Double procedural whammy gives inmate a second chance to prove his case

Today's plaintiff alleges that correction officers at Rikers Island incited an attack on him by another inmate, failed to protect him from that attack, and/or retaliated against him after he filed a grievance and lawsuit relating to that attack. The case was dismissed on the City's motion for summary judgment, and the inmate appeals pro se, without a lawyer. 

The case is Fredricks v. Shaheen, a summary order issued on July 16. The Court of Appeals does not actually find that plaintiff has a case, much less that he can actually win the case. He wins on a procedural ground that is unique to pro se litigants. Two procedural grounds, actually.

When the government or a corporate entity or some other defendant represented by counsel moves for summary judgment, they have to provide the pro se plaintiff with a notice that lays out what the plaintiff must do to save his case, emphasizing that the plaintiff needs to produce admissible evidence in support of his case (like affidavits and useful documents) and follow other procedural requirements to ensure the trial judge can fairly resolve the motion. That did not happen here. The reason for this set of rules is that most pro se plaintiffs have no idea what to do with the summary judgment motion, and even a good jailhouse lawyer might not be familiar with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or the local rules guiding practice in the Southern or Eastern Districts of New York.

Plaintiff responded to the motion as best he could, but his papers were still lacking because they were incomplete. The trial judge granted summary judgment against him anyway even though the City's lawyers did not provide him with the right procedural notice that I outlined above.  

Another wrinkle on this case. The motion was first resolved by a U.S. Magistrate Judge. Once the magistrate issues the summary judgment ruling, called a Report and Recommendation, the district court, who supervises the magistrate judge, decides whether the magistrate judge got it right. In order to preserve your rights, the party that loses before the magistrate judge has to object to the magistrate's ruling in a timely matter. In this case, it looks like there was a screw-up with mailing out the magistrate's ruling to the inmate, who by now had been transferred to state prison in Auburn, New York. The court thought he was still at state prison in Elmira, New York. So he never got the magistrate's court ruling in time to file an objection. 

There are no do-overs in baseball, but the two procedural errors in this case, neither of them the inmate-plaintiff's fault, get him a do-over on the summary judgment. I am sure these errors and omissions have given the plaintiff great confidence in our court system. We still don't know if the plaintiff has a case, however. The Court of Appeals (Raggi, Menashi and Merriam) says, "It may well be that on remand, Fredricks is unable to establish a genuine dispute of material fact sufficient to permit this matter to proceed to trial. But he is entitled to try."