Williams, Travis v. Syed, Salam et al

Filing 98

ORDER denying plaintiff Travis Williams' 80 Motion for Assistance in Recruiting Counsel; denying plaintiff's 81 Motion to Compel. Signed by Magistrate Judge Stephen L. Crocker on 6/25/2019. (jef),(ps) Modified on 6/26/2019 (jef).

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN

TRAVIS D. WILLIAMS,
Plaintiff,
v.

OPINION AND ORDER
16-cv-474-wmc

DR. SALAM SYED, et al.,
Defendants.

Plaintiff Travis D. Williams, is proceeding against defendants, all employees at
Columbia Correctional Institution (“Columbia”) on First, Eighth and Fourteenth
Amendment claims related to his medical care and placement within the prison. Williams
has filed a second motion to compel (dkt. 81), complaining about defendants’ more recent
responses to his discovery requests, and he also renews his request for assistance in
recruiting counsel (dkt. 80). For the reasons that follow, I am denying the motion to
compel, and I am denying without prejudice his request for assistance in recruiting counsel.

I.

Motion to Compel (dkt. 81)
Williams requests four categories of documents: (1) the Health Services Unit

(“HSU”) medication delivery policy sent to housing units in 2015, 2016, and 2017; (2)
logs related to medication deliveries in 2015, 2016, and 2017; (3) his behavior log report
from Columbia Correctional Institution; and (4) a Dodge Correctional Institution 2015
staffing report for non-defendant social worker Hoover.

Defendants oppose the motion on two grounds. First, they argue that the motion
should be denied for his failure to meet and confer as required by Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 37(a). My review of the parties’ correspondence leading up to Williams motion
indicates that while Williams may have requested a conference call about his objections to
defendants’ responses to his ninth request for production, Williams never actually specified
what he was objecting to before filing this motion.
More substantively, defendants’ responses to Williams’s requests for the four
categories of documents have been adequate. Defendants represent that they already
produced documents responsive to paragraphs 1 and 2 (see Ex. 1006 (dkt. 84-7) at 109121; Ex. 1007 (dkt. 84-8) at 2572-2671); the documents Williams requested in paragraph
3 do not exist; and the documents he requested in paragraph 4 are not relevant. Williams
has no real opposition to defendants’ responses related to paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of his
motion. Instead, in his reply he argues more broadly about how defendants have been
responding to his various other discovery requests, complaining that he’s been receiving
irrelevant documents in response to his discovery requests during this lawsuit. These
arguments, unmoored to any of the specific categories in the pending motion, do not
contradict defendants’ valid bases to decline to produce additional documents.
As for paragraph 4, I agree with defendants that records related to the staffing at
Dodge Correctional Institution in 2015 are not relevant to Williams’ claims against the
defendants (all Columbia employees) in this lawsuit. While Williams argues that his time
at Dodge is relevant insofar as staff there concluded that he suffers from a handicap, he

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still does not explain why the employment records of Hoover would be relevant to his
claims. As such, I will not require defendants to turn over documents related to Hoover.
Defendants have produced thousands of pages of documents related to Williams’s
physical and mental health care, defendants’ employment, and various institution and
Wisconsin Department of Corrections policies. Williams likely will remain dissatisfied
with what he has received from defendants, but the court cannot compel defendants to
produce documents that do not exist, nor will the court grant Williams unfettered access
to materials irrelevant to his claims. Accordingly, the motion is denied.

II.

Renewed Motion for Assistance in Recruiting Counsel (dkt. 80)
Williams seeks reconsideration of my previous order denying his request for

recruitment of counsel. He argues that my prior decision denying this request was biased
against him, and he repeats that he needs counsel to assist him in conducting discovery,
and because his conditions are severely restrictive (and have recently included a severalday power outage). I already have explained to Williams that a pro se litigant does not
have a right to counsel in a civil case, Olson v. Morgan, 750 F.3d 708, 711 (7th Cir. 2014),
but that a district court has discretion to assist pro se litigants in finding a lawyer to
represent them when the legal and factual difficulty of the case exceeds their ability to
prosecute it. Pruitt v. Mote, 503 F.3d 647, 649, 654-55 (7th Cir. 2007).
I am denying Williams’s renewed motion, again without prejudice. To start, I have
no bias against Williams. Rather, in reviewing his filings and the nature of his claims, I
have concluded that he is capable of representing himself because he understands the
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applicable legal standards, he has actively engaged in discovery, and he can adequately
communicate with the court and defense counsel. Williams’s filings related to the motion
to compel in particular show that he understands the requirements of discovery and motion
practice, and he understands the nature of his claims and has been able to absorb and
respond to this court’s orders. Williams repeats his concern that various documents have
been stolen from him, complaining that I previously ignored this fact and he still needs to
recover the stolen documents. As with his motion to compel, Williams has not specified
exactly how these missing documents actually affect his ability to litigate his case. The fact
that defendants have produced several thousand pages of documents directly responsive to
his discovery requests suggests that this concern is unfounded or irrelevant. Williams has
a significant amount of documentation that should help him prove his claims, or at least
sufficient information to respond to defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
I understand that Williams is frustrated by this result, so here is some context for
my denial. Each year more than 300 lawsuits are filed in this district by pro se plaintiffs,
the majority of whom are in state custody. In contrast, only about 30 lawyers have the
time, willingness, and expertise in civil rights litigation to accept appointments, but not all
of them volunteer to handle one new case a year. For example, between 2016 and 2017,
the court was able to locate approximately 17 volunteer lawyers to represent pro se
litigants. In doing so, those lawsuits were delayed significantly, since even a simple case is
stayed for months while the court recruits counsel for them.

To be sure, the court

continues to do its best to find new ways to recruit counsel, but the pro se litigants
requesting counsel far exceed the number of attorneys available to fill that need. I am not
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convinced that Williams needs an attorney to conduct discovery for him or to handle the
dispositive motion phase of this lawsuit. If any of his claims survive summary judgment
and he proceeds to trial, then Williams may renew his motion at that time. So that there
is no misunderstanding, many pro se prisoner plaintiffs do end up representing themselves
at jury trials on their lawsuits. We will see what happens in this case.

ORDER
IT IS ORDERED that:
1. Plaintiff Travis Williams’ motion to compel (dkt. 81) is DENIED.
2. Plaintiff’s renewed motion for assistance in recruiting counsel (dkt. 80) is
DENIED without prejudice.
Entered this 25th day of June, 2019.
BY THE COURT:
/s/
_______________________
STEPHEN L. CROCKER
Magistrate Judge

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