Handy Jr. v. Douglas et al

Filing 167

MINUTE ORDER denying 165 Third Motion for Sanctions by Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty on 8/12/2015.(mdave, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO
Civil Action No. 14-cv-01930-WYD-MEH
WYATT T. HANDY, JR.,
Plaintiff,
v.
TRACY DOUGLAS,
TAMERA COOPER,
GREG WILKINSON,
CAPTAIN FRANK, Shift Commander/Duty Officer,
BOBBY MAYES, and
SHERWYN PHILLIP,
Defendants.

MINUTE ORDER
Entered by Michael E. Hegarty, United States Magistrate Judge, on August 12, 2015.
Plaintiff’s Third Motion for Sanctions [filed August 10, 2015; docket #165] is denied.
Plaintiff seeks an order deeming the operative pleading’s allegations established and barring the
Defendants from filing dispositive motions “based on Defendant Douglas’ failure to execute an
incident report ... in violation of prison regulations.” However, as Plaintiff concedes in his motion,
to the extent such omission by Defendant Douglas is proven and may be construed as “spoliation
of evidence,” Plaintiff may be entitled to an inference that the omitted evidence is unfavorable to
Douglas. The omission itself, even taking Plaintiff’s allegation as true, does not provide a
justification for barring Defendants from filing dispositive motions.1

1

Plaintiff asserts in his motion that the Court “agreed that there is case law that would
support sanctioning DOC and/or Corrections Defendants ... and instructed Plaintiff to file a
subsequent ‘motion for sanctions’ for the court to entertain, if the requested incident report was nonexistent.” Plaintiff is not accurate. The Court simply stated that Plaintiff “may be able to argue that
the regulation was violated,” and that “the law often provides a remedy when certain documents
aren’t produced and that may be a presumption or a striking defenses or things like that - now, I’m
not saying that’s available here ... I’ll leave that to you [Plaintiff] to ask for a remedy.”