Turner v. Ghaly
- Edward Chen
- 3:20-cv-02791
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 9
In Turner v. Ghaly, Judge Chen granted summary judgment to prison medical defendants because Turner had not exhausted required prison grievance procedures before suing.
Anthony Dawayne Lee Turner’s Eighth Amendment prison-medical claim was dismissed without prejudice because he had not exhausted the required grievance process before filing suit; Dr. Ghaly and Nurse Paley received judgment in their favor.
What happened
In Turner v. Ghaly, Anthony Dawayne Lee Turner, a prisoner representing himself, claimed that Dr. Sabry Ghaly and Nurse Paley failed to provide proper care for his swollen leg and failed to move him to a lower bunk and tier. The defendants asked for summary judgment, which asks whether the evidence shows no important factual dispute requiring a trial.
The court ruled that Turner had not completed California’s prison grievance process before filing suit. He did not appeal his first and third healthcare grievances to the required headquarters level. He appealed the second grievance only after filing this lawsuit, and completing the process later did not fix the problem.
The court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and entered judgment in their favor, while allowing Turner to bring a new action after properly exhausting the claim. The court also denied his motions for reconsideration of appointed counsel and to reply as moot, denied the defendants’ motion to strike, and terminated his mislabeled renewal motion. Judge Edward Chen issued the order.
The detailed version
- Turner v. Ghaly · No. 3:20-cv-02791
- Edward Chen
- Mar. 21, 2022
Background
Anthony Dawayne Lee Turner brought a civil-rights lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Dr. Ghaly and Nurse Paley concerning treatment of a swollen right leg at San Quentin State Prison. Turner alleged that, after he was diagnosed with a blood clot and returned from a hospital, Dr. Ghaly ordered blood-thinner pills and said he would note an allergy in Turner’s chart. Turner also alleged that Ghaly and Paley did not move him to a lower bunk and lower tier, did not provide treatment for leg pain, did not provide ointment for dry skin and infection sores, and did not provide pain medication or drain fluid from his knee and leg.
The court had previously screened Turner’s amended complaint and found that it stated a valid Eighth Amendment claim against Ghaly and Paley. The remaining defendants moved for summary judgment based on Turner’s alleged failure to exhaust administrative remedies. Exhaustion means completing the available prison grievance process before filing a lawsuit about prison conditions.
Grievance history
California’s healthcare grievance process required a prisoner to identify the healthcare issue and involved institutional-level and headquarters-level review. Headquarters-level review was the step that exhausted the healthcare grievance.
Turner filed three healthcare grievances. He received an institutional-level response to the first grievance but did not appeal it to the headquarters level. He also received an institutional-level response to the third grievance but did not appeal it to headquarters. The court found that neither grievance was properly exhausted.
Turner appealed the second grievance to the headquarters level on April 24, 2020, and received a headquarters response on July 21, 2020. But he filed this lawsuit on April 16, 2020. The court held that attempting to complete the grievance process after filing suit did not satisfy the requirement that exhaustion occur before the lawsuit was filed.
Court’s reasoning
The Prison Litigation Reform Act requires prisoners to exhaust available administrative remedies before bringing a federal action about prison conditions. The court explained that proper exhaustion requires compliance with the prison system’s procedural rules. Turner’s institutional-level responses expressly told him that he needed to seek headquarters-level review to exhaust his grievances. He did not do so for the first and third grievances, and he did not even appeal the second grievance until after filing this action.
Because Turner filed suit before fully exhausting the second grievance, the court concluded that the entire action had to be dismissed. The court did not reach the defendants’ separate argument that Turner failed to identify Ghaly and Paley as wrongdoers in his grievances because the failure to exhaust was independently sufficient.
The court also held that amendment would be futile. Turner could not cure the problem by filing an amended complaint because exhaustion had to occur before the original lawsuit was filed. The court stated that the dismissal was without prejudice, meaning Turner could file an entirely new action after properly exhausting the claim, but he could not amend this action to fix the problem.
Rulings
The court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and entered judgment in their favor on the affirmative defense of failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The judgment was without prejudice to Turner filing a new action raising his Eighth Amendment claim after proper exhaustion.
The court denied the defendants’ motion to strike Turner’s “Motion for Renewal for Exhaustion and Merits of his Claims.” The clerk was directed to terminate that mislabeled motion. The court denied Turner’s motion for reconsideration concerning appointment of counsel because he gave no reason to revisit the earlier decision and because the action’s failure for nonexhaustion made the request moot. The court also denied as moot Turner’s motion to reply. The clerk was directed to enter judgment and close the file. The court certified that any appeal would not be taken in good faith.
Read the full 9-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.