Cornstubble v. Tarrant County, Texas

Filing 22

MEMORANDUM OPINION and ORDER granting 15 Motion for Summary Judgment filed by Tarrant County, Texas... all claims and causes of action asserted by plaintiff against defendant are hereby dismissed with prejudice. See Order for further specifics. (Ordered by Judge John McBryde on 7/22/2013) (krg)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRI
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TE
FORT WORTH DIVISION

U.S. DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS

s~ouRT

FILED

JUl 2 2 2013

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Plaintiff,

Q.l;'J.W, llJ.S;.. DISfRICf COURT

§

TERRY L. CORNSTUBBLE,

-·-~==---:------.
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§
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vs.

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NO. 4:13-CV-335-A

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TARRANT COUNTY

I

TEXAS

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I

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Defendant.

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MEMORANDUM OPINION
and
ORDER
Now before the court is the motion for summary judgment
filed in the above action by defendant, Tarrant County, Texas.
Plaintiff, Terry L. Cornstubble, filed a response, 1 and defendant
filed a reply.

Having considered all of the parties' filings,

the summary judgment record, and the applicable legal
authorities, the court concludes that the motion for summary
judgment should be granted.
I.

Plaintiff's Claims and the Motion for Summary Judgment
At the time he filed this action, plaintiff was incarcerated
at the Tarrant County Jail ("Jail").

1

In his complaint pursuant

0n June 19, 2013, the court received additional correspondence from plaintiff regarding this
action. If plaintiff intended the correspondence as a response to defendant's reply, it is considered a surreply, which requires leave of court to file.

to 42 U.S.C.

§

1983, plaintiff alleged that he had cataracts in

both eyes, and claims he had asked for medical treatment of this
condition while incarcerated at the Jail.

However, plaintiff

claimed that medical staff at the Jail failed and refused to
render adequate medical treatment.
Defendant moved for summary judgment on the grounds that:
plaintiff failed to exhaust his administrative remedies;
plaintiff received adequate medical care during the time he was
incarcerated at the Jail; and, plaintiff cannot establish that
any official policy, custom, or procedure adopted by defendant
relating to inmate medical care caused him harm.
II.

Facts
The facts set forth below are undisputed in the summary
judgment record:
On March 22, 2013, plaintiff was booked into the Jail for
violation of his parole and for a misdemeanor theft charge
following his arrest by officers with the Fort Worth Police
Department.

That same day, plaintiff underwent his initial

medical screening at the Jail.
On March 25, 2013, medical staff at the Jail performed a
second medical assessment of plaintiff.

Notes by the physician's

assistant who performed the assessment, Crystal Walker
2

("Walker"), indicate that plaintiff, among other medical issues,
had "[c]ataracts bilaterally for about 3 years." 2

App. in Supp.

of Mot. for Summ. J. and Br. of Def. Tarrant Cnty., Tx., at 52.
Walker also assessed plaintiff as having some trouble with his
vision, but noted he was able to manage his activities of daily
living.

An appointment was scheduled for plaintiff in the

Ophthalmology Clinic on July 30, 2013.

Walker also recommended

that plaintiff be assigned a bottom bunk, which was done on March
26, 2013.
The Jail's Inmate Handbook includes the following procedure
a prisoner mus·t follow to file a grievance:
To file a grievance you must send a written statement
directly to the Grievance Unit in a sealed envelope
marked Grievance . . . . Your Grievance will be reviewed
and/or investigated by the Grievance board, and an
answer should be received in sixty (60) days or less,
with an interim response in fifteen (15) days or less.
You may appeal the action taken by the Grievance Board
(on complaints that qualify as a grievance) . The
appeal shall be in writing to the Inmate Grievance
Appeal Board within thirty (30) days of receipt of the
written reply to your Grievance.
You may further appeal the Grievance Appeal Boards
[sic] ruling to the Sheriff, or his designee (Executive
Chief Deputy of Confinement) . The appeal shall be in
writing within five (5) days after receipt of the
2

1n his response, plaintiff disputes defendant's contention that his initial cataract diagnosis was
made at the "Middleton Unit" of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice because plaintiff claims he
has never been housed at that unit. Plaintiff does not appear to dispute the three-year time frame in
which he received that diagnosis. The location at which the diagnosis was made is immaterial to the
court's resolution of the motion for summary judgment.

3

decision of the Inmate Grievance Appeal Board. The
Sheriff, or his designee, shall respond to the appeal
within fifteen (15) working days. The decision by the
Sheriff or his designee shall be final.
Def.'s App. at 17-18.

On March 26, 2013, only four days after

being booked in the Jail, plaintiff filed his first grievance
claiming inadequate medical care for his cataracts.

On April 8,

2013, plaintiff submitted a request for medical care, claiming
his eyesight was worsening because of his cataracts.

The next

days a nurse evaluated plaintiff regarding this complaint, and
noted that he was already scheduled for an exam in the
Ophthalmology Clinic.
On April 11, 2013, plaintiff submitted a second grievance,
again complaining of inadequate medical care for his cataracts.
On April 16, 2013, the Jail's Grievance Review Board issued a
decision regarding plaintiff's first grievance, which found that
plaintiff was "being provided medical services as prescribed by
Texas state minimum jail standards."

Id. at 36.

The written

decision informed plaintiff that within thirty days he could
appeal the decision in writing to the Inmate Grievance Appeal
Board.

Rather than appeal, however, on April 25, 2013, plaintiff

filed the instant action.

On May 31, 2013, plaintiff was

transferred to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-Institutional Division, to serve time for his parole violation.

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III.
Applicable Summary Judgment Principles
Rule 56(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides
that the court shall grant summary judgment on a claim or defense
if there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the
movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

Fed. R. Civ.

P. 56(a); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247
(1986).

The movant bears the initial burden of pointing out to

the court that there is no genuine dispute as to any material
fact.

Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323, 325 (1986).

The movant can discharge this burden by pointing out the absence
of evidence supporting one or more essential elements of the
nonmoving party's claim, "since a complete failure of proof
concerning an essential element of the nonmoving party's case
necessarily renders all other facts immaterial."

Id. at 323.

Once the movant has carried its burden under Rule 56(a), the
nonmoving party must identify evidence in the record that creates
a genuine dispute as to each of the challenged elements of its
case.

Id. at 324.

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

("A party

asserting that a fact . . . is genuinely disputed must support
the assertion by
the record

citing to particular parts of materials in

." ) .

If the evidence identified could not lead

a rational trier of fact to find in favor of the nonmoving party
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as to each essential element of the nonmoving party's case, there
is no genuine dispute for trial and summary judgment is
appropriate.

Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp.,

475 u.s. 574, 587, 597 (1986).
IV.
Analysis
A.

Failure to Exhaust Administrative Remedies
Defendant contends that plaintiff's claims should be

dismissed as a result of his failure to exhaust his
administrative remedies prior to filing the instant action.

The

court agrees.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act ("PLRA"), 42 U.S.C.

§

1997e(a), provides that "[n]o 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."

Inmates are not

required to specially plead or demonstrate exhaustion of
administrative remedies in their complaints; rather, their
failure to exhaust may be raised as an affirmative defense.
Jones v. Bock, 549 us. 199, 215-16 (2007).
The Fifth Circuit has adopted a "strict approach" to
exhaustion of administrative remedies.
6

Dillon v. Rogers, 596

F.3d 260, 268 (5th Cir. 2010).

Consequently, in the Fifth

Circuit, "[p]roper exhaustion is required, meaning that the
inmate must not only pursue all available avenues of relief but
must also comply with all administrative deadlines and procedural
rules."
2012)

Lindsey v. Striedel, 486 F. App'x 449, *452 (5th Cir.

(per curiam)

(citing Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 90-91

(2006)).
Here, plaintiff was incarcerated in the Jail on March 22,
2013, and was still incarcerated on the day he filed the instant
action.

The Inmate Handbook in effect on the date of plaintiff's

incarceration contains a grievance process that includes multiple
appeals or levels of review.

Although plaintiff filed two

grievances concerning his perceived lack of medical care for his
cataracts, plaintiff failed to file any appeal following his
receipt of the Grievance Board's response to his first grievance.
Plaintiff maintains that defendant was given "ample
opportunity to act" in response to his grievances.
at 1.

Pl.'s Resp.

However, he does not dispute that he failed to appeal the

response to his first grievance as required by the Inmate
Handbook or to otherwise fully exhaust his administrative
remedies.

To the extent that plaintiff contends he substantially

complied with the grievance process, such is insufficient to

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exhaust administrative remedies:
Nothing in the [PLRA], however, prescribes appropriate
grievance procedures or enables judges, by creative
interpretation of the exhaustion doctrine, to prescribe
or oversee prison grievance systems . . . . The PLRA
required [plaintiff] to exhaust "available" "remedies",
whatever they may be. His failure to do so prevents
him from pursuing a federal lawsuit at this time.
Wright v. Hollingsworth, 260 F.3d 357, 358 (5th Cir. 2001)
(footnote omitted) .
Having determined that plaintiff failed to exhaust his
administrative remedies prior to filing his federal suit, the
court is left with no other option but to dismiss plaintiff's
claims against defendant.

As the Fifth Circuit observed,

there can be no doubt that pre-filing exhaustion of
prison grievance processes is mandatory . . . . District
courts have no discretion to excuse a prisoner's
failure to properly exhaust the prison grievance
process before filing their complaint. It is
irrelevant whether exhaustion is achieved during the
federal proceeding. Pre-filing exhaustion is
mandatory, and the case must be dismissed if available
administrative remedies were not exhausted.
Gonzalez v. Seal, 702 F.3d 785, 788 (5th Cir. 2012)
(footnote omitted) . 3

(per curiam)

Accordingly, plaintiff's claims must be

dismissed for failure to exhaust his administrative remedies.

3

ln a footnote, the court in Gonzalez v. Seal, 702 F.3d 785 (5th Cir. 2012) (per curiam), noted
that its decision applied only where a defendant moved for dismissal based on the failure to exhaust
administrative remedies. Here, as noted previously, defendant asserted failure to exhaust as one of the
grounds for summary judgment.
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B.

Other Grounds of the Motion for Summary Judgment
As discussed, having found that plaintiff failed to exhaust

his administrative remedies, the court must dismiss plaintiff's
complaint.

Having considered the remaining arguments in

defendant's motion for summary judgment, the court notes that
they appear meritorious, and it is likely summary judgment would
be warranted on the remaining grounds as well.

In particular,

the summary judgment evidence shows that, beginning with the
medical assessment on the date his incarceration began, plaintiff
was evaluated on numerous occasions for various medical issues,
and treatment prescribed accordingly. 4

As to the specific claim

regarding plaintiff's cataracts, it is undisputed that an
appointment was scheduled for plaintiff at the Ophthalmology
Clinic for July 30, 2013.

Merely because plaintiff's concerns

were not addressed in the time frame he preferred does not
establish a constitutional violation of deliberate indifference
to plaintiff's medical needs.
F. 3d 286, 292 (5th Cir. 1997)

See,

~'

Norton v. Dimazana, 122

(per curiam) .

4

1n his response plaintiff also objects to the release of his medical records, claiming a violation of
his privacy. However, "prisoners have no absolute constitutional right in the privacy of their medical
records." Alfred v. Corr. Corp. of Am., 437 F. App'x 281, *285 (5th Cir. 2011). In addition, plaintiff
has placed his medical information at issue in this litigation and cannot now complain about prison
officials or their counsel having access to those records.
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VI.

Order
Therefore,
The court ORDERS that defendant's motion for summary
judgment be, and is hereby, granted, and that all claims and
causes of action asserted by plaintiff, Terry L. Cornstubble,
against defendant, Tarrant County, Texas, be, and are hereby,
dismissed with prejudice.
SIGNED July

~2013.

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