Flournoy v. Marin County Sheriff Department
- Charles Breyer
- 3:23-cv-00514
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Flournoy v. Marin County Sheriff Dep’t, Judge Breyer dismissed the prisoner’s civil-rights complaint as duplicative and closed the case.
James Henry Flournoy’s later-filed prisoner complaint and the defendants named in it; the court closed the case after dismissing the complaint as duplicative.
What happened
James Henry Flournoy, a prisoner at Marin County Jail, filed a complaint claiming that officials improperly placed and kept him in disciplinary isolation based on pending criminal charges rather than a disciplinary violation. He brought the claim under a federal civil-rights law.
The court said Flournoy was already litigating the same allegations and claim in an earlier, still-pending case. It therefore treated this later complaint as duplicative under the federal prisoner-screening law.
The court dismissed the complaint as duplicative and instructed the clerk to close the case. Judge Charles R. Breyer signed the order on April 4, 2023.
The detailed version
- Flournoy v. Marin County Sheriff Department · No. 3:23-cv-00514
- Charles Breyer
- Apr. 4, 2023
Background
James Henry Flournoy, a prisoner at the Marin County Jail, filed a complaint without a lawyer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. He alleged that he was placed and kept in “disciplinary isolation” when he arrived at the jail in late December 2022. According to the complaint, the placement was based solely on his pending criminal charges and not on a prison disciplinary violation. He claimed this violated due process.
The opinion states that Flournoy had raised the same allegations in an earlier prisoner complaint, which had been dismissed with permission to amend and remained pending. The earlier case was identified as No. 23-cv-00290-CRB (PR).
Reason for dismissal
The court explained that a prisoner complaint that merely repeats claims that are pending or were previously litigated may be treated as abusive and dismissed under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. Because Flournoy was already litigating the same allegations and claim in the earlier case, the court determined that this complaint was duplicative.
Ruling
The court dismissed the complaint as duplicative under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b) and instructed the clerk to close the case. The order did not decide whether Flournoy’s due-process claim was legally valid on its merits. Judge Charles R. Breyer signed the order on April 4, 2023.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.