Ebmeyer v. Brock

Dist. Ct. did not err in granting defendants-three prison officials’ motion for summary judgment in plaintiff-prisoner’s section 1983 action, alleging that defendants used excessive force during prison shakedown, where defendants asserted that plaintiff had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies by filing prison grievance prior to filing instant lawsuit. Although plaintiff claimed that grievance procedure was effectively not available to him because filing grievance would have resulted in additional abuse from abuser, plaintiff’s case against said defendants was properly dismissed, where record showed that: (1) filing of grievance would not have involved alleged abuser, and that plaintiff was aware of such procedure; and (2) plaintiff had filed three other grievances for incidents that allegedly happened on same day as shakedown. Dist. Ct. erred, though, in dismissing remainder of plaintiff’s case as sanction for plaintiff’s conduct in delaying identification of alleged John Doe defendant, where plaintiff had been aware of said defendant’s first name for over two years and failed to alert Dist. Ct.  Dismissal was improper, where Dist. Ct. had failed to make required finding that plaintiff willfully abused judicial process or otherwise conducted litigation in bad faith; (2) Dist. Ct. failed to consider any lesser sanction; and (3) Dist. Ct. failed to find that plaintiff acted or failed to act with degree of culpability that exceeded simple inadvertence or mistake.