Syler v. Doe et al

Filing 36

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 12/10/2012:Mailed notice(srn, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
RANDALL W. SYLER,
Plaintiff,
v.
COUNTY OF WILL, et al.,
Defendants.

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No.

12 C 1408

MEMORANDUM ORDER
All of the defendants in this 42 U.S.C. §1983 (“Section
1983”) action brought against them by Randall Syler (“Syler”)
have filed their corrected Answer and Affirmative Defenses
(“ADs”) to Syler’s Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”).

This

memorandum order is issued sua sponte to deal with two aspects of
that responsive pleading--a minor one that requires an amendment
to the Answer and a major issue posed by defendants’ detailed
first AD that requires a response by Syler.
As for the minor item, Answer ¶10 fails to comply with Fed.
R. Civ. P. 8(b)(1)(B) by failing to respond to the allegations in
SAC ¶10, stating instead that the document referred to there
“speaks for itself.”

That is unacceptable--see App’x ¶3 to State

Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Riley, 199 F.R.D. 276, 278 (N.D. Ill.
2001).

Accordingly Answer ¶10 must be suitably amended on or

before December 19, 2012.1

1

That amendment can take the form of a one-paragraph
pleading, rather than dealing with the response more extensively.

As for the major issue, AD 1 sets out a detailed 18paragraph contention that Syler has failed to comply with the
mandate of 42 U.S.C. §1997e(a), which establishes a prisoner’s
exhaustion of administrative remedies as a precondition to any
Section 1983 action that relates to prison conditions.

According

to the AD, the grievance advanced by Syler at the Will County
Adult Detention Facility did not satisfy that precondition.

And

because that poses a threshold issue in this litigation, Syler’s
counsel is ordered to file a response to that AD on or before
December 21, 2012, and this Court will then determine what
further proceedings may be called for in that respect.2

________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:

December 10, 2012

2

AD 2 advances a qualified immunity defense on behalf of
three of the individual defendants, but that issue that does not
call for consideration at the outset of the case.
2