Taylor v. Miller et al

Filing 43

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER: IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Plaintiff Samuel Lewis Taylor's Motion for Reconsideration Under Rule 59(e) # 42 is DENIED. Signed by District Judge Rodney W. Sippel on 3/22/17. (CAR)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI
EASTERN DIVISION
SAMUEL LEWIS TAYLOR,
Plaintiff,
v.
MICHAEL MILLER, et al.,
Defendants.

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Case No. 4:15 CV 285 RWS

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
Plaintiff Samuel Lewis Taylor filed a motion for reconsideration under
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e). Taylor, an inmate at the Crossroads
Correctional Center, brought First Amendment retaliation claims under 42
U.S.C. § 1983 against employees of the Missouri Department of Corrections
employed by the Potosi Correctional Center, where Taylor was formerly
incarcerated. On February 8, 2017, I granted defendants’ motion for summary
judgment. Taylor now asks that I reconsider my order and set the case for
trial.1 Defendants have not filed any response. I will deny the motion.
Rule 59(e) motions “serve the limited function of correcting manifest
errors of law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence.” United States v.
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Taylor certified that he placed the motion in the prison mailbox on March 3, 2017. As a result,
I will consider the motion timely even though it was not received by the Court until March 13,
2017. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e).

Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer Dist., 440 F.3d 930, 933 (8th Cir. 2006)
(quotation marks omitted). “Such motions do not allow a party to re-litigate
matters previously resolved by the court or to raise arguments or present
evidence that could have been presented prior to the entry of judgment, unless
good cause is shown for such failure.” Smith v. Wallace, 2016 WL 6962817,
at *1 (E.D. Mo. Nov. 29, 2016) (citing Holder v. United States, 721 F.3d 979,
986 (8th Cir. 2013)).
After reviewing Taylor’s motion, I conclude that it fails to point to any
manifest errors of law or fact or to any newly discovered evidence. The
motion primarily revisits old arguments—each of which I considered carefully
when deciding summary judgment—or mentions other alleged incidents
without providing good cause for the failure to raise them prior to the entry of
judgment. Taylor claims I ignored his evidence and erred in granting summary
judgment for his alleged failure to exhaust administrative remedies on his
complaint about his Koss headphones, but I did not grant summary judgment
on that basis. Rather, I concluded that even if defendants misled Taylor by
telling him he would receive new headphones, and even if that behavior
excused Taylor from failing to exhaust administrative remedies, defendants
were still entitled to summary judgment on that claim because Taylor failed to

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provide any evidence of retaliatory motive.
Because Taylor’s motion does not point to any manifest errors of law or
fact or to any newly discovered evidence, he is not entitled to relief under Rule
59(e). See Innovative Home Health Care, Inc. v. P.T.-O.T. Associates of the
Black Hills, 141 F.3d 1284, 1286 (8th Cir. 1998).
Accordingly,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that Plaintiff Samuel Lewis Taylor’s
Motion for Reconsideration Under Rule 59(e) #[42] is DENIED.

_________________________________
RODNEY W. SIPPEL
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Dated this 22nd day of March, 2017.

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