Smith v. Diaz

Background

The court had scheduled an evidentiary hearing for June 30 and July 1, 2025. The hearing concerned factual issues about exhaustion—the requirement at issue in the case—and whether those issues were separate from or intertwined with the merits, meaning the underlying substance of C.JAY SMITH’s claims.

The parties referred to the Supreme Court’s June 18, 2025, decision in Perttu v. Richards and stated that it directly affected the factual and legal issues planned for the hearing. The court had ordered briefing on whether exhaustion was intertwined with the merits so that a jury trial would be required.

Parties’ Request

Both parties agreed that the exhaustion-related facts were intertwined with the facts underlying the merits of the plaintiff’s claims. They jointly requested that the evidentiary hearing and all related dates be vacated, that the pending issues be included in a jury trial, and that the court set a trial-setting conference.

Ruling

Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. granted the parties’ request. The court vacated the June 30 and July 1 evidentiary hearing and all related dates, and directed that all pending issues that would have been heard at the evidentiary hearing be included in a jury trial. The court set a case-management conference by videoconference for July 1, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. The order did not decide the merits of the plaintiff’s claims or resolve the exhaustion issue itself.