Tyler v. Wick

MATTHEW TYLER, Plaintiff, v. STEPHANIE WICK, SANDRA HANSEN, PETER MARIK, K. MARKS, DAVID H. SCHWARZ,MARGARET BECKWITH, DEBORAH MCCULLOCH, ROBERT KNEEPKENS, JEFFREY P. HRUDKA,MARK SPEES, ALBERT LAVENDER, ERIC SWIATLY, MIKE LUTZ, VAL LITTY, DONNA HEDRICH,JAMIE OLSON, STEVE SCHNEIDER, and WILLIAM PARKER, Defendants.

14-cv-68-jdp

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN

December 4, 2015

OPINION & ORDER

Plaintiff Matthew Tyler, a person civilly committed to the Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center under Wis. Stat. Chapter 980, brought this lawsuit alleging that various state officials violated his rights with regard to his probation revocation and several other issues during his placement at state facilities. In a March 31, 2015, order, I granted defendants' "motion for summary judgment restricted to threshold issues" in almost all respects, leaving only plaintiff's federal and state claims against defendant Agent Lutz¹ in her individual capacity for providing false information at plaintiff's revocation hearing.

Currently before the court are three motions. First is plaintiff's motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) to revise the March 31 order in several respects. Second,plaintiff has also filed a motion to compel discovery. Third, defendants have filed a motion for summary judgment on the remaining claims against Agent Lutz.

After considering the parties' submissions, I will grant plaintiff's motion to revise the March 31 order in one respect—I conclude that his complaint includes due process claims for deprivation of a property interest in his personal property and money in conjunction with his transfers away from and back to Sand Ridge. I will deny the motion to revise in all other respects, and deny plaintiff's motion to compel as moot. Also, I will grant defendants' motion for summary judgment on plaintiff's federal and state claims against Agent Lutz for providing false information during the revocation proceedings. I will set a final round of summary judgment briefing on plaintiff's due process claims, which are now the only claims remaining in the case.

A. Motion to revise March 31, 2015, order

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) states that this court may revise any non-final order prior to entry of judgment adjudicating all of the claims in a case. Plaintiff seeks revision of certain aspects of the March 31 order. Motions to revise an order under Rule 54(b) are subject to a standard very similar to motions to alter or amend a judgment under Rule 59(e): they should be granted only to correct manifest errors of law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence. See Rothwell Cotton Co. v. Rosenthal & Co., 827 F.2d 246, 251 (7th Cir. 1987) (quoting Keene Corp. v. Int'l Fid. Ins. Co., 561 F. Supp. 656, 665-66 (N.D. Ill. 1982)); Bullock v. Dart, 599 F. Supp. 2d 947, 964 (N.D. Ill. 2009). "A 'manifest error' is not demonstrated by the disappointment of the losing party. It is the 'wholesale disregard, misapplication, or failure to recognize controlling precedent.'" Oto v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 224F.3d 601, 606 (7th Cir. 2000) (quoting Sedrak v. Callahan, 987 F.Supp. 1063, 1069 (N.D. Ill. 1997)).

1. Access to courts

In the March 31 order, I denied plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunctive relief concerning access to the courts, in which he sought the provision of legal materials that were sent from Sand Ridge to one of his relatives. Plaintiff now argues that I erred in concluding that his "submission of over 100 pages of exhibits also suggests that he has access to materials to litigate this case," Dkt. 89, at 2.

Plaintiff argues that the "over 100 pages of exhibits" do not show that he could adequately litigate the case, at least in part because those documents "were taken directly from defendants submissions." Dkt. 91, at 4. Even if all of plaintiff's exhibits came from documents previously submitted by defendants (which from my own cursory review of the docket does not appear to be the case), that issue misses the point. The question is whether I should have ordered the materials to be given to plaintiff. I resolved that question as follows in the March 31 order:

[T]o the extent that I understand plaintiff to be asking for preliminary injunctive relief regarding the provision of these materials, I would only consider such drastic action if I thought that defendants were actively blocking plaintiff from litigating this action. This is clearly not the case given the large amount of materials that plaintiff has been able to submit. Further, from plaintiff's briefing, he is not able to raise any compelling reason to think that he has been hampered from presenting evidence or argument. As stated in more detail below, the real problem with plaintiff's case is that he raises a series of claims that are either frivolous or barred.

Dkt. 89, at 3.

Regardless of the source of plaintiff's submissions, he fails to show that there are any useful documents missing that he needed to litigate the previous summary judgment motion. He also seems to be arguing that defendants' submissions are not admissible because they came from their own documents, or that his own evidence was deemed inadmissible for similar reasons, see Dkt. 91, at 5, which is simply incorrect. Plaintiff provides no persuasive reason to reconsider this portion of the March 31 order.

Also in the March 31 order, I concluded that plaintiff failed to state an access to the courts claim against Agent Lutz, Robert Kneepkens, Deborah McCulloch, and William Parker for withholding money and property from him because he failed to identify any meritorious litigation that was thwarted by the withholding of this property:

It is undisputed that plaintiff ultimately shipped his property to Ronald Tyler. In the interim, while plaintiff's property was being held by prison officials, even assuming the named defendants were responsible for the withholding of that property, plaintiff fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted because he does not identify any meritorious legal action that he lost because he failed to have his property or money at his disposal. The only litigation plaintiff mentions is his revocation and appeals of that decision, but it is clear from the Wisconsin courts' rulings and my own review of the record that plaintiff did not have a meritorious case; he failed to comply with the terms of his extended supervision. The main thrust of plaintiff's opposition to the revocation was that he was not actually on extended supervision as a Chapter 980 patient, but that position has no merit. Plaintiff does not provide any other suggestion of how the outcome of his proceedings would have been different. Therefore, I will grant defendants' motion for summary judgment on this claim.

Dkt. 89, at 21.

Plaintiff now argues that "[t]he court did not address the 'access to the courts' claim in terms of all the issues in this case that [he] could not successfully litigate because of not having his legal material and money." Dkt. 91, at 3. By this I understand plaintiff to besaying that his ability to litigate this case has been hampered by defendants' actions. It is dubious whether such a claim would even be ripe. This court has previously not allowed plaintiffs to bring access to the courts claims about the hindrance of other claims in the very same lawsuit. See Cheek v. Beeman, No. 13-cv-527-bbc, 2014 WL 1276412, at *2 (W.D. Wis. Mar. 27, 2014); Smith v. Rose, No. 09-cv-233-bbc, 2009 WL 1444140, at *5 (W.D. Wis. May 20, 2009).

Even if such a claim were ripe, plaintiff fails to show that I erred in dismissing it. The only argument plaintiff brings to develop this claim is that the loss of money and property thwarted his ability to file a notice of claim earlier than the notice he actually filed. However, the notice-of-claim issue is irrelevant to an access to the courts claim because this right is limited to challenges to his conviction and to claims brought under the United States Constitution challenging his conditions of confinement. Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 346-48 (1996) (The tools . . . require[d by the right to access the courts] are those that the inmates need in order to attack their sentences, directly or collaterally, and in order to challenge the conditions of their confinement. Impairment of any other litigating capacity is simply one of the incidental (and perfectly constitutional) consequences of conviction and incarceration."). Thus, even if plaintiff filed a brand-new lawsuit in which he alleged that his access to courts was violated through interference with his notice of claim, he would not be able to sustain such a claim. Therefore, I will deny plaintiff's motion to reconsider dismissal of an access to the courts claim.

2. Due process - deprivation of property

In the March 31 order, I outlined the various claims I understood to be part of the complaint.² Among those was the access to the courts claim discussed above against defendants Agent Lutz, Kneepkens, McCulloch, and Parker for withholding his money and property. Now plaintiff argues that he intended to bring a separate due process claim against these defendants for depriving him of his property interest in his money and property. That claim is based on the following allegations in his complaint:

• Defendants "deprived [plaintiff of] liberty and property without due process." Dkt. 2-2, at 2;

• " On August 1, 2011, Agent Lutz, Robert Kneepkens, and Deborah McCulloch conspired and did withhold Tyler's money and legal material. As such, Tyler was denied access to the courts." Id. at 9;

• Kneepkens told plaintiff that the "was the policy and practice of Sand Ridge . . . to send patient property and money after the revocation hearing," yet even after he was revoked he did not receive his money and legal property. Id. at 10;

• " [Plaintiff] was revoked on October 26, 2011, however his money and legal property were not sent to the institution where he

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