kelsey of Holland & Knight LLP, Tallahassee, FL, for Petitioner.

Robert A. Butterworth, Attorney General, and Douglas T. Squire and Charlie McCoy, Assistant Attorneys General, Tallahassee, FL, for Respondent.

PER CURIAM.

Marshall Mitchell petitions this Court for writ of mandamus. We have jurisdiction. Art. V, § 3(b)(8), Fla. Const.

While we recently struck down the copy requirement portion of section 57.085, Florida Statutes (1999) (hereinafter the Prisoner Indigency Statute), in Jackson v. Florida Dep't of Corrections, 26 Fla. L. Weekly S51, ___ So.2d ___, 2000 WL 33114471 (Fla. May 4, 2000), we find it necessary to further address the copy requirement due to the importance of the constitutional issue raised in this case.

FACTS

On July 24, 1996, petitioner, an inmate in Florida's prison system, filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Leon County Circuit Court. The circuit court treated the petition as one for a writ of mandamus and denied the petition.¹ On September 2, 1997, petitioner filed his notice of appeal in the circuit court and it was forwarded to the First District Court of Appeal on September 4, 1997. On September 10, 1997, the First District issued an order instructing petitioner to pay the filing fee of $250 or obtain an order determining him indigent (for appellate purposes) from the lower court within thirty days. On September 22, 1997, petitioner filed an affidavit of insolvency in the trial court. However, before the circuit court had ruled upon petitioner's request for indigency, on November 4, 1997, the First District dismissed petitioner's appeal. On November 12, 1997, the circuit court denied petitioner's request for indigency because he had failed to submit copies of the complaints or other initial pleadings he had filed in the preceding five years as required by subsection (7) of the Prisoner Indigency Statute. It seems clear from petitioner's numerous motions that petitioner thought that all the courts wanted was information concerning his lack of funds. Therefore, on November 12, 1997, (the same day the circuit court denied his request to proceed in forma pauperis) petitioner filed a response to the First District's dismissal order detailing the cases in which he had been adjudicated indigent, attaching a number of orders from various courts finding him indigent and asserting that his financial circumstances had not changed. He also filed a motion for rehearing in the circuit court. The First District denied petitioner's motion for rehearing/reinstatement in December 1997 and the trial court denied his motion for rehearing in February 1998.

At about that time, it seems clear that petitioner began to understand what the courts had wanted (copies of the initial pleadings and final orders, not the orders on indigency). Nevertheless, he also realized that he no longer had copies of the pleadings from the vast majority of the forty or so lawsuits he had filed in the last five years. Petitioner was eventually able to reassemble his old cases and on February 15, 1999, he filed a second motion for reinstatement in the First District explaining that he did not have the copies before that time and that he had mistakenly thought that the courts only wanted prior orders from other courts finding him indigent. On March 19, 1999, the First District denied petitioner's second motion for reinstatement. On April 8, 1999, petitioner filed his petition for writ of mandamus in this Court and was granted indigency status.²

Petitioner alleged that the copy requirement of the Prisoner Indigency Statute violated the constitution under various theories. We decline to discuss any but the access to courts theory.

ACCESS TO COURTS

Petitioner argues that the copy requirement of the Prisoner Indigency Statute is unconstitutional because it results in an insurmountable obstacle to a prisoner's right to access the courts. Having had several years of experience with the Prisoner Indigency Statute, we must now agree. Petitioner's appeal was dismissed for his failure to provide copies of voluminous pleadings which were only obtainable through great difficulty, delay, and public expense. While the copy requirement does not always result in a complete inability to gain access to the courts, it produces procedural pitfalls so difficult and time-consuming that litigation of the merits of a case becomes less time-consuming and frustrating than being permitted to proceed as an indigent. We must conclude that these requirements have become a door to the Court that some inmates simply cannot open.

There are two sources of the right to access the courts. Florida's constitution specifically guarantees a citizen's access to courts. See art. I, § 21, Fla. Const. The Constitution of the United States does not, however, contain a specific clause providing for this right. The United States Supreme Court, nevertheless, has held that there is such a right arising from several constitutional provisions including the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause. See generally Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 825, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977)

(holding that prisoners have a fundamental constitutional right to "a reasonably adequate opportunity to present claimed violations of fundamental constitutional rights to the courts"), modified, Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 116 S.Ct. 2174, 135 L.Ed.2d 606 (1996). The Supreme Court described the right of "access to courts" as including, among other things, the provision of an acceptable law library. Id. at 828, 97 S.Ct. 1491. In Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. at 355, 116 S.Ct. 2174, however, the Court made clear that "access to courts" does not guarantee inmates the right to "transform themselves into litigating engines capable of filing everything from shareholder derivative actions to slip-and-fall claims." States must only provide a reasonably adequate opportunity to file nonfrivolous legal claims challenging their convictions or conditions of confinement. Id.

As pointed out by petitioner's counsel, one problem with Florida's Prisoner Indigency Statute is that the requirement that some inmates comply with the more rigorous copy requirement does not stem from a determination by any court that the inmate has ever filed a frivolous or other improper action. Only inmates who have twice in the preceding three years been permitted to file actions without prepayment of filing fees must comply with these more rigorous requirements. Having filed only two prior actions in forma pauperis is clearly not, in itself, inherently improper. Furthermore, the federal statute upon which the Prisoner Indigency Statute is purportedly fashioned and upon which the State relies to assert that the Florida statute does not amount to an access to courts violation does not contain a copy requirement at all. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915 (Supp. IV 1999). Further, the federal "three strikes" provision to which the State compares Florida's copy requirement only applies when an inmate has been found by a court to have filed three prior in forma pauperis proceedings which were improper.³ Therefore, if application of these requirements either intentionally or incidentally results in a sanction being imposed on the inmate, there are several constitutional problems. First, no "bad act" has been identified as the basis for the "punishment." Second, if the requirements act to prevent the filing of actions which have not yet even been reviewed to determine whether they are frivolous or otherwise improper, that effect would result in an access to courts violation under the federal constitution.

The copy requirement of Florida's Prisoner Indigency Statute is problematic under an analysis based on Florida's constitution as well. Contrary to the federal constitution, Florida's constitution contains a specific "Access to Courts" provision, found in article I, section 21, that provides:

Access to Courts.—The courts shall be open to every person for redress of any injury, and justice shall be administered without sale, denial or delay.

In Kluger v. White, 281 So.2d 1 (Fla. 1973), this Court set forth a test for determining compliance with the access to courts clause when the Legislature enacts provisions which appear to restrict the right. In that case, the Legislature purported to do away with a person's ability to sue for an automobile accident unless the property damages exceeded a certain amount. This Court found the statute unconstitutional and established the following test:

[W]here a right of access to the courts for redress for a particular injury has been provided by statutory law predating the adoption of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of the State of Florida, or where such right has become a part of the common law of the State pursuant to Fla.Stat. § 2.01, F.S.A., the Legislature is without power to abolish such a right without providing a reasonable alternative to protect the rights of the people of the State to redress for injuries, unless the Legislature can show an overpowering public necessity for the abolishment of such right, and no alternative method of meeting such public necessity can be shown.

Id. at 4. In Kluger, the Court found that the test was not met and declared the statute unconstitutional. On other occasions, however, this Court has concluded that statutes had passed the test because the right of action at issue had been only marginally limited. See, e.g., Chapman v. Dillon, 415 So.2d 12 (Fla.1982)

(threshold limits of no-fault statute provide a reasonable alternative to tort action and do not deny access to courts); Purdy v. Gulf Breeze Enterprises, Inc., 403 So.2d 1325 (Fla.1981) (statute requiring reimbursement of insurer for PIP benefits where insured recovers from...