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USCA1 Opinion
November 2, 1993 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT
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No. 93-1297
MARVIN M. SMITH,
Plaintiff, Appellee,
v.
MICHAEL MALONEY & MICHAEL FAIR, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
Defendants, Appellants.
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ERRATA SHEET
The opinion of this Court issued on November 1, 1993, is amended
as follows:
Page 9: Line 20 - Delete the words, "as there is no dispute,".
November 1, 1993
[NOT FOR PUBLICATION]
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT
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No. 93-1297
MARVIN M. SMITH,
Plaintiff, Appellee,
v.
MICHAEL MALONEY & MICHAEL FAIR, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
Defendants, Appellants.
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APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]
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Before
Breyer, Chief Judge,
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Selya and Boudin, Circuit Judges.
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Marvin M. Smith on brief pro se.
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Nancy Ankers White, Special Assistant Attorney General, and
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Herbert C. Hanson, Senior Litigation Counsel, Department of
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Correction, on brief for appellants.
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Per Curiam. In this appeal we are asked to decide
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whether the defendants are, as a matter of law, entitled to
invoke the defense of qualified immunity in resisting
plaintiff's pro se action under 42 U.S.C. 1983. Mitchell
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v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985). We conclude that the
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district court correctly decided that the contours of the law
were well known at the time about which plaintiff complains,
and therefore affirm.
I.
_
Plaintiff Marvin M. Smith, a Massachusetts
prisoner, sued the defendants, state prison officials, for
taking two years to forward his legal materials after Smith's
transfer from state to federal custody on February 5, 1986.
At the time of the transfer, plaintiff was attempting to
pursue post-conviction relief from his state conviction, and
had several civil actions pending. On March 1, 1986, he
wrote to the state prison property office inquiring when he
could expect to receive his personal property, particularly
his legal materials, asserting that the delay was threatening
court deadlines. When no response came by March 18, 1986,
plaintiff wrote to defendant Maloney, then the Superintendent
of the state prison, about the forwarding of his personal
property. The letter reiterated plaintiff's lack of access
to his legal documents, and again warned that it was
impossible to meet pressing court dates because his legal
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materials were being held at the state prison. On March 19,
plaintiff wrote a similar letter to defendant Fair, the then
Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction
("DOC").
Defendant Maloney's April 1, 1986 response to the
March 18 letter advised that "your property must be picked up
by your family." Plaintiff's letter to defendant Fair was
referred to Pires, a DOC grievance coordinator, who, on April
24, 1986, informed plaintiff that he would check into "the
problem with your property." In a May 13, 1986 letter to
Pires, plaintiff complained, inter alia, that he had not
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received his legal property or legal mail since the transfer,
and that federal prison administrators would not allow his
family to send his legal property.1 Pires did not reply to
that letter. However, on June 9, 1986, a DOC Deputy
Commissioner approved a Pires' memorandum outlining defendant
Maloney's agreement that his facility would assume any costs
in forwarding property of inmates transferred to the federal
prison system, and would also "ensure that all permissible
property is forwarded."
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1. Plaintiff also relies on 103 C.M.R. 403.16(2) which
states in relevant part: "Whenever an inmate is transferred
to another correctional institution all personal property
approved for retention at the receiving institution shall be
transferred along with him/her or as soon as practicable
thereafter."
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In July 1987, plaintiff still had not yet received
his legal property and filed this 1983 suit against Fair
and Maloney in their individual and official capacities. The
complaint alleged that because the federal prison system was
not equipped to assist him with pending Massachusetts cases,
the continuing refusal to forward his legal property was a
deprivation of property without due process and a denial of
meaningful access to the courts. On March 15, 1988, twenty-
five months after the transfer to federal custody,
plaintiff's legal materials were forwarded to the federal
authorities. Defendant Maloney's accompanying letter
acknowledged plaintiff's federal lawsuit seeking the return
of his legal property, and characterized the delay as caused
by "administrative miscommunication at our end." In 1989,
plaintiff was returned to the state prison system.
In 1990 defendants' initial motion for summary
judgment on the due process and access to the courts claims
was denied; an accompanying claim of inadequate federal
prison library facilities was declared moot since plaintiff
was no longer in federal custody. In 1992, defendants'
renewed motion for summary judgment on, inter alia, qualified
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immunity grounds was denied, and the case was ordered to
proceed to trial. Our review on this interlocutory appeal
from the denial of a qualified immunity defense is de novo,
and following the usual summary judgment commands, we view
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all facts and reasonable inferences from the record as a
whole in plaintiff's favor.2 Cookish v. Powell, 945 F.2d
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441, 443 (1st Cir. 1991).
II.
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Plaintiff's complaint alleges, with sufficient
particularity, a claim for which relief under 1983 is
available: the right to meaningful and effective access to
the courts. Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 822-24 (1977).
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We have held that allegations of intentional refusal to
return an inmate's legal materials state a cause of action
under 1983. Simmons v. Dickhaut, 804 F.2d 182, 184 (1st
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Cir. 1986). In determining whether the defendants are
entitled to the protection of qualified immunity from suit,
the inquiry is essentially objective: whether a "reasonable
[official] could have believed [the failure to forward
plaintiff's legal materials for two years] to be lawful, in
light of clearly established law and the information the
[prison officials] possessed." Anderson v. Creighton, 483
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U.S. 635, 641 (1987). Plaintiff bears the initial burden to
show that the legal rules regarding the right of access at
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2. We note that plaintiff's motion for leave to file a first
amended verified complaint, proffered before the district
court acted upon defendants' renewed motion for summary
judgment, was denied after this appeal was noticed. While
defendants argue that the amended verified complaint is
outside the record on appeal, since plaintiff expressly
included it as part of his opposition to summary judgment, it
is properly before us. See Sheinkopf v. Stone, 927 F.2d
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1259, 1262 (1st Cir. 1991).
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issue here were sufficiently clear before the defendants
acted or, in this case, failed to act. Davis v. Scherer, 468
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U.S. 183, 197 (1984). Once that threshold is passed, the
defendants' conduct is compared to what a reasonable official
would understand was legally required during the relevant
period, from February 1986 through March 1988. To that end,
a "court should ask whether the [officers] acted reasonably
under settled law in the circumstances, not whether another
reasonable, or more reasonable, interpretation of the events
can be constructed [subsequently] . . . . Hunter v. Bryant,
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112 S. Ct. 534, 537 (1991); see also Frazier v. Bailey, 957
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F.2d 920, 929 (1st Cir. 1992); Cinelli v. Cutillo, 896 F.2d
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650, 654 (1st Cir. 1990). If the particular access right at
issue here was clearly established at the time of the alleged
deprivation, it can be "presume[d] that the defendant knew,
or should have known that his conduct was beyond the pale."
Buenrostro v. Collazo, 973 F.2d 39, 42 (1st Cir. 1992).
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III.
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Applying this standard, we have little difficulty
concluding that plaintiff has satisfied the burden to
demonstrate that the access right at issue was clearly
established during the relevant period. In opposing
defendants' request for summary judgment based on qualified
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immunity,3 plaintiff sufficiently identified a "universe of
authority" relevant to his access claim. Elder v. Holloway,
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975 F.2d 1388, 1393 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. granted, 113 S.
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Ct. 3033 (1993). We have not required a plaintiff opposing a
qualified immunity defense to cite cases in which the precise
conduct at issue had been found unlawful. Germany v. Vance,
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868 F.2d 9, 16 (1st Cir. 1989). "It is enough, rather, that
there existed case law sufficient to clearly establish that
if a court were presented with such a situation, the court
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would find that plaintiff's rights were violated." Hall v.
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Ochs, 817 F.2d 920, 925 (1st Cir. 1987).
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By 1986, "[m]any courts [had] found a cause of
action for violation of the right of access . . . where it
was alleged that prison officials confiscated and/or
destroyed legal materials." Simmons, 804 F.2d at 183
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(collecting cases). See also Bonner v. Coughlin, 517 F.2d
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1311, 1320 (7th Cir. 1975) (pre-Bounds case assumes that
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intentional taking of prisoner legal materials resulting in
access interference may violate due process); Ruiz v.
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3. In an accompanying affidavit, plaintiff averred that he
had four lawsuits pending at the time of his February 1986
transfer to federal custody. Court documents, attached as
exhibits, show that two of these cases were later dismissed
for lack of prosecution, a direct consequence, plaintiff
maintains, of the two-year deprivation of his legal materials
which included trial transcripts, pleadings, legal documents,
research materials and exhibits. For the same reason,
plaintiff attests that he could not effectively prosecute the
two other pending actions.
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Estelle, 679 F.2d 1115, 1153 (5th Cir. 1982) (access to the
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courts includes right to access to those "accessories without
which legal claims cannot be effectively asserted"), cert.
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denied, 460 U.S. 1042 (1983); Morello v. James, 810 F.2d 344,
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346 (2d Cir. 1987) (complaint of official taking, in 1983, of
pro se legal materials and work product stated a Bounds
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claim); Green v. Johnson, 977 F.2d 1383, 1389-90 (10th Cir.
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1992) (pre-1985 seizure of pro se legal materials followed by
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dismissal of several of inmate's lawsuits stated a cognizable
denial of access claim). And, in Germany, where a social
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worker's failure to disclose important information was found
to preclude qualified immunity, we concluded: "In 1980, the
contours of the right of access to the courts were
sufficiently clear so that a reasonable official would
understand that the right would be violated by the
intentional or recklessly indifferent withholding of
potentially exculpatory information from an adjudicated
delinquent or from the court itself." Germany, 868 F.2d at
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16.
Thus, although we have not addressed the particular
question whether state prison officials' intentional or
deliberately indifferent withholding of a transferred
inmate's legal materials implicates a Bounds right, in light
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of the state of the relevant law in February 1986, we
conclude that the unlawfulness of such conduct was
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sufficiently established at that time and would have been
apparent to a reasonable official. See Patterson v. Mintzes,
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717 F.2d 284, 288 (6th Cir. 1983) (unrebutted allegations of
delay in forwarding transferred inmate's legal papers
constitute cognizable 1983 claim); see also Crisafi v.
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Holland, 655 F.2d 1305, 1309-10 (D.C. Cir. 1981). Moreover,
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plaintiff's letters would have alerted a reasonable prison
official that some action needed to be taken to protect
plaintiff's access rights. See Nelson v. Overberg, 999 F.2d
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162, 166 (6th Cir. 1993).
IV.
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Defendants have posited no governmental interest or
penological objective justifying the delayed transfer of
plaintiff's legal materials. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78,
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89 (1987). Defendants' arguments here that their conduct was
at most negligent or that they were minimally involved in the
claimed violations are not properly before us: the
subjective beliefs or motives of a government official are
simply irrelevant to the qualified immunity inquiry.
Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641; Buenrostro, 973 F.2d at 42; Floyd
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v. Farrell, 765 F.2d 1, 4-5 (1st Cir. 1985); see also Coffman
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v. Trickey, 884 F.2d 1057, 1063 (8th Cir. 1989) ("In deciding
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[the qualified immunity] issue, a court must consider the
information upon which the official acted, although this is
not to be confused with a review of the official's subjective
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intent."), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1056 (1990). Consequently,
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the district court correctly decided that defendants are not
entitled to qualified immunity on plaintiff's access to the
courts claim.
Affirmed.
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Appellee's request for double costs is denied.
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Appellants' motion to strike first amended verified
complaint from appellee's supplemental appendix is denied.
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Appellee's cross-motion to strike portions of
appellants' reply brief is denied.
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Appellants' motion to amend argument heading in
brief is allowed.
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Appellee's motion to supplement appendix and for
sanctions is denied.
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Document Info
Docket Number： 93-1297
Filed Date： 11/2/1993
Precedential Status： Precedential
Modified Date： 9/21/2015