Rhodes v. Ford
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 4:20-cv-03128
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 13
In Rhodes v. Ford, Judge Hamilton denied defendants’ summary-judgment motion in part, found three grievances exhausted, and deferred final ruling pending briefing.
Kavin Maurice Rhodes and the twelve defendants in his prison civil-rights case; the order determines that three grievances were exhausted but leaves which claims they cover for further briefing.
What happened
Kavin Maurice Rhodes, a state prisoner representing himself, sued prison officials under a federal civil-rights law, alleging retaliation and failure to protect him. The defendants asked for summary judgment based on his alleged failure to complete the prison grievance process before filing suit.
The court found that very long delays in responding to three grievances made the grievance process unavailable and treated those grievances as exhausted. It denied the defendants’ motion in part, but did not finally decide which of Rhodes’s ten claims were covered by those grievances.
Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton deferred a final ruling on the motion and ordered more briefing about which claims were exhausted, including whether claims against Hernandez were part of the motion.
The detailed version
- Rhodes v. Ford · No. 4:20-cv-03128
- Phyllis Hamilton
- May 4, 2022
Background
Kavin Maurice Rhodes, a state prisoner proceeding without a lawyer, brought a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that prison officials retaliated against him for filing complaints, appeals, and a federal petition, and failed to protect him from attacks by other prisoners. The court allowed ten numbered claims involving twelve defendants and incidents occurring between December 2019 and September 2020 to proceed.
The defendants moved for summary judgment, asking the court to rule that Rhodes had not exhausted the prison’s administrative grievance process before filing suit. The Prison Litigation Reform Act requires prisoners to complete available administrative remedies before bringing lawsuits challenging prison conditions.
Grievances and exhaustion
Rhodes filed seven grievances during the relevant period. Only PBSP-19-02840 received a third-level response, but that grievance concerned the denial of legal-copy requests and did not allege retaliation or failure to protect. The court concluded that this grievance did not exhaust the claims in the lawsuit.
Three other grievances—PBSP-B-20-01069, PBSP-A-20-00001, and PBSP-B-20-00819—were screened out or rejected and were never fully processed. The court concluded that these grievances did not sufficiently identify the retaliation or failure-to-protect claims at issue, even if they were treated as exhausted.
Three additional grievances—PBSP-20-00187, PBSP-20-00452, and PBSP-20-00604—were still awaiting final review when Rhodes filed his amended complaint. Responses to two took approximately ten and eleven months, and the record did not show whether a response had been issued for the third. The court found that these delays were far beyond an acceptable period and made administrative remedies unavailable for the allegations presented in those grievances. It therefore considered all three grievances exhausted.
Ruling
The court stated that it had denied the defendants’ motion in part regarding the delays in responding to the three pending grievances. It did not require an evidentiary hearing because there were no disputed factual issues requiring one.
The court did not issue a final ruling on the summary-judgment motion. It ordered the defendants to submit additional briefing identifying which claims were exhausted and which were not, and to clarify whether claims nine and ten against Hernandez were included in the exhaustion motion. Rhodes was allowed to file responsive briefing. After resolving which claims were exhausted, the court stated that it would give the defendants an opportunity to file another summary-judgment motion addressing the merits.
Read the full 13-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.