Robert Trevino v. E. Dotson ( 2020 )

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
MAY 1 2020
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
ROBERT TREVINO, No. 18-15032
Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No. 4:15-cv-05373-PJH
v.
MEMORANDUM*
E. DOTSON; D. AMBRIZ; D. VEGA; D.
ANGUIANO; G. COLLIER; E. ELIAS; S.
MILENEWICZ; M. PEREZ; P. LORD; W.
WATERMAN; W. KEKU; C. SEVIER; B.
HOPKINS; E. MEDINA; DOES,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California
Phyllis J. Hamilton, Chief District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted April 15, 2020
San Francisco, California
Before: PAEZ and CLIFTON, Circuit Judges, and HARPOOL,** District Judge.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable M. Douglas Harpool, United States District Judge for
the Western District of Missouri, sitting by designation.
Robert Trevino, a California prisoner, appeals the district court’s grant of
summary judgment in favor of defendants on his claims brought under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983. In March 2012, Trevino was found guilty in a prison disciplinary hearing
of assaulting another inmate with a weapon capable of causing serious bodily
injury. He alleged that he filed an administrative appeal the next month, in April
2012, and received no response. Several months later, in August 2012, Trevino
submitted an inquiry about the status of the appeal that he allegedly submitted in
April. Trevino claimed in the August inquiry that he had filed an earlier inquiry in
June requesting a “status update” of the appeal, but there is no other record
evidence of this separate inquiry. In response to the August inquiry, a prison
official informed Trevino that the appeal database showed no record of receiving
Trevino’s appeal.
Trevino took no further action to pursue his administrative remedies, and
instead filed a habeas petition in California state court more than two years later.
The state court dismissed Trevino’s petition for failure to exhaust his
administrative remedies. He then filed this action. The district court held that
under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”), Trevino failed to exhaust
administrative remedies and granted summary judgment in favor of defendants.
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This Court reviews the district court’s ruling on whether a prisoner failed to
exhaust administrative remedies de novo. Albino v. Baca, 747 F.3d 1162, 1171
(9th Cir. 2014) (en banc). The PLRA 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 . . . correctional facility until such
administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)
(emphasis added).
Trevino has failed to meet his burden of producing “evidence showing that
there is something in his particular case that made the existing and generally
available administrative remedies effectively unavailable to him.” Albino, 747
F.3d at 1172. The evidence raised by Trevino is insufficient to create a “genuine
dispute as to any material fact” in this case. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a); see Villiarimo v.
Aloha Island Air, Inc., 281 F.3d 1054, 1061 (9th Cir. 2002). A fact issue is
genuine “if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the
nonmoving party.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc. 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986).
The record evidence reflects only a single inquiry that Trevino submitted in
August, to which prison officials responded. And upon receiving this response,
Trevino took no further action to pursue his administrative remedies. No
reasonable jury could find that “prison administrators thwart[ed] [Trevino] from
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taking advantage of a grievance process through machination, misrepresentation,
or intimidation” on the basis of the evidence he has presented. Ross v. Blake, 136
S. Ct. 1850, 1860 (2016); see also Andres v. Marshall, 867 F.3d 1076, 1079 (9th
Cir. 2017).
Finally, Trevino filed a motion for reconsideration under Fed. R. Civ. P.
60(b) arguing, inter alia, that the district court’s analysis was incorrect because it
overlooked evidence that he actually filed a new appeal on August 14, 2012.
Accompanying that motion, he proffered for the first time an alleged “hand
duplicated” copy of the August 14 appeal. The district court properly declined to
consider this new evidence, which could have been provided in response to
defendants’ summary judgment motion.
AFFIRMED.
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