Johnson v. Meyer
- Susan Illston
- 3:19-cv-02345
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Johnson v. Cermeno, Judge Illston denied discovery sanctions and extended deadlines while requiring exhaustion to be addressed first.
Joseph Jamaul Johnson, who was representing himself, must address the defendants’ exhaustion-based summary-judgment motion before pursuing merits discovery; the defendants received a deadline to reply.
What happened
Johnson v. Cermeno is a prisoner civil-rights case in which Joseph Jamaul Johnson alleged that defendants disregarded risks to his safety and medical needs. Defendants asked for summary judgment solely because Johnson allegedly had not completed required prison grievance procedures before suing.
Johnson sought discovery and sanctions, but his requests concerned the substance of his claims rather than whether he had completed those procedures. The court determined that the exhaustion issue should be decided first, so the requested discovery was not relevant at that stage.
Judge Susan Illston denied Johnson’s motion to compel discovery and for sanctions. She gave Johnson another opportunity to oppose the summary-judgment motion by May 20, 2021, and set June 4, 2021, as the deadline for defendants’ reply, if any.
The detailed version
- Johnson v. Meyer · No. 3:19-cv-02345
- Susan Illston
- Apr. 21, 2021
Background
Joseph Jamaul Johnson, representing himself while imprisoned, brought a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to his safety and medical needs.
On January 22, 2021, the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment based solely on Johnson’s alleged failure to exhaust administrative remedies before filing the action. The court’s scheduling order required Johnson to oppose that motion by March 5, 2021. He had not filed an opposition or requested an extension.
On April 14, 2021, Johnson moved to compel discovery and sought sanctions. His requests for admissions addressed the merits of his claims rather than his efforts to exhaust administrative remedies. The defendants objected that exhaustion should be decided before they were required to address the merits.
Court’s reasoning
The court agreed that administrative exhaustion should be decided as a threshold matter before the merits of the claims. Relying on the approach described in Albino v. Baca, the court stated that exhaustion should be decided first when feasible and that discovery, if appropriate, could initially be limited to exhaustion.
Because Johnson’s discovery requests concerned the merits rather than exhaustion, the court found them irrelevant to the issue currently before it. The court stated that, if the case survived the defendants’ summary-judgment motion, Johnson could then pursue discovery about the merits.
Ruling and deadlines
The court denied Johnson’s motion to compel discovery and for sanctions. It also gave him one final opportunity to file and serve an opposition to the summary-judgment motion by May 20, 2021. The defendants’ reply, if any, was due by June 4, 2021. The court stated that the opposition deadline would not be extended again.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.