Alexander v. Hoffman et al

Filing 105

ORDER granting in part and denying in part Defendants' Rule 50(a) Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law. Signed by District Judge Terrence G. Berg. (AChu)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION

4:16-cv-12069

D’ANDRE M. ALEXANDER,
Plaintiff,

HON. TERRENCE G. BERG

v.
ANN HOFFMAN, et al.

ORDER GRANTING IN PART
AND DENYING IN PART
DEFENDANTS’ RULE 50(a)
MOTION

Defendants.

This case is now before the Court on an oral motion for judgment as
a matter of law raised by Defendants Ann Hoffman and Scott Freed upon
completion of the presentation of evidence at trial. See Fed. R. Civ. Proc.
50(a). Defendants ask the Court to enter judgment as a matter of law on
both their claims—for First Amendment retaliation and Fourteenth
Amendment Due Process violation—before this case is submitted to the
jury. After careful consideration of the evidence presented during the
trial and the relevant law, the Court finds that Defendant Scott Freed is
entitled to judgment in his favor as a matter of law on Plaintiff D’Andre
Alexander’s Fourteenth Amendment claim because there was no
evidence presented to show that Defendant Freed’s conduct caused
Plaintiff to be deprived of a liberty interest as that term is currently
defined by governing legal precedent. As to Defendant Ann Hoffman, who
1

Plaintiff claims violated his First Amendment rights by retaliating
against him for engaging in protected conduct, for the reasons set forth
in greater detail below, Defendants’ motion for judgment as a matter of
law is denied. That claim will accordingly be submitted to the jury.
DISCUSSION
Rule 50(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that “[i]f
a party has been fully heard on an issue during a jury trial and the court
finds that a reasonable jury would not have a legally sufficient
evidentiary basis to find for the party on that issue, the court may: (A)
resolve the issue against that party; and (B) grant a motion for judgment
as a matter of law against the party on a claim or defense that, under the
controlling law, can be maintained or defeated only with a favorable
finding on that issue.” In contrast, if the court denies the motion for
judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(a), “the court is considered to
have submitted the action to the jury subject to the court’s later deciding
the legal questions raised by the motion.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b).
A. Fourteenth Amendment due process violation
Plaintiff claims that Defendant Scott Freed violated his rights
under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by refusing to
gather evidence that Plaintiff asserts would have supported his defense
against the allegedly false major-misconduct charge. The Fourteenth
Amendment’s

Due

Process

Clause

protects

individuals

against

deprivations of life, liberty or property. Individuals who seek to invoke
2

the Due Process Clause’s procedural protection must establish that one
these interests is at stake. Wilkinson v. Austin, 545 U.S, 209, 221 (2005).
In Sandin v. Conner, the Supreme Court explained that a prisoner does
not have a protected liberty interest in prison disciplinary proceedings
unless the sanction at issue “will inevitably affect the duration of his
sentence” or “imposes atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in
relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life.” LaFountain v. Coleman,
No. 1:09-cv-623, 2010 WL 310736 at *6 n.2 (W.D. Mich. Jan. 21, 2010)
(discussing Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 483–84 (1995)).
The Supreme Court has found that there is no liberty interest in
being housed in a particular facility or, generally, in avoiding transfer to
more adverse conditions of confinement. Montayne v. Haynes, 427 U.S.
236, 242 (1976); Wilkinson, 545 U.S. at 221. Likewise, the Supreme Court
explained in Sandin that being placed in administrative segregation for
30 days does not rise to the level of an “atypical and significant hardship”
in the prison context. Sandin, 515 U.S. at 485. In Nali v. Ekman, an
unpublished Sixth Circuit case, the court also determined that findings
of misconduct, even if they create the possibility that a prisoner’s
sentence could be lengthened by the parole board, “do not implicate a
protected liberty interest so long as the parole board retains discretion to
release a prisoner based on a ‘myriad of considerations’ and so long as the
prisoner may ‘explain the circumstances behind his misconduct record’ to
the board.” 355 F. App’x 909, 2009 WL 4641737, *3 (6th Cir. 2009)
3

(unpublished) (quoting Sandin, 515 U.S. at 487). In contrast, the Sixth
Circuit has stated that indefinite placement in a more restrictive
maximum-security prison, or placement that disqualifies an otherwiseeligible inmate from parole consideration would create a liberty interest
upon which a Fourteenth Amendment Due Process claim could rest.
Harden-Bey v. Rutter, 524 F.3d 789, 792 (6th Cir. 2008).
Although the penalty for the misconduct imposed on Plaintiff
Alexander as a result of being found guilty of possession of a weapon
clearly involved imposing more adverse prison conditions on him—30
days’ confinement to administrative segregation and a concurrent loss of
privileges—no evidence was presented at trial that would provide a
reasonable jury with a legally sufficient evidentiary basis to find that
Plaintiff was subjected to an “atypical and significant hardship . . . in
relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life” as those terms are
currently defined by the United States Supreme Court. Sandin, 515 U.S.
at 483–84; see Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a). In that case, the Supreme Court
specifically found that the precise penalty imposed on Mr. Alexander did
not constitute an “atypical and significant hardship . . . in relation to the
ordinary incidents of prison life.” Consequently, no reasonable jury could
find that the evidence presented at trial establishes this element of
Plaintiff’s claim. Defendant Scott Freed is therefore entitled to judgment
as a matter of law on Plaintiff’s claim for denial of a liberty interest
without due process. The Court must accordingly grant Defendants’
4

motion for judgment of a law on this claim and judgment will be entered
in favor of Defendant Freed.
B. First Amendment retaliation
Plaintiff’s claim against Defendant Hoffman is that she violated his
First Amendment rights by retaliating against him for filing grievances.
A retaliation claim has three elements: (1) the plaintiff engaged in
protected conduct; (2) an adverse action was taken against the plaintiff
that would deter a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage
in that conduct; and (3) there is a causal connection between those
elements—that the adverse action was motivated at least in part by the
plaintiff’s protected conduct. Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 175 F.3d 378, 394
(6th Cir. 1999) (en banc).
The Sixth Circuit has expressly held that “[a]n inmate has an
undisputed First Amendment right to file grievances against prison
officials on his own behalf” so long as the grievances are not frivolous.
Herron v. Harrison, 203 F.3d 410, 415 (6th Cir. 2000). Plaintiff presented
evidence at trial—including but not limited to his own testimony—that
Defendant Ann Hoffman issued him a false major-misconduct ticket in
retaliation for his filing of grievances. Plaintiff also introduced evidence
through the testimony of multiple witnesses that he was placed in
administrative segregation and lost privileges as a result of the majormisconduct finding. “Whether a retaliatory action is sufficiently severe to
deter a person of ordinary firmness from exercising his or her rights is a
5

question of fact” best left to the jury to decide. Bell v. Johnson, 308 F.3d
594, 603 (6th Cir. 2002). Because the Sixth Circuit has previously held
that, “[i]n the prison context, an action comparable to transfer to
administrative segregation would certainly be adverse,” Thaddeus-X v.
Blatter, 175 F.3d 378, 396 (6th Cir. 1999) (en banc), and that actions that
result in “more restrictions and fewer privileges for prisoners” are also
considered adverse, Hill v. Lapin, 630 F.3d 468, 474 (6th Cir. 2010), the
Court finds a reasonable jury would have a legally sufficient evidentiary
basis to find that Plaintiff has shown he suffered an adverse action that
would deter a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in
conduct—grievance-filing—that is undisputedly protected by the First
Amendment.
The final element of Plaintiff’s retaliation claim requires
demonstrating a causal connection between the protected conduct and
the adverse action. Again, causation in this context is generally a factual
issue to be resolved by the jury and, further, may be satisfied by
circumstantial evidence. Harris v. Bornhorst, 513 F.3d 503, 519–20 (6th
Cir. 2008). In some circumstances temporal proximity between protected
conduct and the alleged adverse action may be significant enough to
constitute indirect evidence of a causal connection that supports an
inference of retaliatory motive. Muhammad v. Close, 379 F.3d 413, 417–
18 (6th Cir. 2004). Plaintiff presented evidence at trial from which a
reasonable jury could deduce—consistent with governing case law—that
6

Plaintiff has proven the elements of his First Amendment retaliation
claim.
Defendants argue that this Court must give preclusive effect to the
factfinding by the Michigan Department of Corrections hearing officer
under Peterson v. Johnson, 714 F.3d 905 (6th Cir. 2013). To determine if
Peterson preclusion applies, the Court looks to four requirements: “(1) the
state agency ‘acted in a judicial capacity’; (2) the hearing officer ‘resolved
a disputed issue of fact that was properly before it’; (3) the prisoner ‘had
adequate opportunity to litigate the factual dispute’ and (4) if these other
three requirements are met, we must ‘give the agency’s finding of fact the
same preclusive effect it would be given in state courts.’” Maben v. Thelen,
887 F.3d 252, 259 (6th Cir. 2018) (some internal quotations omitted)
(quoting Peterson, 714 F.3d at 911–913).
But the Sixth Circuit, in Roberson v. Torres, a 2014 case, specifically
warned that Peterson “is not a blanket blessing on every factual finding
in a major-misconduct hearing.” 770 F.3d 398, 403–04 (6th Cir. 2014).
The appellate court instructed the district court to “give particular
attention to the fairness and accuracy of the factual findings made by the
major-misconduct hearing officer.” Roberson, 770 F.3d at 405. The
Roberson court further advised that “[n]umerous inquiries may be
relevant to the district court’s analysis,” including “why the hearing
officer refused to review the alleged video of the incident, whether the
hearing officer provided a sufficient and reasonable basis for her factual
7

findings, and whether the testimony of other witnesses corroborated the
accounts provided by either [the prisoner] or [the officer].” Id. at 405.
Here, Plaintiff has made allegations that there were discrepancies
between the description of the knife he was found to have possessed in
the misconduct ticket, Plaintiff’s Exhibit 6, and the appearance of the
knife in the photograph, now destroyed, which he says was part of the
investigative packet presented at his hearing. He further alleges that at
that hearing he sought to present a voice recording of a phone call,
Plaintiff’s Exhibit 5, as well as certain witness statements that according
to the hearing decision report, Exhibit 8, were never presented. For
reasons that are unclear, the investigative packet was not preserved for
litigation. The plain language of the hearing report states that certain
statements that Plaintiff requested were not presented. While Defendant
Freed testified to an explanation for this statement, the evidence before
the Court raises sufficient questions concerning the completeness of the
record before the hearing officer that permits the Court to decline to
afford its decision preclusive effect under the standards of Peterson and
Roberson.
Defendants also cite Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994) as a
bar to Plaintiff’s First Amendment claim, which he asserts via § 1983.
But Heck “applies only where a prisoner’s § 1983 challenge
‘threatens . . . his conviction or the duration of his sentence.’” Peterson,
714 F.3d at 918 (quoting Muhammad, 540 U.S. at 751). From the record
8

it is not apparent that Plaintiff’s First Amendment claim implicates
either. Heck, accordingly, is inapposite. See Wilkinson, 544 U.S. at 74–75
(explaining that “the prisoner cannot use § 1983 to obtain relief where
success would necessarily demonstrate the invalidity of confinement or
its duration.”) (emphasis in original); Meeks v. Schofield, 625 F. App’x
697, 701 (6th Cir. 2015) (finding Heck was not implicated where the
challenged disciplinary conviction did not affect the length of the
plaintiff’s sentence). The Court has already ruled that there was no
evidence presented showing that the penalty received by the Plaintiff for
the misconduct

here would necessarily lengthen his

sentence.

Consequently, the Court will deny Defendants’ motion for judgment as a
matter of law on this claim and submit it to the jury for its consideration.
This finding also resolves Defendant’s claim of qualified immunity.
There is a clearly recognized right under the First Amendment that every
law enforcement officer may be reasonably expected to know. The Sixth
Circuit has repeatedly recognized that if a prison officer retaliates
against a prisoner for filing grievances, that conduct comprises a
violation of clearly established constitutional law. Maben v. Thelen, 887
F.3d at 269 (collecting cases). Likewise, the Sixth Circuit has stated that
“a reasonable prisoner officer would have been aware that issuing a
misconduct ticket, even a minor misconduct ticket, in retaliation for the
inmate’s exercise of his First Amendment rights could give rise to
constitutional liability. Id. (citing Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635,
9

640 (1987). Based on the evidence presented, there is a question of fact
as to whether this Defendant knowingly violated that right by bringing
a false misconduct charge. Consequently Defendant Hoffman is not
entitled to qualified immunity on this claim.
CONCLUSION
For these reasons, Plaintiff’s motion for judgment as a matter of
law under Rule 50(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is
GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. The Court will grant
judgment as a matter of law in favor of Defendants on Plaintiff’s claim
that Defendant Scott Freed violated his rights under the Fourteenth
Amendment’s Due Process Claim. The Court declines to enter judgment
as a matter of law on Plaintiff’s claim that Defendant Ann Hoffman
retaliated against him for exercising his rights under the First
Amendment. That claim will accordingly be submitted to the jury for its
consideration.
Dated: September 27, 2019 s/Terrence G. Berg
TERRENCE G. BERG
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

10