Woods v. Najar et al

Filing 31

OPINION & ORDER (1) Accepting the Magistrate Judge's Recommendation Dated October 17, 2017 (Dkt. 22 ); (2) Overruling Plaintiff's Objections Thereto (Dkt. 23 ); (3) Granting Defendants' Motions to Dismiss (Dkt. 20 , 21 ); (4) Den ying Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. 12 ); (5) Denying Plaintiff's Motions for Relief from Judgment (Dkt. 24 , 29 ); and (6) Dismissing Plaintiff's Claim with Prejudice. Signed by District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith. (Sandusky, K)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
CURTIS L. WOODS,
Plaintiff,
Case No. 17-cv-10489
v.
HON. MARK A. GOLDSMITH
KHALID NAJAR, et al,
Defendants.
_____________________________________/
OPINION & ORDER
(1) ACCEPTING THE MAGISTRATE JUDGE’S RECOMMENDATION DATED
OCTOBER 17, 2017 (Dkt. 22); (2) OVERRULING PLAINTIFF’S OBJECTIONS
THERETO (Dkt. 23); (3) GRANTING DEFENDANTS’ MOTIONS TO DISMISS (Dkt. 20,
21); (4) DENYING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT (Dkt. 12); (5)
DENYING PLAINTIFF’S MOTIONS FOR RELIEF FROM JUDGMENT (Dkt. 24, 29);
AND (6) DISMISSING PLAINTIFF’S CLAIM WITH PREJUDICE
This matter is before the Court on the Report and Recommendation (“R&R”) of Magistrate
Judge Mona K. Majzoub (Dkt. 22), which recommends granting Defendants’ motions to dismiss
(Dkts. 20, 21). Plaintiff Curtis Woods filed objections to the R&R (Dkt. 23), to which Defendants
filed a response (Dkts. 25, 26). Because oral argument will not aid the decisional process, the
objections to the R&R will be decided based on the parties’ briefing. See E.D. Mich. LR 7.1(f)(2);
Fed. R. Civ. P. 78(b). For the reasons set forth below, the R&R is accepted and Defendants’
motions to dismiss are granted. The Court also denies Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment
(Dkt. 12) and motions for relief from judgment (Dkts. 24, 29).
I. BACKGROUND
Plaintiff Curtis Woods is currently serving a sentence of 30 to 60 years arising from a 2014
conviction for armed robbery. He brought this suit against Defendants — Wayne County
Prosecutors Khalid Najar and Melissa Palepu, Dearborn Police Sergeant Matthew Larabell, and
1

State of Michigan District Court Judge Mark Plawecki — alleging several constitutional violations
surrounding his September 20, 2013 arrest, detention, initial appearance, and arraignment. He
seeks monetary damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Defendants Najar and Palepu have filed a motion to dismiss (Dkt. 20), as have Defendants
Larabell and Plawecki (Dkt. 21). The magistrate judge recommended that the motions be granted,
as some of Woods’s claims are barred under the doctrine of Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477
(1994). That doctrine holds that a plaintiff may not recover under § 1983 for an allegedly
unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment or for other action that would render a conviction or
sentence invalid, unless “the conviction or sentence has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged
by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or
called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.” Heck, 512 U.S. at
487. The magistrate judge found that the remaining claims are all time-barred under the threeyear statute of limitations.
Woods filed four objections to the magistrate judge’s decision; he also filed two motions
for relief from judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). Also pending is a motion
for summary judgment filed by Woods before Defendants had filed a responsive pleading or
motion.
II. STANDARD OF DECISION
The Court reviews de novo any portion of the R&R to which a specific objection has been
made. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1); Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b); Alspaugh v. McConnell, 643 F.3d 162,
166 (6th Cir. 2011) (“Only those specific objections to the magistrate’s report made to the district
court will be preserved for appellate review; making some objections but failing to raise others
will not preserve all the objections a party may have.”). Any arguments made for the first time in

2

objections to an R&R are deemed waived. Uduko v. Cozzens, 975 F. Supp. 2d 750, 757 (E.D.
Mich. 2013).
III. ANALYSIS
Woods has purportedly raised four objections to the R&R, though three of these objections
relate to issues not decided in the R&R. These objections — Woods’s first three — are not
permissible under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(2) (“Within 14
days after being served with a copy of the recommended disposition, a party may serve and file
specific written objections to the proposed findings and recommendations.”) (emphasis added),
but the Court will address them regardless. For the reasons that follow, the objections are
overruled.
Woods’s first and third objections relate to the timing of Defendants’ response to the
complaint. Woods argues that Defendants’ did not respond within the twenty-one days allowed
by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(a)(1), and thus that the responses were untimely. See Obj.
at 1-2 (Dkt. 23). Defendants Najar and Palepu claim they waived service sometime after they were
served on March 30, 2017, which entitled them to sixty days to file an answer. See Resp. to Obj.
at 2-3, 4-5 (Dkt. 26). Thus, they claim, their May 11, 2017 motion was timely. Defendants
Larabell and Plawecki claim that they were never properly served. See Resp. to Obj. at 3-4 (Dkt.
25).
Regardless of whether or when Defendants were served, the objections fail. Woods did
not raise the issue of timeliness of the motions to dismiss in front of the magistrate judge; indeed,
Woods did not file a response to the motions to dismiss at all. Thus, any objection related to the
filing of the motions is waived. See Uduko, 975 F. Supp. 2d at 757. The proper time to raise this
objection would have been through a motion to strike before the magistrate judge issued her

3

opinion; the untimeliness of the objections requires the Court to overrule them. Accordingly,
Objections 1 and 3 are overruled.
Next, Woods objects to the magistrate judge’s decision to deny as moot his motion for
issuance of service (Dkt. 9). See Obj. at 1-2. The magistrate judge entered this denial on October
17, 2017 via a text-only order, and did so because a service order had been previously entered by
Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen (Dkt. 10). Contrary to Woods’s contention that the denial of
the motion as moot constituted a deprivation of due process, the magistrate judge’s action appears
entirely appropriate. The order directing service signed by Magistrate Judge Whalen clearly
effectuated the request made by Woods in his motion for issuance of service, although it did so
without explicitly granting the motion. Because Magistrate Judge Whalen’s order directed that
Defendants be served, the request made by Woods was indeed moot. Accordingly, the objection
is overruled.
Finally, Woods objects to the magistrate judge’s use of Heck. As the magistrate judge
explained, the Heck doctrine prevents a state prisoner from bringing a civil rights claim
challenging his imprisonment if a finding in his favor would render his continued confinement
invalid, except under certain circumstances. In her opinion, the magistrate judge found that certain
of Woods’s claims were barred by the Heck doctrine. See R&R at 4-5. She did agree that Woods’s
claim of detention without probable cause was not barred by Heck. Woods makes a generalized
claim in his objection that “Heck…does not apply to plaintiff.” Obj. at 2. Such a conclusory
argument is insufficient to bring the magistrate judge’s conclusion about Heck into question before
this Court. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(2) (requiring specific objections); see also United States v.
Fowler, 819 F.3d 298, 309 (6th Cir. 2016) (“Issues adverted to in a perfunctory manner,
unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are deemed waived. It is not sufficient

4

for a party to mention a possible argument in [a] skeletal way, leaving the court to put flesh on its
bones.”) (internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original).
However, even if it were, there was another basis for dismissal set forth by the magistrate
judge: the three-year statute of limitations for § 1983 claims had expired. See R&R at 6 (“Any
claims surviving the Defendants’ res judicata and Heck defenses should be dismissed on [a statute
of limitations] basis.”). Woods has not objected to the magistrate judge’s recommendation on the
statute of limitations defense. Therefore, any error in that analysis is waived. See Lardie v. Birkett,
221 F. Supp. 2d 806, 807 (E.D. Mich. 2002) (“As to the parts of the report and recommendation
to which no party has objected, the Court need not conduct a review by any standard.”). In any
case, the Court has reviewed the magistrate judge’s statute of limitations analysis and determines
that it was correct; the action was filed on February 16, 2017, which is outside the three-year
limitations period that began accruing on September 23, 2013. Accordingly, regardless of any
objection by Woods regarding the magistrate judge’s treatment of Heck, her recommendation for
dismissal based on the statute of limitations was entirely correct. Thus, the objection as to Heck
is overruled.
For all of the reasons stated above, all of Woods’s objections are overruled. This leaves
outstanding Woods’s motion for summary judgment (Dkt. 12) and his motions for relief from
judgment (Dkts. 24, 29). The magistrate judge found that the motion for summary judgment
should be denied, see R&R at 2, and Woods did not object to this finding. That failure to object is
sufficient to justify adoption of the recommendation. See Lardie, 221 F. Supp. 2d at 807.
Further, there is no error in the magistrate judge’s recommendation to deny the motion for
summary judgment, even though she did not explain her reasoning. Woods claimed in his motion
that he was entitled to summary judgment based on Defendants’ allege failure to timely respond

5

to the lawsuit after service. The basis for that contention is Woods’s unsworn statement in his
motion that Defendants were served on March 30, 2017, thus justifying the filing of his motion
twenty-six days later, on April 25, when no responsive pleading or motion had been filed by
Defendants. But the record belies Woods’s contention that the Defendants were served on March
30. The record reveals that on that date the U.S. Marshals Service received the summons,
complaint, and order of this Court directing service. See 3/30/17 Acknowledgement from U.S.
Marshals Service of Receipt of Service of Process Documents (Dkt. 11). Attached to the
Acknowledgement were the Notices of a Lawsuit and Request to Waive Service of a Summons,
which were sent to the Defendants. The record does not indicate how or when they were sent, but
what is clear is that the Defendants were not served on March 30. The purpose of the notices was
to give Defendants an opportunity to waive service, thus sparing the Marshal Service the time and
expense of personal service. The notices gave Defendants 30 days to elect to waive. The record
does not reflect any such election, although counsel for Defendants Najar and Palepu states that
the waiver was executed and returned to the Marshals Service, Resp. to Obj. at 3 (Dkt. 26). The
notices provided 60 days for Defendants to take some action – which would make the due date for
a response a date well beyond April 25. Nor is there any return of service on the docket from the
Marshals Service, which would support Defendants’ statements that they were never served with
the suit papers. See Resp. to Obj. at 3-4 (Dkt. 25). Thus, at the time the motion was filed, there
was no legitimate basis for Woods to claim that Defendants should have been defaulted for failure
to answer or move within the time allowed by law after service. His motion for summary
judgment, based on that untenable foundation, is properly denied.
Regarding the motions for relief from judgment, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)
allows for such motions seeking relief from a final judgment, order, or proceeding. The Sixth

6

Circuit has determined that Rule 60(b) applies “only to final judgments,” Mallory v. Eyrich, 922
F.2d 1273, 1277 (6th Cir. 1991), and that reports and recommendations are not considered final
orders, United States v. Shalash, 259 Fed. Appx. 754, 760 (6th Cir. 2008). Accordingly, the Court
denies the motion for relief from judgment, because they seek relief from a report and
recommendation.1
IV. CONCLUSION
For the above stated reasons, the R&R is accepted and Defendants’ motions to dismiss are
granted (Dkts. 20, 21). The Court also denies Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment (Dkt. 12)
and motions for relief from judgment (Dkts. 24, 29).
SO ORDERED.
Dated: March 12, 2018
Detroit, Michigan

s/Mark A. Goldsmith
MARK A. GOLDSMITH
United States District Judge

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
The undersigned certifies that the foregoing document was served upon counsel of record and any
unrepresented parties via the Court's ECF System to their respective email or First Class U.S. mail
addresses disclosed on the Notice of Electronic Filing on March 12, 2018.
s/Karri Sandusky
Case Manager

1

Woods has also filed a letter requesting that the motions for relief from judgment be assigned to
a separate panel for review (Dkt. 30). The letter was not styled as a motion, but the Court will
construe it as one regardless. The request lacks merit, because there is no panel to which the
motion may be reassigned. If Woods is seeking reassignment to another judge, he has offered no
explanation or authority for that request. Accordingly, the issue is waived, and the request is
denied. See Fowler, 819 F.3d at 309 (6th Cir. 2016).
7