Appeals Court Allows Illinois Prisoner’s Suit for Failure to Exhaust Administrative Remedies
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled on December 23, 2024 that a district court erred in dismissing, without a hearing, prisoner-plaintiff Henry Jones’s 42 U.S.C. section 1983 complaint (“Complaint”) for failure to exhaust administrative remedies where a factual dispute existed as to whether the administrative remedy was available to Jones.
On July 21, 2019, Jones sought treatment for his broken his left hand that he suffered during a basketball game the previous day at the Henry Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg, Illinois. In his Complaint, Hill alleged that Amanda Lamb turned him away from the medical unit without medical treatment even though his hand was extremely swollen. Pursuant to Ill. Admin. Code tit. 20, (“Admin. 20”) section 504.810, Jones submitted a grievance with his counselor on July 21, 2019, complaining that Lamb refused to provide medical treatment. But his counselor did not respond to the grievance until September 2019, in which she noted only that Jones had, by that time, received medical treatment.
Two weeks later, a grievance officer received Jones’s grievance for review. While Admin. 20 provides that the grievance officer shall complete the review and submit written findings and recommendation to the warden within two months of receipt, the grievance officer “took seven months to issue a recommendation to deny the grievance.” Six days later, the warden concurred and denied the grievance on April 30, 2020.
In the meantime, since no response had been forthcoming to the grievance he filed with his counselor, Jones submitted an emergency grievance directly to the warden on August 20, 2019 alleging Lamb refused to provide medical treatment. The warden expedited this grievance by forwarding it directly to the grievance officer for initial review. The grievance officer took five months before recommending that this grievance be denied, and the warden concurred three days later.
Also, on August 25, 2019, Jones submitted another emergency grievance directly to the warden, complaining that Lamb refused to provide him with pain medication. The warden declined to process this grievance as an emergency and Jones was instructed to resubmit it in accordance with standard procedures. Jones took no further action on this grievance.
Although Admin. 20 provides that prisoners dissatisfied with a warden’s resolution of a grievance may appeal to the director of the Illinois DOC within 30 days, Jones appealed neither the resolution of his July 21, 2019, nor his August 20, 2019, grievances alleging Jones failed to treat him.
Lamb moved for summary judgment, arguing Jones failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. Jones rebutted, arguing that he did not receive the warden’s responses to his July and August grievances regarding Lamb’s refusal to treat him until discovery in this case. Jones offered no explanation for his failure to exhaust his grievance regarding Lamb’s refusal to provide pain medication.
The district court disbelieved Jones, reasoning that his counselor’s September response contradicted Jones. The district court granted Lamb’s motion and dismissed all of Jones’s claims for failure to exhaust his administrative remedies. Jones appealed.
The Court observed that “No action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under [federal law] by a prisoner … until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.” Exhaustion of administrative remedies by a prisoner is mandatory before bringing a suit in federal court unless those remedies are unavailable to the prisoner.
“To succeed on a motion for summary judgment based on an affirmative defense,” the Court continued, “the defendant ‘must lay out the elements of the [defense], cite the facts which [the defendant] believes satisfies these elements, and demonstrate why the record is so one-sided as to rule out the prospect of finding in favor of the [plaintiff] on the [defense].’”
In the instant case, while it was true that it appeared Jones failed to exhaust his administrative remedies when he did not appeal the warden’s responses to his grievances alleging a denial of medical treatment, it was also true that it has been held that prison officials’ failure to timely respond to a prisoner’s grievances makes the remedy unavailable to him.
Not only did the warden fail to timely respond to Jones’s grievances, but Jones alleged he was not made aware of those responses until discovery in this case. And by that time, the limitation period for appealing those responses had expired.
The Court determined that the district court erred in disbelieving Jones without an evidentiary hearing. First, the counselor’s September response to Jones mentioned nothing about the warden’s response (indeed, at that time, the grievance had not even yet been received by the grievance officer who took another seven months to make a recommendation to the warden). Consequently, the counselor’s September response did not blatantly contradict Jones and support the district court’s finding and dismissal.
Second, the Court explained “[a]t summary judgment, a party asserting that a fact is genuinely disputed—here, the availability of administrative remedies—must support the assertion…An unsworn declaration subscribed as true by the declarant under penalty of perjury may support an assertion if the declaration is ‘made on personal knowledge, set[s] out facts that would be admissible in evidence, and show[s] that the … declarant is competent to testify on the matters stated.’” In the instant case, Jones had satisfied each of these requirements.
Because Jones’s dispute was material to the issue of exhaustion, it could be resolved by the district court without submission to a jury. That is, exhaustion is an issue of judicial administration and determination of factual issues related solely to it are within the province of the court. But a material factual dispute regarding exhaustion may be resolved only after an evidentiary hearing.
With regard to Jones’s grievance alleging Lamb refused to provide pain medication, the Court concluded the district court correctly dismissed it for failure to exhaust. Accordingly, the Court reversed the district court’s order dismissing Jones’s two grievances alleging Lamb refused to provide medical treatment and remanded with instructions to conduct an evidentiary hearing as to whether administrative remedies remained available to Jones. The Court affirmed the district court’s order with regard to the claim that Jones refused to provide pain medication. See: Jones v. Lamb, 124 F.4th 463 (7th Cir. 2024).
[Note to Readers: This case is illustrative of the fact that prison grievance procedures are, like those enforcing them, generally useless and used primarily as a means to deprive prisoners of access to the courts. In this case, a prisoner with a broken hand was denied medical care and pain medication; the prison bureaucrats failed to timely respond to his complaints by several months; and the defense sought to evade responsibility by blaming the prisoner for the utter failure of the prison bureaucrats.]
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Related legal case
Jones v. Lamb
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 124 F.4th 463 (7th Cir. 2024) |
| Level | Court of Appeals |