Opinion
3:24cv573/LAC/ZCB
12-03-2024
DARREL LEON RAYFORD, FDOC Inmate #M61942, Plaintiff, v. CENTURION OF FLORIDA LLC, et al., Defendants.
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
ZACHARY C. BOLITHO, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
Plaintiff Darrel Leon Rayford is incarcerated in the Florida Department of Corrections. He is proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis in this civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. (Docs. 1, 4). The Court has screened Plaintiff's complaint and recommends that this case be dismissed without prejudice as malicious under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(b) and 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b)(1) because Plaintiff has abused the judicial process.
The prisoner civil rights complaint form requires a prisoner to disclose his prior litigation history.The form must be signed under penalty of perjury. The Eleventh Circuit has made clear that a prisoner's case may be dismissed without prejudice for failing to accurately disclose his litigation history on the complaint form. See, e.g., Burrell v. Warden I, 857 Fed.Appx. 624, 625 (11th Cir. 2021) (affirming dismissal of prisoner's complaint where prisoner failed to identify two prior federal lawsuits).Dismissal is appropriate, even if the prisoner claims that a misunderstanding caused his failure to accurately disclose his litigation history. See Redmon v. Lake Cnty. Sheriff's Office, 414 Fed.Appx. 221, 226 (11th Cir. 2011) (affirming dismissal for failure to disclose litigation history and concluding that prisoner's failure was not excused by his claimed misunderstanding of the form).
Plaintiff re-typed the Court's prisoner civil rights complaint form instead of using the pre-printed form.
A raft of Eleventh Circuit cases say the same thing. See, e.g., Allen v. Santiago, No. 22-11946, 2023 WL 5745494, at *1 (11th Cir. Sept. 6, 2023) (affirming dismissal of pro se plaintiff's case as malicious because he failed to disclose all of his relevant prior litigation); Kendrick v. Sec'y, Fla. Dep't of Corr., No. 21-12686, 2022 WL 2388425, at *3 (11th Cir. July 1, 2022) (“A plaintiff's bad-faith litigiousness or manipulative tactics, which include lying about one's litigation history, warrant[s] dismissal under § 1915”); Jones v. Szalai, 778 Fed.Appx. 847, 848 (11th Cir. 2019) (affirming dismissal of pro se plaintiff's case for malicious abuse of judicial process as an appropriate sanction for plaintiff's failing to disclose a prior case on the complaint form); Strickland v. United States, 739 Fed.Appx. 587, 588 (11th Cir. 2018) (affirming dismissal of pro se plaintiff's case as malicious because he misrepresented the number of cases he had previously filed in the district court); Wynn v. Postal Serv., 735 Fed.Appx. 704, 705 (11th Cir. 2018) (affirming dismissal of pro se plaintiff's case for abuse of the judicial process after he failed to disclose a habeas action because the habeas action fell “squarely within the complaint form's disclosure requirements”).
Here, the complaint form required Plaintiff to disclose information regarding prior civil cases he had filed in state and federal courts. (Doc. 1 at 13-14). Question C of the Prior Litigation section asked Plaintiff if he had “filed any other lawsuit, habeas corpus petition, or appeal in state or federal court either challenging your conviction or relat[ing] to the conditions of your confinement.” (Id. at 14). Plaintiff answered “No”. (Id.). At the end of the complaint form, Plaintiff signed his name after the following certification: “I declare, under penalty of perjury, that all of the information stated above and included on or with this form, including my litigation history, is true and correct.” (Id.).
Plaintiff, therefore, certified that at the time he filed this case on November 11, 2024, he had not filed any other state or federal lawsuits, habeas petitions, or appeals either challenging his conviction or relating to the conditions of his confinement.The Court has screened Plaintiff's complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2) and 28 U.S.C. § 1915A to determine whether it is subject to dismissal for any of the grounds listed, including maliciousness. Upon researching Plaintiff's litigation history, the Court has discovered that Plaintiff failed to accurately disclose his litigation history. According to Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), before Plaintiff filed the complaint in this case, he filed a habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida: Rayford v. Secretary, Department of Corrections, et al., Case No. 6:21cv39-PGB-EJK (M.D. Fla.) (filed Jan. 11, 2021).
The “filed” date is the date Plaintiff certified that he delivered the initial complaint to jail officials for mailing. (Doc. 1 at 14); see Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266, 270 (1988) (a pro se prisoner's document is deemed filed on the date the prisoner delivered it to prison authorities for forwarding to the court).
Because Plaintiff filed the habeas petition prior to filing the current lawsuit, it should have been disclosed in Question C. See Wynn, 735 Fed.Appx. at 705 (affirming dismissal of pro se plaintiff's case for abuse of the judicial process after the plaintiff failed to disclose a habeas action because the habeas action fell “squarely within the complaint form's disclosure requirements”); see also Wesley v. Payne, No. 5:24cv86, 2024 WL 2820920 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2024 WL 2818262 (N.D. Fla. June 3, 2024) (dismissing pro se plaintiff's case as malicious because plaintiff failed to disclose prior habeas case and complaint form specifically asked litigant to disclose habeas corpus petitions); Hayes v. Dixon, No. 5:23cv304, 2024 WL 1515702 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2024 WL 1516100 (N.D. Fla Apr. 8, 2024) (same); McNair v. Johnson, No. 4:23cv505, 2023 WL 8952052 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2023 WL 8952052 (N.D. Fla. Dec. 28, 2023) (same).
Dismissing a complaint as malicious for failing to disclose a prior habeas case has been the Court's consistent practice for many years. See, e.g., Simmons v. Dixon, No. 4:23cv179, 2023 WL 5836832 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2023 WL 5835969 (N.D. Fla. Sept. 8, 2023); Grammer v. Connley, No. 5:23cv162, 2023 WL 7554069 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2023 WL 7554026 (N.D. Fla. Nov. 14, 2023); Henry v. Conley, No. 5:23cv30, 2023 WL 3063387 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2023 WL 3060803 (N.D. Fla. Apr. 24, 2023); Rizvi v. Payne, No. 5:22cv257 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2023 WL 2250622 (N.D. Fla. Feb. 27, 2023); Brown v. Nigh, No. 1:23cv19, 2023 WL 2760434 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2023 WL 2761297 (N.D. Fla. Apr. 3, 2023); Washington v. Dyas, No. 5:22cv285, 2023 WL 1861948 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2023 WL 359508 (N.D. Fla. Jan. 23, 2023); Velazquez v. Lowery, No. 321cv412, 2021 WL 2666872 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2021 WL 2665721 (N.D. Fla. June 29, 2021); Johnson v. Burch, No. 5:19cv77, 2019 WL 4926617 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2019 WL 4596569 (N.D. Fla. Sept. 23, 2019); Clark v. Chunn, No. 4:17cv494, 2018 WL 2125979 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2018 WL 2124095 (N.D. Fla. May 8, 2018); Smith v. Carroll, No. 5:16cv311, 2016 WL 7173891 (N.D. Fla.), adopted by 2016 WL 7175626 (N.D. Fla. Dec. 8, 2016).
How does the Court know that this Darrel Rayford and the Darrel Rayford who filed the above habeas petition are the same person? The petitioner in the above habeas case listed FDOC Inmate #M61942 on the petition form. Plaintiff listed the same inmate number (#M61942) on the complaint form in this case. (Doc. 1 at 1).
The prior litigation portion of the complaint form serves important purposes. First, it permits efficient consideration of whether the prisoner is entitled to pursue the current action under the Prison Litigation Reform Act's “three strikes” provision. Second, it allows the Court to determine whether an action is related to, or otherwise should be considered in conjunction with, another lawsuit. Third, it enables the Court to determine whether any issues raised in the current action have been previously decided by another judge. These purposes are thwarted, and the efficiency of the judicial system diminished, when a prisoner misstates his litigation history on the complaint form.
Plaintiff's pro se status does not excuse him from following the rules, including the requirement that litigants be truthful with the Court. See Kendrick v. Sec'y, Fla. Dep't of Corr., No. 21-12686, 2022 WL 2388425, at *3 (11th Cir. July 1, 2022) (stating that pro se litigants “owe the same duty of candor to the court as imposed on any other litigant”). The Court is concerned that if misrepresentations on the complaint form are not met with consequences, then word will spread throughout the prisons that the complaint forms need not be truthfully completed. See Strickland, 739 Fed.Appx. at 588 (“A sanction less than dismissal would signal that a failure to disclose filings is an infraction without consequence. It would invite other prisoners to omit their litigation history, thus draining the judicial system's time and resources.”); Rodriguez v. Inch, No. 4:19cv191, 2020 WL 3050231 (N.D. Fla. June 7, 2020) (“If the requirement for prisoner plaintiffs to disclose their prior lawsuits is to serve its purpose, a plaintiff must provide accurate information. If word got around the prisons that inaccurate or incomplete information could be provided with no effective sanction, the form would serve little purpose.”).
As detailed above, Plaintiff misstated-under penalty of perjury- his prior litigation history. Consistent with the Eleventh Circuit precedent previously cited, Plaintiff's complaint should be dismissed without prejudice.
Providing Plaintiff an opportunity to amend his complaint to disclose the previous lawsuit would be an inadequate sanction. See Young v. Sec'y for Dep't of Corr., 380 Fed.Appx. 939, 940-41 (11th Cir. 2010) (holding that district court did not abuse its discretion by not providing a prisoner with an opportunity to amend his complaint to disclose lawsuits that should have been disclosed initially).
Accordingly, it is respectfully RECOMMENDED that:
1. This case be DISMISSED without prejudice as a malicious abuse of the judicial process under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B) and 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b)(1); and
2. The Clerk of Court be directed to enter judgment accordingly and close this case.
Notice to the Parties
Objections to these proposed findings and recommendations must be filed within fourteen days of the date of the Report and Recommendation. Any different deadline that may appear on the electronic docket is for the Court's internal use only and does not control. An objecting party must serve a copy of the objections on all other parties. A party who fails to object to the magistrate judge's findings or recommendations contained in a report and recommendation waives the right to challenge on appeal the district court's order based on unobjected-to factual and legal conclusions. See 11th Cir. Rule 3-1; 28 U.S.C. § 636.