Bennett v. Cooper et al
Filing
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REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION: For these reasons, the Magistrate Judge RECOMMENDS that the Court GRANT Bennett's motions to voluntarily dismiss each of these actions with prejudice and FIND MOOT all remaining pending motions. Signed by Magistrate Judge Alistair Newbern on 4/25/2018. (DOCKET TEXT SUMMARY ONLY-ATTORNEYS MUST OPEN THE PDF AND READ THE ORDER.)(jw)
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE
NASHVILLE DIVISION
COREY ALAN BENNETT,
Plaintiff,
v.
RAMON SHERRELL, ET AL.,
Defendants.
Case No. 3:17-cv-00992
Judge Trauger
Magistrate Judge Newbern
COREY ALAN BENNETT,
Plaintiff,
v.
CAPTAIN ROBERT MOSLEY, ET AL.,
Defendants.
Case No. 3:17-cv-1058
Judge Trauger
Magistrate Judge Newbern
COREY ALAN BENNETT,
Plaintiff,
v.
DONNA TURNER, ET AL.,
Defendants.
Case No. 3:17-cv-01061
Judge Trauger
Magistrate Judge Newbern
COREY ALAN BENNETT,
Plaintiff,
v.
MARK COLLINS, ET AL.,
Defendants.
Case No. 3:17-cv-01174
Judge Trauger
Magistrate Judge Newbern
COREY ALAN BENNETT,
Plaintiff,
v.
TONY PARKER, ET AL.,
Defendants.
Case No. 3:17-cv-01176
Judge Trauger
Magistrate Judge Newbern
COREY ALAN BENNETT,
Plaintiff,
v.
MONICA GRETTA, ET AL.,
Defendants.
Case No. 3:17-cv-01416
Judge Trauger
Magistrate Judge Newbern
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COREY ALAN BENNETT,
Plaintiff,
v.
KOREY COOPER, ET AL.,
Defendants.
Case No. 3:17-cv-01467
Judge Trauger
Magistrate Judge Newbern
To the Honorable Aleta A. Trauger, District Judge
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
These matters came before the Magistrate Judge on February 26, 2018, for a hearing
convened to determine whether they had been frivolously or maliciously filed by Plaintiff Corey
Alan Bennett. At that hearing, Bennett, ably represented by court-appointed counsel, moved to
voluntarily dismiss all pending matters with prejudice. There was no opposition to the voluntary
dismissal of these actions. However, the defendants asked the Court to consider imposing a prefiling protocol to discourage Bennett from filing future similar actions. For the reasons that follow,
the undersigned RECOMMENDS that all of Bennett’s actions be voluntarily dismissed with
prejudice and further RECOMMENDS that the Court decline to impose pre-filing requirements
on Bennett in addition to those already in place under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).
I.
Background
Plaintiff Corey Alan Bennett, a Tennessee prisoner, is well-known to this Court. Since
2014, he has filed more than forty lawsuits here regarding the conditions of his confinement that
have been dismissed voluntarily, through PLRA screening, or by a defendant’s motion to dismiss
for failure to state a claim. What Bennett alleges in these actions is serious: he claims extensive
physical and sexual abuse at the hands of guards, prison administrators, and other officials.
However, Bennett admitted in a hearing before Magistrate Judge Brown held in 2015 that the
claims he makes are false and that, “when [he gets] frustrated[,] . . . the only way to cope . . . with
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[his] frustration . . . is file . . . frivolous lawsuits . . . .” Transcript, Bennett v. Brown et al., 3:15cv-0937, Doc No. 50, PageID# 222 (M.D. Tenn. Jan. 11, 2016).
Although Bennett stated in the 2015 hearing that he was “never going to file another
complaint in this court,” he did not keep that promise. (Id.) Bennett filed the present actions
between June 2017 and November 2017, again alleging assault, rape, and other abuses by prison
officials. When this Magistrate Judge set the cases for a consolidated hearing, Bennett filed
motions to dismiss individual defendants and some actions in full and repeatedly asked that the
hearing be cancelled. At the beginning of the hearing, before any further inquiry took place,
Bennett’s counsel announced that Bennett would voluntarily dismiss all of the actions with
prejudice.
Because there is no objection to the voluntary dismissal of these cases, this report and
recommendation addresses only the defendants’ oral motion for the Court to impose pre-filing
requirements on any future actions Bennett might bring. While the defendants did not argue for
any specific protocol to be put in place, they referenced pre-filing procedures employed in other
districts that required, for example, a plaintiff who had filed multiple dismissed actions to submit
an affidavit with any new action that the claims he raised had not been made before. The defendants
offered no examples of such requirements from cases in which the plaintiff was a prisoner and
subject to the PRLA.
II.
Analysis
Because Bennett’s actions challenge the conditions of his confinement, each is subject to
the PLRA’s requirements. 42 U.S.C. § 1997 et seq. Congress enacted the PLRA “in the wake of a
sharp rise in prisoner litigation in the federal courts.” Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 84 (2006).
The statute’s “dominant concern” is “to promote administrative redress, filter out groundless
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claims, and foster better prepared litigation of claims aired in court.” Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S.
516, 528 (2002). The statute addresses these objectives, first, by requiring exhaustion of
administrative remedies within the correctional institution before an action can be filed in court,
see id. at 523-24; 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). It also establishes three pre-filing mechanisms designed
to discourage the filing of meritless claims.
First, the PLRA requires courts to perform an initial review of a prisoner’s complaint before
any defendant is served to determine if any claims made are frivolous, malicious, or fail to state a
claim upon which relief may be granted. If the court so finds, it is authorized to dismiss those
claims and any associated defendants sua sponte. This screening mechanism acts as a bulwark
against the filing of entirely frivolous actions and as a filter ensuring that only legally sufficient
claims are allowed to proceed to service. See Porter, 534 U.S. at 524 (stating that, “[b]eyond
doubt, Congress enacted § 1997e(a) to reduce the quantity and improve the quality of prisoner
suits.”)
In addition to authorizing the courts’ enhanced authority to terminate meritless claims and
actions, Congress created a financial disincentive to prisoner filings. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a),
prisoners who qualify for in forma pauperis status must still pay the full filing fee to bring a civil
action, although they are allowed to do so through monthly deductions of a percentage of their
inmate trust accounts. 1 Hampton v. Hobbs, 106 F.3d 1281, 1286 (6th Cir. 1997) (finding that the
filing fee obligation creates a financial disincentive that requires a prisoner to “think twice” before
filing a frivolous claim (quoting Senator Kyl)); Christiansen v. Clarke, 147 F.3d 655, 658 (holding
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Congress reasoned that, because prisoners are allowed to pay the fee over time, “the filing
fee is small enough not to deter a prisoner with a meritorious claim, yet large enough to deter
frivolous claims and multiple filings.” Hobbs, 106 F.3d at 1287 (quoting Senator Kyl). See also
28 U.S.C. § 1915(b).
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that the 1996 amendments to § 1915 created “monetary and procedural disincentives to the filing
of meritless cases”). The filing fee provision “was aimed at the skyrocketing numbers of claims
filed by prisoners—many of which are meritless—and the corresponding burden those filing have
placed on the federal courts.” Hobbs, 106 F.3d at 1286. Through it, Congress sought to impose on
prisoner plaintiffs a consideration equivalent to payment of the full filing fee by non-incarcerated
plaintiffs who do not appear in forma pauperis. See also Adams v. Rice, 40 F.3d 72, 74 (4th Cir.
1994) (finding that “Congress enacted § 1915(d) in order to prevent abuse of the judicial system
by parties who bear none of the ordinary financial disincentive to filing meritless claims”).
A third provision of the PLRA creates a separate disincentive. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g),
a prisoner is prevented from proceeding in forma pauperis when the prisoner has repeatedly filed
meritless lawsuits. Known as the “three-strikes rule,” the provision states that a prisoner must pay
the full filing fee upon the initiation of a new lawsuit if, while incarcerated or detained, he has had
three or more federal actions or appeals dismissed on grounds that the action was frivolous,
malicious, or failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. The only exception to this
provision comes in cases where the prisoner alleges imminent danger of serious physical injury.
28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). To satisfy the imminent danger exception, a prisoner must allege that a threat
or prison condition is “real and proximate and the danger of serious physical injury must exist at
the time the complaint is filed.” Rittner v. Kinder, 290 F. App’x 796, 797 (6th Cir. 2008) (internal
quotation marks omitted). Moreover, “district courts may deny a prisoner leave to proceed
pursuant to § 1915(g) when the prisoner’s claims of imminent danger are conclusory or ridiculous,
or are clearly baseless (i.e. are fantastic or delusional and rise to the level of irrational or wholly
incredible).” Id. at 798 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); see also Taylor v. First
Medical Management, 508 F. App’x 488, 492 (6th Cir. 2012) (finding that “[a]llegations that are
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conclusory, ridiculous, or clearly baseless are also insufficient for purposes of the imminentdanger exception”).
The PLRA’s filing requirements were carefully crafted to strike a balance between
diverting meritless filings and allowing prisoners’ potentially meritorious claims to proceed. That
balance has been working in this Court—a large number of lawsuits filed by Bennett were never
served on the named defendants because they were dismissed on the Court’s initial review of their
merits or by application of the three-strikes rule. The current actions proceeded through screening
because Bennett sufficiently crafted his allegations to fall under the three-strikes rule’s imminent
danger exception. Now Bennett has admitted in various ways that those allegations were without
merit, and the Court will consider that history in its evaluation of any future actions Bennett might
file.
Accordingly, in light of what the PLRA already requires from all prisoners, the undersigned
Magistrate Judge finds that additional pre-filing requirements addressed only to Bennett are not
necessary. Congress has done the work of establishing a comprehensive screening mechanism that
adequately addresses Bennett’s filings. The Court need not duplicate or supplement those efforts.
III.
Recommendation
For these reasons, the Magistrate Judge RECOMMENDS that the Court GRANT Bennett’s
motions to voluntarily dismiss each of these actions with prejudice and FIND MOOT all remaining
pending motions.
Any party has fourteen days after being served with this Report and Recommendation in
which to file any written objections to it. A party opposing any objections filed shall have fourteen
days after being served with the objections in which to file any response. Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(2).
Failure to file specific objections within fourteen days of receipt of this Report and
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Recommendation can constitute a waiver of further appeal of the matters disposed of therein.
Thomas v. Arn, 474 U.S. 140, 155 (1985); Cowherd v. Million, 380 F.3d 909, 912 (6th Cir. 2004).
Entered this 25th day of April, 2018.
____________________________________
ALISTAIR E. NEWBERN
United States Magistrate Judge
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