Bishop v. Swanson

Background

Merel Evans Bishop, Joseph Goodwin, William McRae, and William Mosby are detained under civil-commitment orders at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program facility in Moose Lake, Minnesota. In 2012, each filed a lengthy complaint challenging conditions of confinement and various Minnesota Sex Offender Program practices. The cases were stayed while a related class action involving Minnesota Sex Offender Program detainees was pending. After that class action reached a final judgment in February 2022, the stays were lifted.

A January 2023 screening under 28 U.S.C. § 1915 dismissed most of the plaintiffs’ claims. Claims that survived included allegations involving monitoring of calls with attorneys and property losses, invasion of privacy, punitive confinement policies, procedural safeguards in disciplinary hearings, and the totality of confinement conditions under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Motions and Report and Recommendation

The defendants filed identical motions to dismiss in the four cases. They argued that the remaining claims were barred by claim preclusion or issue preclusion, or that the complaints failed to state a claim. United States Magistrate Judge David T. Schultz recommended granting the motions and dismissing all four cases. He concluded that claim preclusion barred the remaining claims and therefore did not reach the issue-preclusion arguments.

Goodwin and McRae filed objections to the recommendation. Bishop and Mosby did not respond to the motions or submit objections. The district court reviewed the specifically challenged portions of the recommendation independently and reviewed the unchallenged portions for clear error.

Court’s Analysis

Claim preclusion is a rule that generally prevents a party from bringing a later case based on the same factual dispute when an earlier case ended in a final judgment and the claim could have been raised in that earlier case. The court held that this rule could be applied on a motion to dismiss because its applicability was apparent from the complaints, the earlier class-action pleading, and the earlier final judgment.

For the claims concerning monitoring of attorney calls and property losses in Causes of Action 2 and 3, the court found that the complaints challenged policies and practices that were included in, or could have been included in, the earlier class action. The court therefore concluded that these claims were barred even though the earlier class-action pleading did not specifically identify monitoring of calls with attorneys in the same terms.

For Cause of Action 7, concerning allegedly punitive confinement policies, the court accepted the recommendation that claim preclusion applied because the claims could have been raised in the earlier class action and the plaintiffs did not argue that anything prevented them from doing so.

For Cause of Action 9, concerning procedural safeguards in disciplinary hearings, the court accepted the recommendation that the claims arose from the same factual circumstances as claims in the earlier class action or could have been asserted there. The court also discussed the connection between whether conditions amounted to punishment and whether they violated procedural due process.

For Cause of Action 15, concerning the totality of the conditions of confinement, the court accepted the recommendation that the claim was based on the same factual circumstances as the earlier class action. The court held that presenting a different legal theory did not avoid claim preclusion.

The plaintiffs also argued that their challenges were applied to them individually rather than facial challenges to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program’s policies. The court rejected that argument, finding that the earlier class action included applied challenges and that these complaints did not adequately allege that the policies uniquely affected the plaintiffs.

Disposition

The court accepted the reports and recommendations, overruled the objections, and granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss in all four cases: Bishop v. Swanson, No. 12-cv-135; Goodwin v. Swanson, No. 12-cv-180; McRae v. Swanson, No. 12-cv-221; and Mosby v. Swanson, No. 12-cv-320. The court dismissed all four matters and directed that judgment be entered. The opinion does not state that the dismissals were with or without prejudice.