8th Amendment Violation

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Rodolph Lanaghan v. Darryl Koch, Correctional Officer, et al.

Case No.: 17-1399

Officials: BAUER, EASTERBROOK, and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: 8^th Amendment Violation

On August 3, 2015, Rodolph Lanaghan filed a suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that the defendants violated his rights under the Eighth Amendment and asserting a negligence claim under state law. Specifically, he asserted that when he was an inmate at the Oshkosh Correctional Institution (“Oshkosh”), the defendants were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs and were negligent in the response to his severe muscle disease, Dermatomyositis with Polymyositis. The district court conducted a Pavey hearing to determine whether Lanaghan had failed to exhaust administrative remedies prior to filing the federal civil action as required under the Prison Litigation Re‐ form Act (PLRA), including whether prison officials rendered the complaint process unavailable to Lanaghan by not lending assistance to him in preparing the complaint and isolating him from inmates that could have assisted him in filing the complaint. See Pavey v. Conley, 544 F.3d 739, 742 (7th Cir. 2008) (requiring district court to hold an evidentiary hearing where exhaustion or lack thereof is not apparent). Following the Pavey hearing, the district court held that Lanaghan had failed to exhaust available administrative remedies and dismissed the Eighth Amendment claim and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claim. Lanaghan now appeals that determination to this court.

The PLRA requires a prisoner to exhaust all administrative remedies available prior to filing a federal lawsuit. Under Wisconsin law, an inmate is required to file a grievance/com‐ plaint within 14 days of the occurrence giving rise to the com‐ plaint. Wisc. Admin. Code § DOC 310.09. No one disputes that Lanaghan failed to file his complaint within that time frame. The only question is whether those administrative remedies were actually available to him given his severe medical limitations and the constrictions of prison policies and their implementation here.

Vacated and Remanded

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