Thompson v. Allison

Background

Sekou Kwane Thompson, an incarcerated person at Correctional Training Facility, brought a civil-rights action without a lawyer. He alleged that correctional officers Martin Magana, Oliva Castro, Don Zypel Igacio, A. Pelayo, Oscar Covarrubias, Jo-ann Crews, and Michael Hicks were deliberately indifferent to his safety when they knowingly housed him with inmate Bankhead, whom Thompson described as a known violent prisoner. Thompson alleged that Bankhead attacked and battered him on October 28, 2021, after being placed in his cell on October 4, 2021.

The operative complaint stated that Thompson had exhausted his administrative remedies through Grievance No. 144510. The grievance challenged a June 30, 2021 housing-classification recommendation to transfer Thompson to Correctional Training Facility Level II. The institution rejected the grievance as anticipatory because the transfer decision had not yet been finalized, and the state appeals office later denied it.

Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings

The defendants moved for judgment on the pleadings under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c), arguing that the complaint and the grievance records showed that Thompson had not exhausted available administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act. The court explained that exhaustion is mandatory and generally requires a prisoner to use all steps of the prison grievance process and follow its procedural rules. A grievance must alert prison officials to the nature of the problem for which the prisoner seeks relief.

The court granted the defendants’ related request for judicial notice. It took notice of the existence and contents of the grievance and the related rejection and denial letters, but did not treat the documents’ factual assertions as conclusively true. The opinion inconsistently refers to the grievance as No. 144510 and No. 144150 in different sections; the court’s analysis identifies the grievance as the one filed on July 25, 2021 concerning the earlier housing-classification decision.

The court held that the grievance could not exhaust Thompson’s Eighth Amendment safety claim concerning the October 4, 2021 decision to place Bankhead in his cell. The grievance was filed about two months before that placement decision and concerned the earlier recommendation to transfer Thompson to Level II housing, not the later cell placement or the alleged risk from Bankhead. The court also found that the exhaustion issues were not factually intertwined with the merits question of whether the defendants knowingly exposed Thompson to a substantial risk of serious harm. Because the failure to exhaust was clear from the face of the complaint and the judicially noticed records, the court resolved the issue through judgment on the pleadings rather than requiring further factual proceedings.

Other Requests and Disposition

The court dismissed the operative complaint for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. This was a threshold ruling, and the court did not decide whether the defendants violated the Eighth Amendment.

The court denied as moot the defendants’ request to stay merits-based discovery. It also denied Thompson’s request for leave to file a third amended complaint because he did not attach a proposed complaint as required by the Northern District of California’s local rules, and because it was unclear how another complaint could cure the exhaustion problem. The denial was without prejudice to Thompson renewing the request with a proposed third amended complaint. Any renewed request had to be filed within 28 days of the order. The order stated that, if no renewed request was received by that deadline, the court would dismiss the action without further notice for lack of an operative complaint.