Mays v. Sherburne County Jail

Background

The court considered a report and recommendation from United States Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Cowan Wright. The recommendation addressed the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and judgment on the pleadings, as well as Mays’s pending requests concerning discovery and other matters.

Mays did not file objections, although the court had allowed additional time for him to do so. When no specific objection is made to a magistrate judge’s recommendation, the district court reviews it for clear error rather than conducting a full new review of the disputed issues.

Court’s reasoning

The recommendation concluded that Mays’s claims failed for several reasons. According to the order, Mays did not properly name or serve many of the listed defendants, some claims failed to state a claim on which relief could be granted, and the remaining claims were unsupported by the factual record. The court stated that these conclusions were correct whether reviewed under the more searching standard that would apply to specific objections or under the clear-error standard used here.

Ruling

The court adopted the report and recommendation. It granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and judgment on the pleadings. It denied Mays’s request to preserve jail recordings at Docket No. 134, denied his motion for a hearing on lack of medical care at Docket No. 137, and denied his second request to preserve jail recordings at Docket No. 138.

The court dismissed Mays’s state-law negligence claims without prejudice. It dismissed his remaining claims against all defendants with prejudice and directed that judgment be entered. Because the order both relied on the factual-record basis associated with summary judgment and described other claims as failing to state a claim or failing because defendants were not properly named or served, the classification is mixed.