Panah v. State of California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation
- Beth Freeman
- 5:14-cv-00166
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Panah v. State of California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Judge Freeman granted discovery and an extension but denied counsel and listed other motions as denied.
Hooman Panah and the defendants, including the defendants subject to the discovery requests and the unserved defendants identified in the order.
What happened
In Panah v. State of California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Hooman Panah, an incarcerated person representing himself, pursued civil-rights claims against correctional officials. The court had previously dismissed untimely claims and left one safety-related claim concerning a 2012 stabbing.
The court granted the defendants’ request to compel Panah to answer written discovery. It also granted Panah more time to provide information about defendants who had not been served, and denied his renewed request for appointed counsel.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman ordered the defendants to re-serve the discovery requests and directed Panah to respond within 30 days. The order’s title also states that motions for reconsideration and sanctions were denied.
The detailed version
- Panah v. State of California Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation · No. 5:14-cv-00166
- Beth Freeman
- Nov. 16, 2020
Background
Hooman Panah, an inmate on death row at San Quentin State Prison, proceeded without a lawyer and brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute. He alleged unconstitutional conduct by prison correctional officers. The opinion states that the operative pleadings were a second amended complaint and a supplemental complaint.
On September 29, 2020, the court dismissed claims as untimely and set briefing on the only remaining timely claim: an Eighth Amendment claim alleging that Defendants Anderson and Odom were deliberately indifferent to Panah’s safety in connection with a February 4, 2012 stabbing.
Motions and rulings
The defendants moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37 to compel Panah to respond to interrogatories and requests for production. Defense counsel stated that the requests had been served on June 27, 2019, that Panah had not responded, and that counsel had followed up on August 13, 2019 without receiving a response. Because Panah filed no opposition and the defendants had shown a good-faith effort to confer, the court granted the motion to compel. The defendants were ordered to re-serve the written discovery within seven days after the order was filed, and Panah was ordered to respond within 30 days after service. The court warned that failing to respond could result in sanctions.
The court denied Panah’s renewed motion for appointment of counsel because he had not shown exceptional circumstances. The court relied on his ability to proceed without counsel, including his numerous and extensive filings, despite his asserted vision impairment and claim that prison officials had not provided new glasses.
The court granted Panah’s request for an extension of time to provide information about unserved defendants, citing a prison lockdown. It directed him to file the information by November 17, 2019 and warned that failure to respond could result in dismissal of the unserved defendants under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m). The order states that it terminated the docket entries concerning the motion to compel, renewed request for counsel, and extension request.
The order’s title also states that the court denied a motion for reconsideration and denied a motion for sanctions, but the provided opinion text does not separately explain those rulings. The opinion is signed by Judge Beth Labson Freeman.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.