King v. Doe et al

Filing 51

OPINION denying motion for relief from judgment and reargument 39 and denying as moot plaintiff's motion to withdraw or stay appeal 44 . Signed by Judge Jerome B. Simandle on 4/30/2012. (bkb)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF DELAWARE
WAYNE A. KING,

HON. JEROME B. SIMANDLE

Plaintiff,

CIVIL NO. 10-573 (JBS/AMD)

v.
OPINION
SGT. JOHN DOE, et al.,
Defendants.
APPEARANCES:
Wayne A. King
SB# 274612
Sussex Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 500
Georgetown, Delaware 19947
Plaintiff Pro Se
Ryan P. Connell, Deputy Attorney General
STATE OF DELAWARE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Carvel State Building, 6th Floor
820 N. French Street
Wilmington, Delaware 19801
Attorney for the Defendants N. Hollingsworth and John Spray
SIMANDLE, District Judge1:
I.

INTRODUCTION
This matter comes before the Court upon Plaintiff’s motion

for relief from judgment and reargument [Docket Item 39] of the
Court’s September, 16, 2011, Order granting Defendants’ converted
motion for summary judgment for failure to exhaust available

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Chief U.S. District Judge for the District of New Jersey,
sitting by designation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 292(b).
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administrative remedies as 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) requires.

The

Court has considered all submissions and, for the reasons that
follow, shall deny Plaintiff’s motion for relief from judgment
and reargument.

II.

FACTS AND BACKGROUND
Plaintiff Wayne A. King was an inmate at the James T. Vaughn

Correctional Center (“JTVCC”) in Smyrna, Delaware, when he filed
his Complaint regarding an assault by fellow inmates.

The facts

surrounding this case were previously detailed in this Court’s
July 6, 2011 Opinion [Docket Item 30], King v. Doe, Civ. No. 10573, 2011 WL 2669221, at *1-2 (D. Del. July 6, 2011), and
augmented in this Court’s September 16, 2011 Opinion [Docket Item
35], King v. Doe, Civ. No. 10-573, 2011 WL 4351797, at *1-2 (D.
Del. Sep. 16, 2011).

Plaintiff claims that this assault was the

result of the deliberate indifference of the Defendant prison
guards, who failed to protect him from his assailants, in
violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights.
On September 16, 2011, this Court granted Defendants’
converted summary judgment motion and “concluded that the
undisputed facts in the record demonstrate[d] that Plaintiff did
not properly exhaust his available remedy as required under 42
U.S.C. § 1997e(a) because he filed his Complaint . . . prior to
appealing and fully exhausting his prison grievance form.”

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King,

2011 WL 4351797, at *6.

On October 4, 2011, Plaintiff submitted

the instant motion for relief from judgment or order and
reargument.

[Docket Item 39.]2

On November 4, 2011, Defendants

filed a response to Plaintiff’s motion.

[Docket Item 45.]

On

November 17, 2011, Plaintiff filed a reply to Defendants’
response.3

[Docket Item 46.]

Plaintiff argues that “summary

judgment should be rescinded” because Defendants’ “evidence and
arguments are contrary to the facts.”

Pl.’s Mot. ¶¶ 2-4.

III. DISCUSSION
A.

Standard of Review

Motions for reargument under Delaware Local Rule 7.1.5(a),
are only “sparingly granted.”

L. Civ. R. 7.1.5(a).

“A court

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On October 9, 2011, Plaintiff filed a notice of appeal to
the Third Circuit of the Court’s Order. [Docket Item 42.] On
October 25, 2011, Plaintiff filed a motion with this Court to
withdraw or stay the appeal pending resolution of his motion for
reargument. [Docket Item 44.] On March 2, 2012, the Clerk of
the Third Circuit terminated the appeal for failure to file an
Affidavit of Poverty or pay the filing fee. [Docket Item 47.]
Consequently, the Court will deny Plaintiff’s motion to stay the
appeal as moot.
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The Court doubts whether reply briefs are authorized under
Local Civil Rule 7.1.5(a), governing reargument. See Sonion
Nederland BV v. Asius Technologies LLC, Civ. No. 11-0067, 2011 WL
6415497 at *1 n.4 (D. Del. Dec. 21, 2011) (concluding that Local
Rule 7.1.5(a) does not permit submission of reply briefs without
leave of the Court). However, the Court, recognizing that
Plaintiff is proceeding pro se, and noting that Defendants have
not objected to the submission of the reply brief, has considered
Plaintiff’s reply brief in its consideration of the instant
motion.
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should only grant reargument when (i) the court has patently
misunderstood a party; (ii) the court has made a decision outside
of the adversarial issues presented to the court by the parties,
or (iii) the court has made an error not of reasoning but of
apprehension.”

BP Amoco Chem. Co. v. Sun Oil Co., 200 F. Supp.

2d 429, 432 (D. Del. 2002).

The purpose of a motion for

reargument or reconsideration is to correct manifest errors of
law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence.

Harsco

Corp. v. Zlotnicki, 779 F.2d 906, 909 (3d Cir. 1985).
Generally, a motion for reargument or reconsideration in
this District is treated as a motion to alter or amend judgment
under Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e), or as a motion for relief from
judgment or order under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b).

This Court has

held that a motion for reconsideration under Federal Rule 59(e)
may be granted: (1) to correct manifest errors of law or fact
upon which the judgment was based; (2) to present
newly-discovered or previously unavailable evidence; (3) to
prevent manifest injustice; and (4) an intervening change in
prevailing law.

Flowers v. Schultz, Civ. No. 07-0045, 2007 WL

1186312, at *2 (D.N.J. Apr. 19, 2007); see also North River Ins.
Co. v. CIGNA Reinsurance Co., 52 F.3d 1194, 1218 (3d Cir. 1995);
Harsco Corp., 779 F.2d at 909.
“[M]otions for reconsideration or reargument ‘shall be
sparingly granted.’”

Samuel v. Carroll, 505 F. Supp. 2d 256, 261

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(D. Del. 2007) (citing L. Civ. R. 7.1.5(a)).

“A motion for

reconsideration is not properly grounded on a request that a
court rethink a decision already made and may not be used ‘as a
means to argue new facts or issues that inexcusably were not
presented to the court in the matter previously decided.’”
Samuel, 505 F. Supp. 2d at 261 (quoting Brambles USA, Inc. v.
Blocker, 735 F. Supp. 1239, 1240 (D. Del. 1990)).
B.

Analysis

Plaintiff argues that reconsideration is warranted
principally on the ground that it was impossible to fully exhaust
his grievance because he was released from the JTVCC on August
14, 2008, after his initial grievance was filed but before it was
fully exhausted.

He further asserts that “[p]ursuant to the 4.4

Procedure[,] inmates cannot pursue the grievance process if they
have been released from custody.”

Pl.’s Br. ¶ 2.

In support of

this contention, Plaintiff attaches a handwritten note from a
“Perry B.”, purportedly from the JTVCC Law Library, which states
that “[o]nce you are released from the D.O.C. and you have a
grievance pending, the grievance will be dropped if it was not
heard or ruled on before you leave, nothing more you can do.”
Pl.’s Br. Ex. A.
Additionally, Plaintiff argues that even if his grievance
had been fully considered on the merits, it would have been
denied because he claims the grievance was one “involving staff”

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and could not, therefore, be grieved, based on an attached
statement from the JTVCC Grievance Office.

Pl.’s Br. Ex. B.4

Defendants oppose Plaintiff’s motion on two grounds.

First,

Defendants argue that “[b]ecause this Court has already correctly
ruled that the Plaintiff had failed to file a grievance as
required by the [§ 1997e(a)] . . . his Motion for Reargument
[should] be denied.”

Defs.’ Response to Pl.’s Mot. ¶ 2.

However, this is incorrect.

To the contrary, this Court held in

its September 16, 2011, Opinion “that there is a dispute of fact
regarding whether Plaintiff submitted [i.e., filed] his
grievance.”

King, 2011 WL 4351797, at *4.

This was not the

basis for this Court’s summary judgment holding.

The Court,

instead, granted summary judgment because it found no dispute of
fact that Plaintiff had not fully exhausted the grievance
procedures through all required levels of appeal.

Id. at *5-6.

Defendants also claim that “Plaintiff’s argument that
release from prison . . . excuses him from exhausting his
administrative remedies is . . . disingenuous,” because he
“subsequently entered the correctional system again.”
Response to Pl.’s Mot. ¶ 3.

Defs.’

Defendants argue that “the fact that

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Plaintiff does not explain how his grievance regarding
the alleged failure of the institution and its corrections
officers to protect him adequately from other inmates would
properly be deemed to be one “involving staff” and therefore not
subject to the institution’s grievance procedures. However, as
explained more fully below, this question is not material to the
resolution of the motion.
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he was released for approximately one day cannot possibly relieve
him of his duty to exhaust his administrative remedies in this
matter.”

Id.

The Court does not reach the issue of whether, on the
merits, the requirement of full exhaustion would have been
excused for Plaintiff because of his temporary release from the
JTVCC, because the Court finds that Plaintiff raises this
argument for the first time in his motion for reargument.
Reconsideration is not properly granted on the basis of an
argument presented for the first time on reargument.

Samuel v.

Carroll, 505 F. Supp. 2d 256, 261 (D. Del. 2007).
In his opposition to Defendants’ converted motion for
summary judgment, Plaintiff submitted an affidavit stating that
“the reason that the grievance was not on file [and, presumably,
not further pursued] [wa]s because he was released from the
Department of Correction” after bail was posted.
¶¶ 5-6.

Pl.’s Affidavit

However, Plaintiff did not argue that his release

automatically terminated his grievance, as he is presently
arguing.

The Court, in its original decision, scoured the

available official institutional grievance policy and found no
mention of any such procedure; Plaintiff did not at the time
argue that one existed.

That Plaintiff now argues on

reconsideration that there is some sort of informal or otherwise
undocumented policy of grievance termination is not a proper

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ground for reconsideration.
The same reasoning applies to Plaintiff’s second argument,
that full exhaustion of his grievance was futile because it
“involv[ed] staff.”

This argument was, similarly, not presented

in his opposition to the motion for summary judgment, and is
therefore not a proper basis for reconsideration now.
“A motion for reconsideration cannot be used to ‘relitigate
old matters, raise argument or present evidence that could have
been raised prior to the entry of judgment.’”

Dunkley v. Mellon

Investor Services, 378 F. App’x 169, 172 (3d Cir. 2010) (citing
Wilchombe v. TeeVee Toons, Inc., 555 F.3d 949, 957 (11th Cir.
2009)).

“‘[A] motion for reargument may not be used to

supplement or enlarge the record’ on which the court made its
initial decision.”

BP Amoco Chem. Co., 200 F. Supp. 2d at 432

(quoting Stairmaster Sports/Medical Products, Inc. v. Groupe
Procycle, Inc., 25 F. Supp. 2d 270, 292 (D.Del. 1998)).
Thus, because Plaintiff has not identified an error of law
or fact, newly discovered evidence, or manifest injustice, and
because the grounds asserted for reconsideration are raised for
the first time on reargument, the Court concludes that
reconsideration and reargument is not warranted.
the Court will deny Plaintiff’s motion.

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Accordingly,

IV.

CONCLUSION
For the reasons set forth above, Plaintiff’s motion for

reargument will be denied.
The accompanying Order will be entered.

April 13, 2012
Date

s/ Jerome B. Simandle
JEROME B. SIMANDLE
United States District Judge

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