Walters v. Kautzky, 02-1177.
| Decision Date | 07 April 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 02-1177.,02-1177. |
| Citation | 680 N.W.2d 1 |
| Parties | Ernest F. WALTERS, Montez Shortridge, and Christopher LeGear, Appellants, v. Walter KAUTZKY, Mark Smith, and Peter Hansen, Appellees. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Ernest F. Walters, Christopher LeGear, and Montez Shortridge, Fort Madison, pro se.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and William A. Hill, Assistant Attorney General, for appellees.
Ernest F. Walters, Christopher LeGear, and Montez Shortridge, inmates of the Iowa State Penitentiary, claim to be third-party beneficiaries of a contract between the Iowa Department of Corrections and the state public defender providing that the latter will provide limited legal assistance to prison inmates. They assert that their rights under the contract have been denied. They also claim a right to relief on the ground that the legal assistance provided to them fails to satisfy the constitutional mandate for access to the courts imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal constitution. Although the named defendants are Walter Kautzky, Mark Smith, and Peter Hansen, we will only consider Hansen to be sued in an individual capacity. We must consider the other two defendants as sued as representatives of the Iowa Department of Corrections and the office of the state public defender.
After reviewing the record and considering the arguments presented, we conclude that summary judgment was proper for the contract claims of all plaintiffs. Summary judgment was also proper for the constitutional claims of plaintiffs Shortridge and Walters. However, there are genuine issues of material fact surrounding the constitutional claim of plaintiff LeGear that precludes the granting of summary judgment on that claim. Consequently, we reverse the judgment of the district court with respect to LeGear's constitutional claim and remand the case for further proceedings.
The Supreme Court in Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977), determined that a prison system may satisfy the constitutional requirement of court access for prison inmates by utilizing various devices, including prison libraries, jailhouse lawyers, private lawyers under contract with corrections authorities, or some combination of those or other devices. Bounds, 430 U.S. at 830-31, 97 S.Ct. at 1499-1500, 52 L.Ed.2d at 84.
On July 1, 2000, the state public defender (SPD) contracted with the Iowa Department of Corrections (IDOC) to provide legal assistance to prison inmates.1 Pursuant to that agreement, the matters for which advice was to be provided included the following:
The agreement recited that SPD was to provide assistance in the following ways:
The agreement expressly stated that
The agreement provided that SPD might contract with private attorneys to provide those services. SPD contracted with attorney Peter Hansen to advise inmates at the state penitentiary. The agreement with Hansen incorporated in full the scope of services listed as items (1) through (7) of the IDOC agreement with SPD and the means of assistance specified in items (1) through (8) thereof as set forth above.
The petition in this action alleges that inmates Walters and LeGear each made requests for legal assistance from attorney Hansen. They assert that his response was inadequate to afford them reasonable access to the courts due to the fact that the prison was no longer maintaining an adequate law library and conferences with jailhouse lawyers were prohibited. The petition has alleged no specific request by plaintiff Shortridge for legal assistance from Hansen or SPD nor any actual injury that he has suffered.
LeGear alleges that he requested assistance in preparing a writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. The record contains a written response to this request by Hansen in which he asserts that his contract with SPD prohibited such representation and that SPD could also not help LeGear.
Walters, who had a federal habeas corpus action pending, claims that he requested assistance from Hansen in objecting to a federal magistrate's proposed adverse decision on his claim. He asserts that he asked Hansen to research recent cases in the area. Hansen replied that his contract did not provide for doing such research.
Walters also asserts that he requested assistance from Hansen in filing a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against IDOC, SPD, and Hansen asserting a constitutional denial of access to the courts and also asserting a third-party beneficiary claim under the IDOC contract with SPD. Hansen's response was that he was not obligated to provide legal advice regarding legal action against himself.
The district court granted summary judgment in favor of all defendants with regard to both the third-party beneficiary contract theories and the constitutional claims. We review that ruling as it applies to each of the appellants, LeGear, Walters, and Shortridge.2
We review rulings granting motions for summary judgment to determine errors at law. Grovijohn v. Virjon, Inc., 643 N.W.2d 200, 202 (Iowa 2002); Kolbe v. State, 625 N.W.2d 721, 725 (Iowa 2001); Knudson v. City of Decorah, 622 N.W.2d 42, 48 (Iowa 2000). It is legal error to grant such a motion if the facts viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party support a right to relief under applicable law. Grovijohn, 643 N.W.2d at 202; Kelly v. Iowa Mut. Ins. Co., 620 N.W.2d 637, 641 (Iowa 2000).
Plaintiffs assert that they are third-party beneficiaries of the agreement for legal services between IDOC and SPD and between SPD and Hansen. The district court questioned their standing as third-party beneficiaries, but decided the contract claims on the merits. In response to plaintiffs' contentions that the court's ruling on the merits of their contract claims was in error, we avoid discussion of that issue based on our belief that plaintiffs are clearly not third-party beneficiaries of the agreements in question.
In Vogan v. Hayes Appraisal Associates, Inc., 588 N.W.2d 420 (Iowa 1999), we determined that the primary consideration in deciding whether nonparties to an agreement are third-party beneficiaries thereof is whether the contract manifests an intent to benefit those parties. Vogan, 588 N.W.2d at 423. This is the standard of Restatement (Second) of Contracts, which provides:
Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 302(1) (1979) (emphasis added). The agreement between IDOC and SPD expressly negates an intention to benefit the inmates of the institution where the legal services were to be provided. Because Hansen's contract served as the implementation of SPD's agreement with IDOC, it must be viewed as similarly limited as to the persons to be benefited. The district court was correct in granting summary judgment on plaintiffs' contract claims.
The scope of the Supreme Court's opinion in Bounds v. Smith was sharpened and narrowed in Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 116 S.Ct. 2174, 135 L.Ed.2d 606 (1996). Lewis found that implicit in Bounds was a need to show actual injury in order to successfully assert a denial of access to the courts. Lewis, 518 U.S. at 351, 116 S.Ct. at 2180, 135 L.Ed.2d at 618. The Court stated in that regard:
Because Bounds did not create an abstract, freestanding right to a law library or legal assistance, an inmate cannot establish relevant actual injury simply by establishing that his prison's law library or legal assistance program is subpar in some theoretical sense. That would be the precise analog of the healthy inmate claiming constitutional violation because of the inadequacy of the prison infirmary. Insofar as the right vindicated by Bounds is concerned, "meaningful access to the courts is the touchstone," id. at 823, 52 L.Ed.2d [at 80], 97 S.Ct. [at 1495] (internal quotation marks omitted), and the inmate therefore must go one step further and demonstrate that the alleged shortcomings in the library or legal assistance program hindered his efforts to pursue a legal claim.
Id. In giving examples of what might represent an alleged shortcoming that violated the constitutional standard, the Court in Lewis stated:
[The prison inmate] might show, for example, that a complaint he prepared was dismissed for...
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