Butler v. The Georgia Department of Corrections et al

Filing 22

ORDER granting 10 Motion to Stay discovery. Signed by Magistrate Judge G. R. Smith on 10/1/18. (wwp)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA
STATESBORO DIVISION
ALICIA BUTLER,
Plaintiff,
v.
THE GEORGIA DEPARTMENT
OF CORRECTIONS, et al.,
Defendants.

)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)

CV618-170

ORDER
Alicia Butler has sued several state agencies and employees to
recover for injuries she suffered when she was attacked by an inmate at
Georgia State Prison while she was working in the prison infirmary.
Doc. 1-1 (Complaint). Defendants removed the case from the Superior
Court of Tattnall County, based on Butler’s assertion of a claim under 42
U.S.C. § 1983 against two of them.

Doc. 1 at 2.

Both the agency

defendants (the Georgia Department of Corrections, Board of Regents of
the University System of Georgia, Georgia Correctional Healthcare,
Georgia State Prison, Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and
Developmental Disabilities) and the individual defendants (Stanley
Williams, Marty Allen, and Timothy Ward) have moved for judgment on
the pleadings. Docs. 4 & 7. They also jointly seek a stay of discovery

pending the resolution of those motions. Doc. 10. Plaintiff opposes the
stay. Doc. 14.
In evaluating stays of discovery pending resolution of dispositive
motions, “a court must take a ‘preliminary peek’ . . . to assess the
likelihood that the motion will be granted.” Taylor v. Jackson, 2017 WL
71654 at * 1 n. 2 (S.D. Ga. Jan. 6, 2017) (quoting Sams v. Ga West Gate,
LLC, 2016 WL 3339764 at * 6 (S.D. Ga. June 10, 2016). The Court is
satisfied that the defendants have stated non-frivolous claims of
immunity from suit.

“Like a public official’s qualified immunity, a

state’s Eleventh Amendment immunity is ‘an entitlement not to stand
trial or face the other burdens of litigation.’” Buchard Transportation
Co. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection, 91 F.3d 1445, 1448
(11th Cir. 1996) (quoting Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 526 (1985));
see also McMahon v. Presidential Airways, Inc., 502 F.3d 1331, 1339
(11th Cir. 2007) (discussing the military’s immunity under Feres v.
United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950), and explaining that all immunities
“entail[] a right to be free from the burdens of litigation”); Blinco v.
Green Tree Servicing, LLC, 366 F.3d 1249, 1252 (11th Cir. 2004) (“The
defense of sovereign . . . immunity protects government officials not only
2

from having to stand trial, but from having to hear the burdens
attendant to litigation, including pretrial discovery.” (citation omitted)).
As defendants point out, if they are required to submit to discovery
before their asserted immunities are resolved, “those immunities would
be effectively lost.” Doc. 15 at 3.
Defendants’ motion to stay discovery (doc. 10) is, therefore,
GRANTED. If any claims remain after the District Judge’s disposition
of defendants’ Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings (docs. 4 & 7), the
parties must confer and submit the report required by Fed. R. Civ. P.
26(f) within 14 days of that disposition.
SO ORDERED, this 1st day of October, 2018.

3