Mays v. Sherburne County Jail
- Paul Magnuson
- 0:20-cv-00506
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 6
In Mays v. Sherburne County Jail, Judge Menendez denied three requests involving medical care, disciplinary proceedings, and amendment of filings.
Otis Mays’s requests for emergency relief, reconsideration, and amendment were denied; the defendants avoided adding the new allegations at this stage, and the deadline for objections to the earlier recommendation was extended.
What happened
In Mays v. Sherburne County Jail, Otis Mays asked for an emergency hearing about medical care he says he received after returning to the jail in September 2021. The court said those events were unrelated to this case, which concerns earlier conditions at the jail.
Mays also sought reconsideration of a recommendation to deny his request for temporary emergency relief concerning disciplinary proceedings. He argued that he had been placed in segregated housing before a hearing, could not call a staff witness, and lost privileges. He also sought to add these allegations and his recent medical-care allegations to the case.
The court denied the emergency-hearing request, the reconsideration request, and the motion to amend the temporary-emergency-relief request. Judge Menendez extended the time for Mays to object to the recommendation to 21 days from the order’s date.
The detailed version
- Mays v. Sherburne County Jail · No. 0:20-cv-00506
- Paul Magnuson
- Dec. 3, 2021
Background
The order addressed three filings by Otis Mays: a motion for an emergency hearing, an objection to an October 29, 2021 Report and Recommendation, and a request to amend the complaint or obtain reconsideration.
Mays said he was injured in a fall while held at Grady County Jail. He alleged that after returning to Sherburne County Jail on September 3, 2021, officials provided only pain medication for continuing shoulder and arm pain. He also raised concerns about blood in his urine, dental care, and vision care, and asked the court to hold an emergency hearing and require additional or different treatment.
The court explained that this litigation concerns conditions of confinement at Sherburne County Jail before February 2020. It therefore found that Mays’s allegations about medical care beginning in September 2021 were unrelated to the operative complaint. The court also denied his request to add those allegations because the amendment deadline had passed on October 19, 2020, and allowing amendment would cause delay and unfair prejudice to the defendants.
Reconsideration request
Mays objected to an October 29 Report and Recommendation concerning his request for a temporary restraining order, a form of emergency relief, based on alleged due-process violations in recent disciplinary proceedings. The recommendation concluded that he had not shown a likelihood of success on the merits or an imminent threat of irreparable harm. The court interpreted his filing as a request for reconsideration rather than an objection asking the district judge to reject the recommendation.
The court stated that reconsideration is rarely granted and is limited to correcting a clear legal or factual error or considering newly discovered evidence. It denied reconsideration. The court rejected Mays’s arguments concerning his placement in segregated housing before a disciplinary hearing and his inability to call a staff member as a witness. It also found that his allegations about lost privileges were not included in the original temporary-restraining-order motion and were not newly discovered evidence.
Disposition
The court denied Mays’s motion for an emergency hearing, request for reconsideration, and motion to amend his temporary-restraining-order motion. The order did not decide whether Mays’s underlying medical-care or disciplinary claims were ultimately valid. Because the court treated his objection as a reconsideration request, it extended the time for him to file objections to the October 29 Report and Recommendation. Any objections had to be filed within 21 days after the December 3, 2021 order.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.