EDWARDS v. STATE OF NEW JERSEY et al

Filing 128

OPINION. Signed by Judge Noel L. Hillman on 4/27/2018. (tf, n.m.)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
______________________________
:
RENE D. EDWARDS,
:
:
Plaintiff,
:
Civ. No. 13-214 (NLH)(JS)
:
v.
:
OPINION
:
COMMISSIONER GARY M.
:
LANIGAN, et al.,
:
:
Defendants.
:
______________________________:
APPEARANCES:
Katherine D. Hartman, Esq.
Attorneys Hartman, Chartered
68 East Main Street
Moorestown, NJ 08057
Counsel for Plaintiff
Christopher Porrino, Esq.
Attorney General of New Jersey
R.J. Hughes Justice Complex
25 Market Street
Trenton, NJ 08625
Counsel for Defendants
HILLMAN, District Judge
This case concerns an assault that Plaintiff Rene D.
Edwards, an inmate formerly incarcerated at South Woods State
Prison, suffered at the hands of his cellmate.

In the Second

Amended Complaint, Plaintiff alleges that the correctional
officer defendants on duty the evening of the assault were
deliberately indifferent to Plaintiff’s health and safety in

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failing to intervene in violation of the Eighth Amendment. 1

At

issue is Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment, which is ripe
for adjudication.

The Court has subject-matter jurisdiction

over this case pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331, as this case
concerns a federal question.

For the reasons that follow, the

Court will grant the Motion.
I.

Factual Background
Plaintiff was an inmate formerly incarcerated in various

New Jersey Department of Corrections (“NJDOC”) facilities
throughout the state from 2010 through 2014.

ECF No. 117-1,

Defs’ Statement of Facts (“SOF”), ¶ 1; ECF No. 122-1, Pl’s
Response to Statement of Facts (“RSOF”), ¶ 1.

At all times

relevant to the Second Amended Complaint, Plaintiff was
incarcerated at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton, New
Jersey.

SOF, ¶ 2; RSOF, ¶ 2.

Plaintiff alleges that he complained to whom he believed to
be Defendant Senior Corrections Officer Yvonne Williams that his
cellmate touched his buttocks on or about December 14, 2011.
SOF, ¶ 3; RSOF, ¶ 3.

Approximately two weeks later, on or about

December 27, 2011, Plaintiff’s cellmate began acting

1

Plaintiff also brought failure to supervise claims against
Defendants Gary Lanigan, the commissioner of the New Jersey
Department of Corrections, and Christopher Holmes, the
administrator of South Woods State Prison. See ECF No. 92. The
Court dismissed these defendants by opinion and order dated July
18, 2017. See ECF Nos. 115, 116.
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aggressively.

SOF, ¶ 4; RSOF, ¶ 4.

Plaintiff complained to

Defendants Sergeant Rodney Joynes and Lieutenant Joel Taylor
about his cellmate’s behavior, but his cellmate was returned to
the cell that night.

SOF, ¶ 5, RSOF, ¶ 5.

In the early morning

hours of December 28, 2011, Plaintiff was assaulted by his
cellmate, during which his jaw was broken.

SOF ¶ 6; RSOF ¶ 6.

According to Plaintiff, Defendant Senior Corrections Officer
Franchetta heard Plaintiff’s cries for help and responded to his
cell, but then left the cell to call for backup, during which
time Plaintiff was sexually assaulted by his cellmate.

SOF ¶¶

7-8; RSOF ¶¶ 7-8.
Both inmates were removed from the cell, and Plaintiff was
taken to be examined medically.

SOF ¶¶ 11-12; RSOF ¶¶ 11-12.

The nurse on duty noted that Plaintiff presented with swelling
of his face, limited jaw movement, active bleeding, and missing
teeth, but that he denied suffering any other injuries.
13-14; RSOF ¶¶ 13-14.

SOF ¶¶

Plaintiff was transported to South Jersey

Regional Medical Center for further treatment for a fractured
jaw; Plaintiff was not diagnosed with any other injuries.
¶¶ 15-17; RSOF ¶¶ 15-17.

SOF

After the incident, both Plaintiff and

his cellmate refused protective custody.

SOF ¶ 24; RSOF ¶ 24.

In accordance with N.J.A.C. 10A:8-1.1 to -3.6, all NJDOC
facilities in which Plaintiff was incarcerated from the time of
the alleged assault on December 28, 2011, until he filed the
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Complaint on January 11, 2013, have adopted the Inmate Handbook
outlining the Inmate Remedy System Procedure.
25.

SOF ¶ 25; RSOF ¶

Inmates incarcerated in NJDOC prison facilities are

provided a copy of the Inmate Handbook detailing the Inmate
Remedy System Procedure during their orientation.

SOF ¶ 26;

RSOF ¶ 26.
The Inmate Remedy System Procedure is a mechanism for
inmates to lodge complaints, document problems, and offer
suggestions to the correctional facility administration.
27; RSOF ¶ 27.

SOF ¶

Inmates are required to utilize the multi-part

Inmate Remedy System before applying to the courts for relief.
SOF ¶ 29; RSOF ¶ 29.

Inmate System Forms are available in the

housing units of some NJDOC facilities, or inmates can request
the forms from their housing unit officer, social worker, or the
Inmate Law Library.

SOF ¶ 30; RSOF ¶ 30.

Once an inmate

completes a Remedy Form, he or she must place the form in the
appropriate Drop Box located in each housing unit.
RSOF ¶ 31.

SOF ¶ 31;

If an inmate is unable to access a Drop Box to

submit his or her form because the inmate is in closed custody
housing or has a limiting medical condition, the unit social
worker or housing officer will deposit the form in the Drop Box.
SOF ¶ 32; RSOF ¶ 32.
Plaintiff admits that he was familiar with the Inmate
Remedy System.

SOF ¶ 39; RSOF ¶ 39.
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In fact, Plaintiff has

utilized the Inmate Remedy System approximately thirty-eight
(38) times before.

SOF ¶ 41; RSOF ¶ 41.

Plaintiff, however,

admits that he did not file an Inmate Remedy Form at any time
about his assault on December 28, 2011.

SOF ¶ 39; RSOF ¶ 39.

Although Plaintiff submitted thirty-eight (38) Remedy Forms
across three different prisons between the date of his alleged
assault on December 28, 2011, and the date on which he filed his
Complaint, none of the grievances allege that NJDOC, any of its
facilities, or any of its employees failed to protect Plaintiff
from the alleged assault at issue in this litigation.

SOF ¶ 41;

RSOF ¶ 41.
II.

Standard of Review
Summary judgment should be granted when the pleadings,

depositions, answers to interrogatories, admissions on file, and
affidavits show that there is no genuine dispute as to any
material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a
judgment as a matter of law.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c).

A disputed

fact is material when it could affect the outcome of the suit
under the governing substantive law.
Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986).

Anderson v. Liberty Lobby,

A dispute is genuine if the

evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict
for the nonmoving party.

Id. at 250.

The Court should view the

facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party and

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make all reasonable inferences in that party’s favor.

Hugh v.

Butler County Family YMCA, 418 F.3d 265, 267 (3d Cir. 2005).
Initially, the moving party must show the absence of a
genuine issue concerning any material fact.
v. Carrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986).

See Celotex Corp.

Once the moving party has

satisfied its burden, the non-moving party, “must present
affirmative evidence in order to defeat a properly supported
motion for summary judgment.”

Anderson, 477 U.S. at 257.

“While the evidence that the non-moving party presents may be
either direct or circumstantial, and need not be as great as a
preponderance, the evidence must be more than a scintilla.”
Hugh, 418 F.3d at 267 (citing Anderson, 477 U.S. at 251).
If the court determines that “the record taken as a whole
could not lead a rational trier or fact to find for the nonmoving party, there is no ‘genuine issue for trial.’”

Matushita

Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986)
(quoting First Nat’l Bank of Arizona v. Cities Serv. Co., 391
U.S. 253, 289 (1968)).

Rule 56 mandates the entry of summary

judgment against the party who fails to make a showing
sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to
that party’s case, and on which that party will bear the burden
of proof at trial.

Celotex Corp., 477 U.S. at 322.

A thorough and comprehensive review of the docket makes
clear that no material fact is in dispute as to the dispositive
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issue in this case.

In Plaintiff’s response to Defendants’

Statement of Material Facts, Plaintiff occasionally disputes or
disputes in part facts relating to the operation of the inmate
grievance system as a “legal conclusion” or “no personal
knowledge.”

To dispute an alleged undisputed fact under Federal

Rule of Civil Procedure 56, however, the non-moving party must
provide evidence to support the dispute.
56(e).

See Fed. R. Civ. P.

Stating that the non-moving party lacks “personal

knowledge” or that a fact is a “legal conclusion” fails to show
sufficiently that a genuine issue exists for trial.

As such,

summary judgment is appropriate.
III. Discussion
In support of the Motion for Summary Judgment for failure
to exhaust administrative remedies, Defendants have submitted
information related to the administrative complaints filed by
Plaintiff after the assault.

See ECF No. 117-3 at 91-129.

Although Plaintiff filed a number of inmate remedy forms
concerning various issues, Plaintiff failed to file an inmate
remedy form with respect to the assault at issue in the Second
Amended Complaint. 2

Id.

These facts are not in dispute.

2

Plaintiff does file grievances regarding follow up medical care
that appears to result from the assault. The Second Amended
Complaint does not include a claim for deliberate indifference
to a serious medical need or any other medical claim.
7

The exhaustion of administrative remedies is a mandatory
prerequisite to any prisoner’s filing of a civil rights action
regarding prison conditions.

42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a); Woodford v.

Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 85 (2006) (citing Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S.
731, 739 (2001)). Specifically, § 1997e(a) provides:
No action shall be brought with respect to prison
conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any
other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail,
prison, or other correctional facility until such
administrative remedies as are available are
exhausted.
Exhaustion is a precondition for bringing suit and, as such, it
is a “‘threshold issue that courts must address to determine
whether litigation is being conducted in the right forum at the
right time.’” Small v. Camden County, 728 F.3d 265, 270 (3d Cir.
2013).
“[T]he . . . exhaustion requirement applies to all inmate
suits about prison life, whether they involve general
circumstances or particular episodes, and whether they allege
excessive force or some other wrong.”
U.S. 516, 532 (2002).

Porter v. Nussle, 534

A prisoner must exhaust all available

administrative remedies even where the relief sought, such as
monetary damages, cannot be granted through the administrative
process, as long as the grievance tribunal has authority to take
some responsive action.

Booth v. Churner, 532 U.S. 731, 741

(2001).

8

The applicable procedural rules for properly exhausting
administrative remedies “are defined not by [§ 1997e(a)], but by
the prison grievance process itself.

Compliance with prison

grievance procedures, therefore, is all that is required by [§
1997e(a)] to ‘properly exhaust.’”
218 (2007).

Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199,

The burden of proving non-exhaustion lies with the

defendants asserting the defense.

Id. at 212, 216–17.

The NJDOC has established a comprehensive Inmate Remedy
System, through which “inmates may formally communicate with
correctional facility staff to request information from, and
present issues, concerns, complaints or problems to the
correctional facility staff.”
4.9.

See N.J.A.C. 10A:1–4.1 through

The Inmate Remedy System Form is available from inmate

housing units, the Social Services Department, and the law
library.

N.J.A.C. 10A:1–4.4(f).

An aggrieved inmate must

submit the Inmate Remedy System Form to the designated
institutional coordinator, who refers it to the appropriate
official for response.

N.J.A.C. 10A:1–4.8.

The Inmate Remedy

System Form must be complete and legible and must include “a
clear and concise statement summarizing the request.” N.J.A.C.
10A:1–4.4(e).

Generally, the response to a routine request is

to be provided to the inmate within thirty (30) days.
10A:1–4.4(i), 10A:1–4.5(e).

N.J.A.C.

Where further deliberation is

necessary, the initial response to the inmate shall include
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statements that indicate that further deliberation is necessary,
the nature of the deliberation required, and the time frame
within which the final response shall be provided to the inmate.
N.J.A.C. 10A:1–4.4(i).

An inmate may appeal the initial

response to the institution’s administrator within ten (10)
calendar days from the issuance of the initial decision, and the
administrator is to respond within ten (10) business days.
N.J.A.C. 10A:1–4.4(i), 10A:1–4.6.

The response from the

administrator completes the administrative remedy procedure.
N.J.A.C. 10A:1–4.6(d).

New Jersey regulations specifically

provide that “[t]he comprehensive Inmate Remedy System to
include a ‘Routine Inmate Request’ and/or ‘Interview Request,’
and an ‘Administrative Appeal’ must be utilized and fully
exhausted prior to an inmate filing any legal action regarding
information requests, issues, concerns, complaints, or
problems.”

N.J.A.C. 10A:1–4.4(d).

Here, the undisputed facts establish that Plaintiff failed
to file any administrative remedy as to the assault.

Plaintiff,

indeed, admits that he never filed an inmate grievance regarding
the assault.

He argues, however, that the grievance procedure

was unavailable to him because he “reasonably believed that the
assault . . . [was] under investigation by the SID, and that he
need not have taken the additional step of filing an Inmate
Remedy System Form.”

ECF No. 123, Pl’s Opp. Br. at 8-9.
10

In

support of his argument, Plaintiff relies on Ross v. Blake, 136
S. Ct. 1850 (2016), in which the Supreme Court of the United
States remanded a civil rights action for consideration of
whether any remedies were “available” to the plaintiff in light
of a parallel internal investigation.

136 S. Ct. at 1862.

The

holding in that case, however, does not support Plaintiff’s
position, nor does the factual posture in Ross mirror the
instant undisputed facts.
In Ross, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held
that an internal investigation was a “special circumstance”
exception to the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act’s requirement of
exhaustion; thus, a prisoner need not exhaust the inmate
grievance remedies if an internal investigation is underway.
Id. at 1856.

The Supreme Court rejected the concept of a

“special circumstance” exception to exhaustion as an unwritten
graft into the text of the PLRA and remanded the case for
consideration of whether the inmate remedy system was still
“available” to the plaintiff aside from the internal
investigation.

Id. at 1862.

In doing so, the Supreme Court

reiterated that the sole issue regarding exhaustion in such a
context is whether the administrative remedies were “available”
and outlined the three instances in which remedies would not be
“available:” (1) when an administrative procedure “operates as a
simple dead end with officers unable or consistently unwilling
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to provide relief to aggrieved inmates;” (2) where the
administrative remedies are so unclear that “no ordinary
prisoner can make sense of what it demands;” and (3) where
prison officials “thwart inmates from taking advantage of a
grievance process through machination, misrepresentation, or
intimidation.”

Id. at 1859-60.

None of these examples take

into account the prisoner’s subjective view of the availability
of remedies or whether the remedy system needs to be utilized.
Rather, the Ross exceptions focus on and describe the conduct of
prison officials that result in a dysfunctional, or worse,
corrupt grievance system.
Here, Plaintiff makes no argument that he falls under one
of these three categories, nor would they appear to apply to the
undisputed facts presented in the Motion.

First, the

administrative remedy procedure at South Woods State Prison and
at other Department of Corrections facilities does not appear to
operate as a dead end because Plaintiff has utilized it
approximately thirty-eight times and has obtained relief through
it.

Second, the administrative remedy procedure is not so

unclear as to be unavailable, because Plaintiff has utilized it
with success before.

Finally, there are simply no facts that

prison officials seek to thwart the use of the grievance system
at South Woods State Prison or other facilities.

12

Notably, in Ross, the plaintiff presented extensive
evidence that the prison grievance system was unavailable to the
plaintiff because prison authorities routinely dismissed inmate
grievances as procedurally improper during the pendency of an
internal investigation.

Id. at 128-29.

Ross is thus legally

and factually inapposite to this case because it did not hold
that an internal investigation may excuse PLRA exhaustion as
Plaintiff argues and Plaintiff has presented no evidence to
support the conclusion that the inmate grievance system was
unavailable to Plaintiff within the meaning of the narrow
exceptions in Ross.

Accordingly, this Court finds that

Plaintiff failed to exhaust the administrative remedies that
were available to him, as he is required to do by § 1997e(a)
prior to filing suit.
IV.

Conclusion
The Court will grant Defendants’ Motion for Summary

Judgment and enter judgment in Defendants’ favor and against
Plaintiff.

An appropriate order follows.

Dated: April 27, 2018
At Camden, New Jersey

s/ Noel L. Hillman
NOEL L. HILLMAN, U.S.D.J.

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