Cathy v. Kuzmicz
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 4:19-cv-05932
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 13
In Cathy v. Kuzmicz, Judge Hamilton granted defendants’ motions, dismissed some claims, allowed amendment of others, partly granted discovery relief, and denied counsel.
Charles Ray Cathy’s § 1983 claims against prison officials were affected. Claims two and four were dismissed without prejudice for failure to exhaust administrative remedies; the remaining claims were dismissed with leave to amend. Kuzmicz, Reynolds, and Thompson were dismissed from the case. Cathy also had to respond to limited discovery, and his motions for appointed counsel and judicial notice were denied.
What happened
Charles Ray Cathy, a state prisoner representing himself, sued prison officials under a federal civil-rights law over legal mail, legal publications, and alleged retaliation for grievances. The case was Cathy v. Kuzmicz.
The court found that Cathy had not properly completed the prison grievance process for his claims about mail being opened outside his presence and alleged retaliation. It also found that his claims about a returned legal-materials box and undelivered publications did not contain enough facts to state a claim under the court’s rules.
Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton granted the summary-judgment and dismissal motions. The unexhausted claims were dismissed without prejudice to refiling after exhaustion, while the remaining claims were dismissed with leave to amend; the discovery motion was granted in part, and Cathy’s requests for appointed counsel and judicial notice were denied.
The detailed version
- Cathy v. Kuzmicz · No. 4:19-cv-05932
- Phyllis Hamilton
- Dec. 22, 2020
Background
Charles Ray Cathy, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, brought this civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. His claims arose from his detention at Pelican Bay State Prison and concerned alleged interference with legal mail and legal publications, as well as retaliation for filing grievances.
The amended complaint asserted four claims:
- Several defendants allegedly returned a box of legal documents from Cathy’s attorney, and Cathy never received it.
- Legal mail from the National Legal Professional Associates, Margaret A. Robinson Advocacy Center allegedly was not opened in Cathy’s presence, and defendants Reynolds and Kuzmicz allegedly did not respond after learning about it.
- Cathy allegedly could not receive issues of Prison Legal News and Human Rights Defense.
- Cathy alleged that Kuzmicz and Thompson intimidated him because he filed appeals about his mail, including by having yard officers pat him down. He also alleged that a legal letter was returned with its postage removed in retaliation for protected conduct.
Defendants argued that Cathy had not exhausted the required prison grievance process for claims two and four. They conceded that claims one and three were exhausted but argued that those claims failed to state a legally sufficient claim.
Summary judgment on exhaustion
The Prison Litigation Reform Act requires prisoners to complete available administrative remedies before filing a federal lawsuit challenging prison conditions. The court explained that California’s grievance process required an inmate to describe the issue, identify involved staff members, and complete three formal levels of review.
Cathy identified grievances PBSP-18-00553 and PBSP-18-02607 as exhausting all of his claims. The court found that PBSP-18-00553 concerned censorship of subscriptions to legal publications and that PBSP-18-02607 concerned the return of a box of legal materials to Cathy’s attorney. Although Cathy had pursued more than 23 grievances and exhausted many of them through the final level, none concerned the alleged opening of mail from the Margaret A. Robinson Advocacy Center or the alleged retaliation involving the pat-down and removed postage.
The court also found that grievance PBSP-18-02607 did not adequately alert prison officials to those two subjects. The grievance discussed the returned box of legal materials, and its general statement that legal mail was being excluded was not enough to identify the separate mail-opening and retaliation allegations. Cathy’s reliance on inmate-request forms, letters, and complaints to the warden also did not satisfy the requirement of properly completing the grievance process.
The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment on claims two and four and dismissed those claims as unexhausted, without prejudice to refiling after exhaustion.
Motion to dismiss the remaining claims
The court then considered whether claims one and three stated claims for relief. A motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) tests whether the complaint alleges enough facts to make a legally plausible claim. The court accepts well-supported factual allegations as true at this stage but does not have to accept unsupported legal conclusions.
Returned legal box
Cathy alleged that his appellate attorney mailed a box of legal documents concerning a 16-year-old conviction, that the box was improperly denied and returned, and that he suffered legal injuries because he did not receive the documents. The attached exhibits indicated that the box was improperly labeled, was received by the prison’s reception and release unit rather than the mailroom, and was returned to the attorney with instructions that it could be resent.
The court held that Cathy did not allege enough facts showing an actual injury from not receiving the box. It noted that the box was returned in August 2018 and that Cathy successfully obtained state-court relief from a five-year sentencing enhancement while pursuing relief from 2019 to 2020. The court also found that the complaint did not adequately describe the named defendants’ personal involvement because the exhibits indicated that other prison staff, rather than the named mailroom defendants, returned the box. Finally, the court characterized the incident as an isolated mistake without sufficient allegations of improper motive or interference with access to the courts.
The court granted the motion to dismiss this claim but gave Cathy an opportunity to file a second amended complaint addressing the identified deficiencies.
Legal publications
Cathy alleged that Villarreal violated his rights on at least two occasions by preventing him from receiving letters and magazines from the Human Rights Defense News Agency, which the opinion describes as a branch of Prison Legal News. He also alleged that Hood, Hallock, Parry, and Short knew the publications were protected speech and conduct.
The court found that Cathy did not specifically allege that Hood, Hallock, Parry, or Short took affirmative actions to deny him access to the publications. An exhibit indicated that one issue of Prison Legal News was not delivered because it lacked Cathy’s housing information. The court concluded that the complaint did not contain enough facts linking those defendants to a constitutional violation.
The court granted the motion to dismiss the claims against Hood, Hallock, Parry, and Short, while allowing Cathy to amend to provide additional allegations connecting them to the alleged violation. The court stated that if their only involvement was denying inmate appeals, that alone would not support a constitutional claim because prisoners do not have a constitutional right to a prison grievance system.
Other motions and final directives
The court granted defendants’ motion to compel in part. Cathy was ordered to respond by February 1, 2021, to discovery requests concerning the returned legal-materials box and the legal publications from the Human Rights Defense News Agency. The court stated that the requests were not overly burdensome and that Cathy would need to obtain prison records for only a few requests.
The court denied Cathy’s motions for judicial notice as meritless and denied his motion to appoint counsel. It concluded that Cathy had adequately presented his claims and that the issues were not complex enough to constitute exceptional circumstances warranting a request for counsel.
In the conclusion, the court stated that the unexhausted claims were dismissed without prejudice to refiling after exhaustion; defendants Kuzmicz, Reynolds, and Thompson were dismissed from the case; and the remaining claims were dismissed with leave to amend. Cathy was permitted to file a second amended complaint by February 1, 2021. Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton warned that failure to do so would result in the action continuing only against Villarreal, and that any amended complaint would be screened by the court.
Read the full 13-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.