Ewers v. City Of New York

Background

Altura St. Michael Ewers brought a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City of New York, New York City Department of Correction officers, Corizon Health, Inc., and unidentified correctional and medical providers. He sought damages based on the defendants’ alleged failure to protect him from an assault by another inmate at Rikers Island on November 23, 2014, and their alleged indifference to his resulting medical needs. He also asserted state-law claims.

After discovery, the defendants moved for summary judgment. On May 28, 2021, the court granted that motion in its entirety. As relevant here, the court held that Ewers had not shown an unreasonable risk of serious harm before the assault because he provided no evidence of prior physical altercations between him and the other inmate. The court also held that he had not shown that a prison official acted recklessly during the incident. The court separately discussed inconsistencies and deficiencies in Ewers’s evidence about whether he had filed written or oral complaints, but stated that the failure-to-protect claims failed independently of those issues.

Ewers later moved for partial relief from the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(2), which concerns newly discovered evidence, and Rule 60(b)(3), which concerns fraud, misrepresentation, or other misconduct. He relied primarily on William M. Evans’s declaration. Evans stated that, while working in the inmate grievance program for one to two months in 2010, he saw Pauline P. Mimms destroy detainee grievances. Ewers argued that this could justify reopening discovery to determine whether Mimms had also destroyed grievances Ewers allegedly filed in 2014.

Rule 60(b)(2): Newly Discovered Evidence

The court first held that Ewers could not satisfy Rule 60(b)’s threshold requirement of showing a potentially valid underlying claim or defense. The earlier summary-judgment decision did not depend on whether Ewers had filed written grievances. Instead, the court had found that he lacked evidence of an unreasonable risk before the assault and evidence that officials acted recklessly during it. Because the alleged destruction of grievances did not affect those conclusions, the court held that further discovery would not establish a meritorious claim.

The court also held that the proposed evidence did not satisfy Rule 60(b)(2). The rule requires newly discovered evidence that existed at the time of the earlier dispositive proceeding, could not have been discovered despite reasonable diligence, is admissible and important, and probably would have changed the outcome rather than merely adding cumulative or impeachment evidence.

The court concluded that Ewers had presented no new admissible evidence. Evans’s declaration described events from 2010, four years before Ewers’s incarceration at Rikers Island and involving no stated connection to Ewers or his grievances. The court also found the additional discovery Ewers proposed to be far broader than the limited discovery he described. Even assuming the evidence were admissible, the court held that it would not likely have changed the summary-judgment ruling because that ruling rested on legal conclusions independent of the grievance issue.

Rule 60(b)(3): Misconduct

The court also denied relief under Rule 60(b)(3). It explained that this provision requires clear and convincing evidence of material misrepresentations or misconduct and cannot be used simply to relitigate the merits.

The court found no evidence linking Evans’s account of alleged grievance destruction in 2010 to Ewers’s incarceration or grievances in 2014. It stated that accepting Ewers’s theory would require assuming that an alleged practice observed for one or two months in 2010 continued for years and included Ewers’s grievances. The court declined to reopen discovery on that speculative basis and held that the evidence did not come close to the required clear-and-convincing standard.

Disposition

Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald denied Ewers’s motion for relief under Rule 60(b) and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate docket number 147. The order did not alter the earlier judgment granting the defendants’ summary-judgment motion in its entirety.