Jordan v. Vargas

Background

Harol Jordan, a California inmate incarcerated at Salinas Valley State Prison, sued correctional officers Vargas, Alvarez, and Garcia under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that Vargas prevented him from performing his job duties, and that after Jordan said he would file a grievance, Vargas and Alvarez arranged for inmate Brandon Traveen Carr to attack him on April 2 and 3, 2017. Jordan also alleged that the officers failed to provide medical care after the first attack and that Vargas and Alvarez participated in a civil conspiracy. He brought claims based on First Amendment retaliation and Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference to his safety and serious medical needs.

The parties disputed why Carr attacked Jordan and whether the officers knew about, directed, or failed to respond adequately to the attacks and Jordan’s medical needs. Jordan said that the attacks were coordinated by the Northern Riders prison gang and prison officers. The defendants said Carr attacked Jordan because Jordan had reported Carr’s phone smuggling and that the defendants did not know about or direct the attacks.

Administrative Exhaustion

The Prison Litigation Reform Act requires a prisoner to complete available prison administrative remedies before bringing a federal action about prison conditions. Jordan acknowledged that he had not exhausted the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation grievance process before filing this action. He argued that the process was effectively unavailable because prison officials rejected or cancelled several grievances for procedural reasons.

The court determined that only Grievance No. SVSP-L-17-02138 had been filed before Jordan began this lawsuit. That grievance described assaults on April 2 and 3 that broke both sides of Jordan’s jaw, but it did not mention denial of medical care. The court therefore held that Jordan had not exhausted his medical-treatment claims against Garcia, or his medical-treatment claims against Vargas and Alvarez.

The court rejected Jordan’s argument that the prison’s time limits were merely directory and could not support rejecting his grievance. But, viewing the evidence in Jordan’s favor, the court found a triable issue of fact—meaning a factual dispute that could require a factfinder’s decision—about whether officials made the grievance process unavailable by failing to process Grievance No. SVSP-L-17-02138 as a staff complaint. The court explained that staff complaints were not subject to the same limit on the number of grievances an inmate could file during a fourteen-day period.

The court nevertheless did not hold an evidentiary hearing on that exhaustion dispute because it concluded that the remaining claims failed on the merits.

Merits of the Remaining Claims

The remaining claims alleged that Vargas and Alvarez ordered Carr to attack Jordan in retaliation for Jordan’s statement that he would file a grievance, ordered the attack in violation of the Eighth Amendment duty to protect inmates, and participated in a civil conspiracy.

The court held that Jordan offered no direct evidence that Vargas or Alvarez ordered the attacks. It also held that his indirect evidence was speculative. The facts that officers allegedly favored the Northern Riders, that Vargas had prevented Jordan from performing his job duties, that Jordan had threatened to file a grievance, and that a Northern Riders leader later questioned Jordan about seeking a yard-crew job did not establish that Carr acted at Vargas’s or Alvarez’s direction. The court also noted that the record did not show that Carr was a Northern Riders member or explain why he would act for the gang or the officers, and that Jordan had not shown Alvarez knew about Jordan’s threat to file a grievance.

Disposition

The court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. It granted summary judgment on non-exhaustion grounds for Garcia’s alleged denial of medical attention and for Vargas and Alvarez’s alleged denial of medical treatment in violation of the First and Eighth Amendments. Those claims were dismissed without prejudice for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.

The court granted summary judgment for Vargas and Alvarez on the retaliation, Eighth Amendment safety, and civil-conspiracy claims because there was no triable issue of fact about whether they ordered Carr to attack Jordan. Those claims were dismissed with prejudice. The court entered judgment for the defendants, terminated the pending motions, and closed the file. Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. signed the order.