Michael A. Thomas v. MICHAEL KOLHOUSE and PARKER TROMLEY

gel
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted May 9, 2025*
Decided May 23, 2025
Before
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge
JOSHUA P. KOLAR, Circuit Judge
No. 24-1351
MICHAEL A. THOMAS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
MICHAEL KOLHOUSE and PARKER
TROMLEY,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Southern District of
Indiana, Terre Haute Division.
No. 2:22-cv-00578-JMS-MG
Jane Magnus-Stinson,
Judge.
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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No. 24-1351 Page 2
O R D E R
Michael Thomas, an Indiana prisoner, appeals the summary judgment entered
against him for failing to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the Prison
Litigation Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (“PLRA”). Because administrative remedies
were available to Thomas, and he presented no evidence rebutting the defendants’
exhaustion defense, we affirm.
In his complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Thomas alleged that staff members at
Knox County Jail—where he was a pretrial detainee at the relevant times— applied
excessive force and subjected him to inhumane conditions of confinement, in violation
of his rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. He asserts that he was
violently placed in a padded cell where he remained for three days, during which he
faced unsanitary conditions and was deprived of water.
The jail used kiosks through which prisoners could electronically submit general
requests, medical requests, and grievances. The record shows that Thomas filed several
general and medical requests, and one grievance, this way. As it appears in the record,
the entirety of the grievance, filed in January 2022, reads “THANK YOU!”
After answering Thomas’s complaint, the defendants moved for summary
judgment on the ground that he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies.
Defendant Michael Kolhouse, a jail officer, supplied what he said was a complete set of
Thomas’s kiosk submissions; it included two medical requests, seven general requests,
and the single grievance. Yet Kolhouse attested that he “did not locate a grievance or
other submission sent to request@knoxcounty.in.gov pertaining to a use of force or
confinement in the padded cell” and that he located only “the attached general and
medical requests.” Insofar as the single grievance did not say anything about the use of
force or cell conditions, Kolhouse’s statement is accurate, but it was not correct to say
that only general and medical requests had been discovered and attached. And, in their
motion for summary judgment, the defendants asserted that a search of the jail’s former
database had uncovered no grievances filed by Thomas, which is incorrect.
After receiving two extensions of time to respond to the summary judgment
motion, Thomas filed a letter to the district court asserting that he needed to subpoena
the sheriff because he and the defendants were not producing other materials he had
requested. He attached a copy of the January 2022 grievance to this letter. (The
defendants acknowledged this in their reply brief but did not retract the assertion that
he had not filed any grievances.) Thomas asked for another extension to develop a

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No. 24-1351 Page 3
complete record before responding to the motion for summary judgment. The district
court granted a third and final extension and warned Thomas that it would treat the
summary judgment motion as unopposed if he missed the deadline. After Thomas
failed to file a response, the district court granted the motion, stating that there was no
record of Thomas submitting a grievance and concluding that Thomas failed to produce
any admissible evidence to the contrary. Thomas appeals.
We review de novo the grant of summary judgment based on a failure to exhaust
available administrative remedies. Gooch v. Young, 24 F.4th 624, 626 (7th Cir. 2022). A
jail’s grievance procedures define what steps inmates must take to exhaust, Jones v. Bock,
549 U.S. 199, 218 (2007), all of which a plaintiff must complete before suing, see Ross v.
Blake, 578 U.S. 632, 638 (2016); 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). The defendants bear the burden of
proving the affirmative defense of a failure to exhaust, Gooch, 24 F.4th at 627, even
though Thomas failed to respond to the summary judgment motion, see Raymond v.
Ameritech Corp., 442 F.3d 600, 608 (7th Cir. 2006).
On appeal, Thomas argues that the defendants intentionally obscured the
existence of his January 2022 grievance and that the district court erred in granting
summary judgment based on the misrepresentation that he never filed any grievances.
For their part, the defendants concede that their earlier assertion that Thomas had not
filed any grievances was incorrect. But they contend that the one grievance did not
effectively exhaust any claim, and that Thomas has no evidence of other grievances.
Thomas correctly asserts that the defendants and district court were inaccurate
about whether he had filed any grievances; indeed, the defendants placed the
January 22 grievance in the summary judgment record. Nevertheless, on de novo
review, we have no problem concluding that Thomas did not raise any material dispute
of fact about whether he exhausted. Thomas’s grievance did not include an explanation
of the situation he alleges, as Indiana law requires. See I ND. DEP ’ T OF C ORR ., A DMIN . P.
No. 00–02–301, § X.A.6 (requiring that prisoner grievances explain the situation or
incident). And although the jail’s handbook is silent regarding the level of specificity
required in a grievance, the PLRA requires sufficient detail “to put the prison and
individual officials on notice of the claim.” Jones, 549 U.S. at 205. Further, we have held
that this notice requirement stands even when the administrative code or jail handbook
says nothing about “the contents of a grievance or the necessary degree of factual
particularity.” Strong v. David, 297 F.3d 646, 650 (7th Cir. 2002) (Illinois grievance
procedures); see Schillinger v. Kiley, 954 F.3d 990, 995 (7th Cir. 2020) (Wisconsin
grievance procedures). Because Thomas’s grievance was devoid of substantive content

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related to the allegations in this suit, it did not provide notice to jail officials of his
complaints, and so he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies.
Thomas argues in various ways that the defendants altered the text of his
grievance or withheld evidence of additional grievances. But to create a genuine dispute
of material fact, Thomas needed to cite admissible evidence in the record supporting
these assertions, such as an affidavit attesting to submitting another grievance or
describing the supposed deleted material. See F ED. R. C IV. P. 56(c). He did not swear to
anything like this, however (nor did he swear that the January 2022 grievance contained
more information when he submitted it, though he suggests as much in various filings).
See Jones v. Lamb, 124 F.4th 463, 468 (7th Cir. 2024) (to create a material dispute
regarding exhaustion of remedies a prisoner must cite the record). In the end, the
existence of a single non-substantive grievance and Thomas’s unsworn assertions are
not enough to preclude summary judgment.
Finally, Thomas argues that the jail did not make administrative remedies
available to him. Relying on Gooch, Thomas asserts that by not providing him with a
specific paper form, officials rendered administrative remedies unavailable, and
therefore, he was not required to exhaust. See Gooch, 24 F.4th at 627 (citing Ross, 578 U.S.
at 635). But the PLRA does not mandate specific procedures; prison regulations define
what is (and is not) required of an inmate to “properly” exhaust. Jones, 549 U.S. at 218.
Thomas does not contend that he was prevented from accessing the kiosk, and the
record shows that he used it multiple times to submit requests; therefore, no reasonable
jury could find that the lack of a paper form —even if the handbook at the time
contemplated paper grievances—prevented him from exhausting his administrative
remedies.
AFFIRMED

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