James Owens, an Illinois prisoner, was housed at the Menard Correctional Center when he filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The place of confinement is all that connects his hodgepodge of allegations, which the district court organized into seven claims (some with subparts) against the 15 named Defendants. The court dismissed five of those claims at screening, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, and granted summary judgment for the defendants on the other two. Finding no merit in any of Owens’s arguments on appeal, we affirm.
The number of claims and defendants reflected Owens’s failure to observe the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20(a)(2) with respect to joinder of parties. We emphasized in
George v. Smith,
The evidence before the district court at summary judgment can be summarized as follows. Owens began a hunger strike in April 2004 to protest what he viewed as indifference to his grievances about conditions at Menard. He publicized his strike by communicating with state officials and prison employees. After 21 days Owens
Believing that his grievances were still being ignored, Owens began a second hunger strike in June 2004. After 25 days prison officials moved him from his cell to the infirmary, where for almost three more weeks he refused to eat. At that point administrators obtained an order from a state court allowing them to force-feed Owens, who ended the hunger strike on August 5 after the first use of a feeding tube. This time he had lost over 30 pounds, but again there is no evidence of medical complications. On August 8 he submitted a grievance to his counselor complaining that during the two hunger strikes he was left in his cell without medical monitoring for a total of 49 days. Owens maintained that he should have been housed in the infirmary all that time. His counselor did not respond.
In January 2005, Owens was placed in disciplinary segregation and assigned to a cell with inmate Gordon. For a month the two got along, but then without warning or explanation Gordon hit Owens in the mouth, splitting his lip. Gordon also threatened to hit him again. Owens reported the punch to the guards on duty— defendants Anderson and Niepert — but at summary judgment he never said whether he also disclosed Gordon’s threat. The two guards remained silent when Owens asked to be released from his cell. Later that afternoon, when a different guard was in view, Gordon swung again. Owens evaded the punches, and the guard quickly intervened. Owens was taken to the infirmary and given a saltwater rinse to treat the small lacerations left in his mouth by Gordon’s earlier punch. (Owens says in his complaint and appellate brief that he was left with a scar on his lip, but he submitted no admissible evidence to substantiate this allegation.)
Owens next was housed with inmate Au-tin. For a month they coexisted peacefully, but Autin ran out of drugs to control his mental illness and cautioned Owens to move elsewhere because he might lose control. Owens told no one about this warning. On Autin’s fourth day without medication, he swung at Owens but landed no punches. Owens told a guard — defendant Smith — about the incident, and Autin chimed in that he would go after Owens again. Owens asked to be moved, but Smith said he could not do anything that day. Hours later Owens was conversing with another guard about moving when Autin rushed from behind and shoved him into the bars. The guard took Owens to the infirmary with a bump on his forehead and a small abrasion on one elbow.
These events underlie four of the claims in Owens’s complaint. In one of these claims he contends that unspecified officials violated the Constitution by ignoring his many and varied grievances; in another he insists that his “right to peaceful demonstration” was infringed when his second hunger strike was forcibly ended. At screening the district court dismissed both of these claims as frivolous, and we concur with this assessment. Prison grievance procedures are not mandated by the First Amendment and do not by their very existence create interests protected by the Due Process Clause, and so the alleged mishandling of Owens’s grievances by persons who otherwise did not cause or participate in the underlying conduct states no claim. See
George,
Two other claims proceeded to summary judgment. Owens contended that he should have been moved to the infirmary for the duration of both hunger strikes and, because he was not, that several named defendants had been deliberately indifferent to the state of his health. He also asserted that guards Anderson, Niepert, and Smith violated the Eighth Amendment by failing to protect him from the second assaults by Gordon and Autin. The district court concluded that Owens had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies for the healthcare claim. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a);
Dole v. Chandler,
The latter ruling is correct. On the evidence presented at summary judgment, a jury could not reasonably find that the guards, by declining to move Owens immediately to another cell, deliberately ignored a substantial risk that he would suffer serious harm at the hands of his cellmates. See
Farmer v. Brennan,
The district court’s ruling on the medical-care claim requires a closer look. At summary judgment Owens tendered a copy of his grievance, dated August 8, 2004, alleging that he was left in his cell without medical attention during substantial portions of his hunger strikes. According to Owens, he gave this grievance to his counselor but never received a reply, and so he forwarded copies to the grievance officer in February 2005 and to the Administrative Review Board in June 2005. The district court acknowledged the significance of this grievance but concluded that, since Owens had not discussed it in an affidavit or deposition, he lacked admissible evidence that he gave the grievance to prison officials. In this respect, the court erred. Owens verified his response in opposition to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, and that was enough to make his allegations admissible. See 28 U.S.C. § 1746. As the district court noted, Owens’s submission was not literally an “affidavit” because he did not swear to the content in the presence of someone authorized to administer oaths.
Yet even taking Owens at his word, we conclude that he failed to exhaust. When an informal resolution is not achieved by talking to a counselor, an inmate in Illinois has 60 days from the date of the underlying incident to submit a written grievance to the facility’s designated grievance officer. 20 III. Admin. Code § 504.810;
Dole,
In the alternative the defendants argue that a lack of evidence provided an independent basis for dismissing this claim. We agree with this point as well. Owens’s complete deposition was tendered at summary judgment, and his testimony confirms that he lost weight and became weak while on his hunger strikes but suffered no medical complications. Prison administrators have a right and a duty to step in and force an inmate to take nourishment if a hunger strike has progressed to the point where continuation risks serious injury or death.
Freeman,
That leaves the other three claims dismissed at screening, in which Owens principally alleges that he suffered retaliation for filing grievances and was denied medical and dental care. At screening the district court signaled that it would have allowed these claims to proceed except that Owens had not linked his allegations of unconstitutional conduct to identifiable defendants (or, in a few instances, had named only defendants who could not personally have been involved in the alleged violations). See
Collins v. Kibort,
Owens filed his amended complaint in March 2007, eight months after he filed suit and three months after the district court had screened the original complaint. The 246-paragraph document adds 21 pages and 29 defendants to the original complaint, and many of its allegations date back several years, some as far as 2001. A magistrate judge struck the new complaint. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 72(a); S.D. III. L.R. 72.1(a)(1). The court was uncertain whether the document had arrived in the clerk’s office before a joint answer filed by several defendants, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a), but since Owens had not complied with
We review a denial of leave to amend only for abuse of discretion,
Foster v. DeLuca,
We have considered the remaining issues in Owens’s brief and conclude that none has merit. For these reasons the judgment is Affirmed.