Kerns v. California Department of Corrections

Background

James R. Kerns, a California prisoner representing himself, brought a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that defendants Y. Cuevas and Jones failed to adequately separate inmates during a medical appointment and that this failure led another inmate, Lujan, to attack him on November 12, 2020.

Kerns identified two grievances related to the incident. The first, CTF-100270, accused Jones of allowing another inmate to enter Kerns’s treatment room and attack him. The parties disputed when Kerns submitted that grievance, but the prison grievance office rejected it as untimely. Kerns did not appeal the rejection to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Office of Appeals. Kerns’s second grievance requested incident-related documents and alleged that the facility was obstructing or covering up the incident; it did not complain about the defendants’ conduct.

Legal standard

Summary judgment is appropriate when the evidence shows no genuine dispute about a fact that could affect the outcome and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Failure to exhaust administrative remedies is an affirmative defense in a prisoner civil-rights action. Under federal law, a prisoner must complete all available administrative review before bringing a claim about prison conditions.

Under the California grievance rules applicable to Kerns’s claim, exhaustion required appealing a first-level decision to the Office of Appeals and completing that review. A prisoner’s failure to appeal a grievance’s procedural rejection generally means the prisoner has not exhausted the available remedies. A prisoner may avoid the exhaustion requirement only by showing that the process was effectively unavailable or that officials prevented use of the process.

Court’s analysis

The court did not decide whether Kerns’s first grievance was actually submitted late because the parties disputed the submission date. Instead, the court assumed for purposes of the motion that Kerns had submitted it on time.

Even on that assumption, the court held that Kerns failed to exhaust his remedies because he did not appeal the grievance office’s rejection. The court found that the regulations clearly explained the appeal requirement, the rejection letter specifically told Kerns that he could appeal, and Kerns acknowledged that he understood the grievance system and had used it many times before. The court also found that Kerns had not shown that prison officials prevented him from appealing or that the administrative process was too confusing to use.

The court concluded that Kerns had not exhausted his claim against the defendants. Because that failure was fatal to the claim, the court did not address defendants’ arguments concerning the merits of the claim or Cuevas’s role as a supervisor.

Disposition

Judge P. Casey Pitts granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The opinion does not state that the motion was granted with or without prejudice.