Young v. Jackson et al

Filing 105

MEMORANDUM OPINION and ORDER Denying Plaintiff's 103 MOTION for Relief from Judgment Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(1) - Signed by District Judge Judith E. Levy. (FMos)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
Ardra Young,
Plaintiff,
v.

Case No. 12-cv-12751
Hon. Judith E. Levy
Mag. Judge Mona K. Majzoub

LaToya Jackson, Vindha
Jayawardena, Michigan
Department of Corrections, and
Corizon Health, Inc.,
Defendants.
________________________________/
OPINION AND ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR
RELIEF FROM JUDGMENT PURSUANT TO FEDERAL RULE
OF CIVIL PROCEDURE 60(b)(1) [103]
Ardra Young, a prisoner at the Carson City Correctional Facility,
filed this pro se complaint on June 22, 2012, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,
against

LaToya

Jackson,

Vindha

Jayawardena,

the

Michigan

Department of Corrections (“MDOC”), and Prison Healthcare Services,
Inc., operating as Corizon Health, Inc. (“Corizon”). He alleges that
defendants violated the Eighth Amendment when they did not properly

treat his knee following a fall. (Dkt. 1). Plaintiff filed an Amended
Complaint on September 28, 2012. (Dkt. 16).
Following the filing of two dispositive motions by defendants, all
but one of the defendants were dismissed from the case. (Dkt. 31 & 73.)
On February 25, 2015 the Court issued an order granting summary
judgment to the sole remaining defendant and dismissed the case. (Dkt
101.) Plaintiff now brings a motion for relief from judgment pursuant to
Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(1). For the reasons set forth below, the Court
denies plaintiff’s motion.
I.

Procedural Background
Following the defendants’ first motion for summary judgment, the

claims against Corizon survived because the Court held that there was
potentially a material issue of fact. Corizon was ordered to respond to
an outstanding discovery request. In particular, the Court found that
responding to plaintiff’s interrogatories would clarify whether Corizon
implemented a policy, custom, or practice that violated plaintiff’s
Eighth Amendment rights. (Dkt. 73 at 8).1

1

  This case was initially assigned to Judge Arthur J. Tarnow and reassigned to this

Court on May 13, 2014.
2

Corizon responded to plaintiff’s interrogatories and subsequently
filed a renewed motion for summary judgment on June 27, 2014, and an
amended renewed motion for summary judgment on June 30, 2014.
(Dkt. 80 & 81.)

On December 4, 2014, the Magistrate Judge

recommended that the Court grant defendant’s amended renewed
motion for summary judgment and noted that plaintiff failed to respond
to defendant’s motion.

(Dkt. 86.)

The Magistrate Judge based her

recommendation on the fact that, even after the additional discovery
was completed, plaintiff had failed to provide any evidence that
Corizon’s treatment decisions were based on an unconstitutional policy,
custom, or practice. Id
On December 9, 2014, plaintiff filed a motion to file a
supplemental pleading in response to the amended renewed motion for
summary judgment pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(d).

(Dkt. 87.)

Defendant moved to strike the motion. (Dkt. 89.) Following the Court’s
order granting plaintiff additional time to object to the report and
recommendation, plaintiff filed his objections on January 7, 2015, along
with a motion for leave to file an amended renewed response and a
concurrence with defendant’s motion to strike. (Dkt. 93 & 94.) On

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February 3, 2015, plaintiff filed a renewed motion for leave to file an
amended response to defendant’s renewed motion for summary
judgment. (Dkt. 97.)
On February 23, 2015, the Court issued an Opinion and Order
Adopting the Magistrate’s Report and Recommendation Granting
Defendant’s Amended Renewed Motion for Summary Judgment and
Denying Defendant’s Renewed Motion for Summary Judgment as Moot.
The Court also denied Plaintiff’s Renewed Motion to File an Amended
Response to Defendant’s Amended Renewed Motion for Summary
Judgment. (Dkt. 101.) That order sets forth in greater detail the facts
and procedural history of this lawsuit.
II.

Standard of Review
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(1) provides the Court with

the discretion to relieve a party from an order on the grounds of
mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect.

Fed. R.

Civ. P. 60(b)(1). The Sixth Circuit has set forth two situations in
which Rule 60(b)(1) may provide relief: “(1) when a party has made an
excusable mistake or an attorney has acted without authority, or (2)
when the judge has made a substantive mistake of law or fact in the

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final judgment or order.” United States v. Reyes, 307 F.3d 451, 455 (6th
Cir.2002).
Rule 60(b) does not afford litigants a second chance to convince
the court to rule in his or her favor by presenting a new explanation,
new legal theories, or additional evidence. See Jinks v. Allied Signal,
Inc., 250 F.3d 381, 385 (6th Cir.2001) (citing Couch v. Travelers Ins.
Co., 551 F.2d 958, 959 (5th Cir.1977)). Rule 60(b) motions are not a
substitute for an appeal. See Hopper v. Euclid Manor Nursing Home,
Inc., 867 F.2d 291, 294 (6th Cir.1989).
III.

Analysis

Defendant has failed to demonstrate that the Court committed a
substantive mistake of law.
Plaintiff argues that the Court made a substantive mistake of law
as a result of it denying “plaintiff’s motion to file a response to
defendant’s motion for summary judgment based on the ‘futility’ of the[]
affidavits…” (Dkt. 103 at 4.) Plaintiff alleges the Court was mistaken
in suggesting that the two affidavits from other prisoners were the only
basis for his response to defendant’s motion for summary judgment. On
the contrary, plaintiff now says that he had a personal affidavit, more

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than 20 additional documents, and case law in the response to
defendant’s amended renewed motion for summary judgment that were
not received by the Court. (Id.)
Plaintiff points to Nelson v. Adams USA, Inc., 529 U.S. 460 (2000),
where a district court permitted the addition of a party to a postjudgment amended pleading while simultaneously amending the
judgment. Id. In Nelson, the Supreme Court ruled that amending the
judgment in such a fashion without providing the newly added
defendant an opportunity to respond violated due process and Fed. R.
Civ. P. 15. Id. at 466-67.
Here, unlike in Nelson, plaintiff has had ample opportunity, after
the Magistrate Judge issued the report and recommendation, to direct
the Court to the evidence he would have included in a response to
defendant’s motion for summary judgment.

Indeed, he filed two

motions seeking leave to file an amended response to defendant’s
motion for summary judgment, both of which only directed the Court to
his January 7, 2015 objections. (Dkt. 93 & 97.) In his objections to the
report and recommendation, plaintiff addressed the Magistrate Judge’s
failure to consider his response brief. The only substantive evidence

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plaintiff

cited

to

as

grounds

for

rejecting

the

Magistrate’s

recommendation are the affidavits from other prisoners. Plaintiff failed
to identify any of the evidence he now raises as potentially dispositive.
See Miller v. Currie, 50 F.3d 373, 380 (6th Cir. 1995) (objections to a
report and recommendation “must be clear enough to enable the district
court to discern those issues that are dispositive and contentious”);
Jinks, 250 F.3d at 385 (“[r]ule 60(b) does not allow a defeated litigant a
second chance to convince the court to rule in his or her favor by
presenting new explanations, legal theories, or proof”). Accordingly, the
Court did not err in rejecting plaintiff’s objections and adopting the
report and recommendation.
Even if the Court were in error in denying plaintiff’s motion to file
an amended response, the error was not a substantive one. The alleged
mistake here was not substantive because plaintiff’s inability to
respond did not drive the Court’s decision. Under Rule 56, the burden
of demonstrating the absence of a genuine issue of material fact rests
with the moving party. “More importantly for all purposes, the movant
must always bear this initial burden regardless if an adverse party fails
to respond.” Carver v. Bunch, 946 F.2d 451, 454-55 (6th Cir.1991)

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(internal citations omitted). “The trial court must intelligently and
carefully review the legitimacy of such an unresponded-to motion, even
as

it

refrains

from

actively

pursuing

advocacy

or

inventing

the riposte for a silent party.” Guarino v. Brookfield Twp. Trustees, 980
F.2d 399, 407 (6th Cir.1992).
The Court carefully reviewed the motion and determined that
defendant met its burden for summary judgment. In relevant part, the
Court described the procedural history that left this defendant in the
case after a prior motion for summary judgment:
On March 20, 2013, Judge Tarnow granted defendant
MDOC’s motion to dismiss (Dkt. 31), and on March 31, 2014,
he partially granted defendants’ motion for summary
judgment, dismissing all claims again defendants Jackson
and Jayawardena. (Dkt. 73). The claims against Corizon
remained because the Court found that unresolved discovery
motions against Corizon could potentially bolster plaintiff’s
claim that Corizon implemented a policy, custom, or practice
that violated plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment rights. (Id. at 8).
These discovery issues were resolved on May 5, 2014, when
Judge Tarnow ordered Corizon to respond to plaintiff’s
interrogatory asking defendant to state whether any state
had withdrawn from or refused to renew a contract with
Corizon due to Corizon’s failure to provide adequate medical
care to its prisoners. (Dkt. 77 at 8-9). Corizon responded to
this interrogatory on May 22, 2014, stating:
Corizon Health, Inc. (“Corizon”) cannot speculate
as to any reasons for a state agency and/or
department withdrawing from or opting not to
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renew a contract. Subject to this reservation,
Corizon has conducted a diligent search of its
records relating to contracts between Corizon and
state agencies and/or departments with which it
has done business over the past ten years. To the
best of its knowledge, belief and information, no
state agency and/or department has informed
Corizon that it was withdrawing from or opting
not to renew a contract with Corizon or its
predecessor, Prison Healthcare Services, Inc.,
based on allegations that Corizon provided
inadequate care to prisoners.
(Dkt. 101 at 3-4.) The response did not provide evidence to support
plaintiff’s claim that defendant based its treatment decisions on an
unconstitutional policy, custom, or practice.

Plaintiff’s affidavit,

additional documentation, or case law would not lead the Court to
arrive at a different conclusion. The Court, thus, properly concluded,
viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff, that
defendant was not engaged in a policy, custom, or practice of denying
medical treatment based on financial considerations.
For the reasons set forth above,
The Court DENIES plaintiff’s motion for relief from judgment
because the Court did not make a substantive mistake of law.
IT IS SO ORDERED.

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Dated: May 18, 2015
Ann Arbor, Michigan

s/Judith E. Levy
JUDITH E. LEVY
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 May 18, 2015.
s/Felicia M. Moses
FELICIA M. MOSES
Case Manager

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