Robinson v. Superintendent — prisoner civil rights — reversal — Hardiman

A unanimous Third Circuit panel today held that a  Pennsylvania prison’s repeated failure to respond to an inmate’s grievance rendered its administrative remedies “unavailable” under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, reversing the district court and allowing the inmate’s civil-rights suit to proceed. The court explained:

The District Court concluded that SCI Rockview’s * * * response to Robinson—which was provided more than four months late and six weeks after Robinson filed suit, and did not even address the correct incident— rendered the prison’s administrative remedies “available” to him under the PLRA. We disagree.

The opinion had some pointed words for the prison:

If prisons ignore grievances or fail to fully investigate allegations of abuse, prisoners will feel disrespected and come to believe that internal grievance procedures are ineffective. If prisoners do not believe they will get a response from prison administration, they will be more likely either to bypass internal procedures entirely and file a complaint in federal court or use a federal lawsuit to prod prison officials into a response, thus taxing the judicial resources that Congress meant to conserve by passing the PLRA. Accordingly, we hope that the events that transpired in this case are not reflective of the way in which SCI Rockview responds to inmate grievances generally.

Joining Hardiman were Jordan and Greenaway. Arguing counsel for the prisoner was John Jacobus of Steptoe & Johnson (a Barry district court clerk) and Howard Hopkirk of the state AG’s office for the prison. The opinion thanked the Steptoe lawyers for handling the appeal pro bono.