David REYES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Christopher SMITH, Chief Physician and Surgeon, Mule Creek State Prison; Scott Heatley, Chief Medical Officer, Mule Creek State Prison, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 13-17119.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted Nov. 20, 2015. Filed Jan. 12, 2016. Jan. 12, 2016.
810 F.3d 654
Before: MICHAEL J. MELLOY, SANDRA S. IKUTA, and ANDREW D. HURWITZ, Circuit Judges.
* The Honorable Michael J. Melloy, Senior Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, sitting by designation.
REVERSED and REMANDED.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California, Jonathan L. Wolff, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Thomas S. Patterson, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Jose A. Zelidon-Zepeda (argued), Deputy Attorney General, San Francisco, CA, for Defendants-Appellees.
HURWITZ, Circuit Judge:
As a matter of first impression, we must decide whether an inmate has exhausted administrative remedies under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA),
I.
In January 2011, California state inmate David Reyes was examined by a prison physician, Dr. Wesley Hashimoto, who recommended a regimen of pain medication, including morphine, for Reyes’ degenerative spine condition. The prison‘s Pain Management Committee—which included Dr. Christopher Smith, the Chief Physician and Surgeon, and Dr. Scott Heatley, the Chief Medical Officer—originally approved the prescriptions. But in May 2011, Dr. Hashimoto told Reyes that Drs. Smith and Heatley had ordered that his pain medications would be gradually reduced and discontinued entirely by June.
Reyes filed a prison grievance complaining of the “drastic changes” to his medication regimen. The grievance asserted Reyes suffered “unbelievable pain,” but that a nurse refused to prescribe anything but aspirin. The grievance requested an examination by a physician, stated that “[d]eliberate indifference to medical needs’ violates the [Eighth] Amendment,” and included citations to Eighth Amendment cases.
In response to the grievance, Reyes was interviewed by a physician‘s assistant (PA) who issued a decision denying the request for pain medication. The decision recited that “the Pain Management Committee determined narcotics were not medically necessary” and that the PA “did not determine Morphine was medically indicated” because Reyes was functioning well with his current treatment. The decision provided, however, that the need for pain medication “may be revisited” after consultation with a rheumatologist.
Reyes appealed this decision to Lawrence Fong, the Chief Executive Officer of Health Care Services. Fong denied Reyes’ “request to be prescribed Morphine,” stating that the “Pain Management Committee determined narcotics were not medically necessary,” and concluding that Reyes’ medical treatment had been “appropriate and timely.” Reyes appealed again. The third-level appeal was denied by L.D. Zamora, Chief of the Office of Third Level Appeals for healthcare. The denial noted that Reyes had requested pain medication, stated that the Pain Management Committee had “recommended against narcotics,” and concluded that intervention was unwarranted because Reyes was “receiving treatment deemed medically necessary.” The order concluded: “This decision exhausts your available administrative remedies.”
Reyes then brought this
II.
The PLRA provides that “[n]o action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.”
The California prison grievance system has three levels of review; an inmate exhausts administrative remedies by obtaining a decision at each level.
“The PLRA attempts to eliminate unwarranted federal-court interference with the administration of prisons, and thus seeks to afford corrections officials time and opportunity to address complaints internally before allowing the initiation of a federal case.” Woodford, 548 U.S. at 93, 126 S.Ct. 2378 (alterations, footnote, and quotation marks omitted). Requiring exhaustion provides prison officials a “fair opportunity to correct their own errors” and creates an administrative record for grievances that eventually become the subject of federal court complaints. Id. at 94, 126 S.Ct. 2378; see Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 524-25, 122 S.Ct. 983, 152 L.Ed.2d 12 (2002). Requiring inmates to comply with applicable procedural regulations furthers these statutory purposes. See Woodford, 548 U.S. at 94-96, 126 S.Ct. 2378.
But when prison officials address the merits of a prisoner‘s grievance instead of enforcing a procedural bar, the state‘s interests in administrative exhaustion have been served. Prison officials have had the opportunity to address the grievance and correct their own errors and an administrative record has been developed. For these reasons, all seven of our sister circuits to have considered the issue have concluded that the PLRA exhaustion requirement is satisfied if prison officials decide a potentially procedurally flawed grievance on the merits. Whatley v. Warden, 802 F.3d 1205, 1214-15 (11th Cir. 2015); Hammett v. Cofield, 681 F.3d 945, 947 (8th Cir.2012) (per curiam); Hill v. Curcione, 657 F.3d 116, 125 (2d Cir.2011); Maddox v. Love, 655 F.3d 709, 721-22 (7th Cir. 2011); Reed-Bey v. Pramstaller, 603 F.3d 322, 326 (6th Cir.2010); Ross v. Cty. of Bernalillo, 365 F.3d 1181, 1186 (10th Cir. 2004), abrogated on other grounds by Jones, 549 U.S. at 219-224, 127 S.Ct. 910; Camp v. Brennan, 219 F.3d 279, 281 (3d Cir.2000).
We agree with these decisions. When prison officials opt not to enforce a procedural rule but instead decide an inmate‘s grievance on the merits, the purposes of the PLRA exhaustion requirement have been fully served: prison officials have had a fair opportunity to correct any claimed deprivation and an administrative record supporting the prison‘s decision has been developed. See Nussle, 534 U.S. at 525, 122 S.Ct. 983. Dismissing the inmate‘s claim for failure to exhaust under these circumstances does not advance the statutory goal of avoiding unnecessary interference in prison administration. See Woodford, 548 U.S. at 93, 126 S.Ct. 2378. Rather, it prevents the courts from considering a claim that has already been fully vetted within the prison system.
Declining to enforce procedural rules when prison officials fail to do so also serves the state‘s interests in “deciding when to waive or enforce its own rules.” Reed-Bey, 603 F.3d at 325. It “takes into account the likelihood that prison officials will benefit if given discretion to decide, for reasons such as fairness or inmate morale or the need to resolve a recurring issue, that ruling on the merits is better for the institution and an inmate who has attempted to exhaust available prison remedies.” Hammett, 681 F.3d at 948.
Accordingly, we hold that a prisoner exhausts “such administrative remedies as are available,”
III.
The defendant physicians also contend that Reyes’ suit is barred under the PLRA exhaustion requirement because his grievance failed to “alert[] the prison to the nature of the wrong for which redress is sought” and provide sufficient information “to allow prison officials to take appropriate responsive measures.” Griffin v. Arpaio, 557 F.3d 1117, 1120, 1121 (9th Cir.2009) (quotation marks omitted). Drs. Smith and Heatley argue that the grievance related on its face only to Dr. Hashimoto‘s determination that Reyes should not receive narcotic pain medication, and thus did not exhaust his claim relating to actions by the Pain Management Committee.
Reyes’ grievance plainly put prison officials on notice of the nature of the wrong alleged in his federal suit—denial of pain medication by the defendant doctors. Prison officials also plainly knew that the Pain Management Committee, of which Drs. Smith and Heatley and Smith were members, had decided Reyes should not receive the medication; that decision was cited repeatedly by the prison administration in denying Reyes’ grievance. Prison officials had full notice of the alleged deprivation and ample opportunity to resolve it. The grievance thus sufficed.
Contrary to the defendants’ arguments, this case is not like Griffin, 557 F.3d at 1118-21, in which an inmate submitted a grievance requesting a ladder to access his top bunk, and later filed a lawsuit asserting that prison staff had disregarded an order assigning him to a lower bunk, nor Sapp, 623 F.3d at 824, in which an inmate submitted a grievance about medical treatment for an eye condition but his § 1983 suit also alleged failure to provide review of his medical records and improper screening of administrative appeals. Rather, prison officials in this case easily identified the Pain Management Committee‘s involvement in the issue, and explained repeatedly that they were denying Reyes’ grievance precisely because the Committee had determined that narcotics were not medically necessary. On this record, the state defendants cannot argue that prison officials were unaware of the involvement of physicians other than Dr. Hashimoto in the events alleged. See Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F.3d 218, 234 (3d Cir.2004); Maddox, 655 F.3d at 722 (The inmate “complained about an administrative decision—the cancellation of [religious] services—and it belies reason to suggest that prison administrators at [the prison] were unaware of who was responsible for that decision.“).
IV.
We REVERSE the district court order dismissing Reyes’ claims against Drs. Smith and Heatley and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.