Carl Barrett v. Montrel Bridges

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted January 16, 2025*
Decided January 30, 2025
Before
DIANE S. SYKES, Chief Judge
MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge
CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge
No. 24-1411
CARL BARRETT,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
MONTREL BRIDGES, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of
Wisconsin.
No. 23-C-138
William C. Griesbach,
Judge.
O R D E R
Carl Barrett, a prisoner at Green Bay Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, sued
prison staff for violating his rights under the Eighth Amendment by failing to respond
to his complaints of suicidal thoughts before he overdosed. The district judge entered
* 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. FED. R. A PP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

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summary judgment for the defendants based on Barrett’s failure to exhaust
administrative remedies. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). Because Barrett did not file his
grievances on time nor establish that the system was unavailable to him, we affirm.
This suit arises from an incident on August 24, 2022, when Barrett says he
overdosed on clonidine after warning the defendants that he was experiencing thoughts
of suicide. According to the complaint, Barrett alerted correctional officers Montrel
Bridges, Michael Neveu, and Joseph Spencer, as well as his restricted housing unit’s
sergeant, Gregory Friedel, that he was feeling suicidal and needed psychological
services, but they did not contact the psychological services unit. Later, nurse Rachel
Matushak visited Barrett, and after he showed her that he was holding clonidine pills,
she hurried away from his cell. Shortly after, Bridges came to the cell, and Barrett took
an excessive number of pills in front of him. After learning of this, Captain Jay Van
Lanen visited Barrett’s cell twice, downplayed the seriousness of ingesting the pills, and
told Matushak to wait to take Barrett to the hospital. That evening, however, Barrett
was taken to a hospital, where he remained for two or three days. He was also placed
under observation for a risk of suicide, and while on observation, he was denied access
to paper forms and writing utensils other than a safety crayon.
Barrett was removed from observation status at some point before August 31.
That day, he filed a grievance about a separate incident. On September 14 and 19, after
informally contacting the managers of the restrictive housing and health services units
to resolve his concerns about the August 24 incident, Barrett filed two grievances about
it. The reviewing officer rejected both grievances for being filed late.
Barrett then sued the named officers and nurse Matushak for violating his Eighth
Amendment rights by ignoring his reports of suicidal thoughts. He also alleged that
Friedel and Van Lanen perpetuated a custom or practice of refusing to refer prisoners to
the psychological services unit and instead offering their own untrained assessments.
The defendants moved for summary judgment on the ground that Barrett failed
to exhaust administrative remedies properly, as required by the Prison Litigation
Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). They submitted evidence that the two grievances
related to the August 24 suicide attempt were submitted after the 14-day deadline to
complain. W IS . A DMIN. C ODE DOC § 310.07. On September 14, 2022, Barrett complained
that certain defendants had failed to respond to his requests for psychological aid. On
September 19, he complained that the defendants had failed to protect him from self-
harm. Neither grievance explained the late submission, and the grievance officer denied

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both as untimely. The defendants also showed that Barrett had filed nearly
100 grievances before September 2022.
While awaiting Barrett’s response, the defendants also moved to stay discovery
on the merits, and the judge granted the motion. Barrett filed a timely response but also
moved for a 14-day extension to respond. The judge denied that request as moot.
In his response, Barrett argued that the prison made his administrative remedies
unavailable by denying him access to grievance forms while he was under observation.
Further, he argued that rules required prisoners to wait ten days after contacting a staff
member to informally resolve an issue before filing a formal grievance. And because he
was denied access to paper forms for a few days after August 24, it was impossible for
him to attempt an informal resolution, wait ten days, and then file a grievance by
September 7. As evidence of this purported ten-day rule, Barrett submitted notices he
had received in response to unrelated grievances that were rejected because he did not
first attempt to resolve the matters informally. These notices said that Barrett must
allow the relevant staff member “adequate time to respond before resubmitting” the
complaint, and that he could resubmit his complaint if he did not receive a response
within ten days. Barrett also submitted a note from a grievance officer, dated
December 13, 2023, which said that, before re-filing a rejected grievance, prisoners must
give staff members ten days to respond to a request for informal resolution.
The district judge granted the defendants’ motion, concluding that Barrett’s
grievances were filed past the deadline, and that the prison did not make the grievance
process unavailable. The judge considered the previous grievance responses that
referred to a ten-day waiting period but concluded that Barrett misinterpreted the
instructions. The judge also noted the December 2023 correspondence but concluded
that it could not have misled Barrett in September 2022.
On appeal, Barrett first argues that the district judge illegally altered the rules of
procedure when he required Barrett to respond to the summary judgment motion
within 30 days. The judge did no such thing; he applied a local court rule, E.D. WIS . C IV.
R. 56(b)(2), which was adopted in 2010, years before Barrett’s case. Moreover, the judge
had discretion to set a briefing schedule. See Brooks v. City of Pekin, 95 F.4th 533, 540–41
(7th Cir. 2024). Regardless, Barrett timely responded to the motion. Barrett also argues
that the district judge improperly stayed discovery, preventing him from obtaining
evidence of exhaustion. But the judge stayed discovery on the merits only, pending
resolution of the exhaustion issue. Barrett also does not explain what other evidence
could have placed the evidence of non-exhaustion in dispute.

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We turn, then, to Barrett’s arguments that he had no “available” remedy to
exhaust because the prison prevented him from filing a timely grievance. We review de
novo a decision granting summary judgment for failure to exhaust. Gooch v. Young,
24 F.4th 624, 626 (7th Cir. 2022). To properly exhaust under the Act, Barrett needed to
complete each step set out in the prison’s grievance process. See Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S.
199, 218 (2007); Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 85 (2006). Here, Wisconsin law requires
that prisoners file a complaint within 14 days of the conduct precipitating the
complaint. W IS . A DMIN. C ODE DOC § 310.07. But a complaint filed outside that period
may be accepted with good cause—namely, if the inmate requests “to file a late
complaint in the written complaint and explicitly provide the reason for the late filing.”
Id. Barrett does not dispute that he filed his complaints late and did not acknowledge,
or provide any reason for, the untimeliness.
Instead, Barrett argues that he had no way to file a grievance within the 14-day
period after August 24. A prisoner is excused from the exhaustion requirement if a
remedy was not “available,” which occurs in three general situations: (1) the system is
so opaque that no ordinary prisoner can discern or navigate it; (2) prison staff actively
thwart inmates from taking advantage of a grievance process; or (3) the procedures are
a guaranteed “dead end,” such as when they require inmates to submit grievances to
officials who are unauthorized to act. Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632, 642–44 (2016);
see Smallwood v. Williams, 59 F.4th 306, 314–15 (7th Cir. 2023).
Barrett first renews his argument that the prison imposed a ten-day waiting
period that rendered it impossible for him to grieve the August 24 incident within
14 days. But we agree with the district judge that Barrett did not show that he was
instructed to wait ten days before filing a grievance. The instructions he received—in
response to previous, unrelated grievances—told him to give the relevant staff member
adequate time to respond to an informal attempt at resolution before proceeding to a
formal grievance. Barrett’s mistaken interpretation of what he did wrong with respect
to previous grievances did not make his remedy unavailable in this instance.
See Smallwood, 59 F.4th at 314. The only evidence that he was told to wait ten days (for
re-filing, not filing an original grievance) was the December 2023 note, which does not
establish that some general waiting-period policy was in effect a year earlier.
Barrett next argues that the grievance system was not available because, while he
was in the hospital and then under observation, he was mentally incapacitated, and
prison staff denied him access to the grievance forms. Barrett submitted no evidence of
incapacitation, however. And although a remedy might be unavailable if circumstances

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outside the prisoner’s control prevent him from filing a grievance, see Lanaghan v. Koch,
902 F.3d 683, 688 (7th Cir. 2018), he must nonetheless file as soon as is reasonably
possible, Hurst v. Hantke, 634 F.3d 409, 412 (7th Cir. 2011). Barrett filed an unrelated
grievance on August 31, days after leaving the hospital and before the deadline to file
one about this incident. Therefore, he was capable of using the grievance system at that
time. Cf. Wilborn v. Ealey, 881 F.3d 998, 1005–06 (7th Cir. 2018) (prisoner lacked good
cause, despite being denied access to forms while in an infirmary, because he filed an
unrelated grievance within the deadline to file relevant grievance).
Finally, Barrett argues that he could not avail himself of the process for filing a
late grievance because the complaint form’s instructions did not explain that a late filing
might be accepted if, in the complaint, he provided good cause. Notably, however,
Barrett never attested that he was unaware of this rule. And although we once
concluded that a prisoner’s remedies were unavailable when the prison failed to inform
him of the procedure to file a late grievance, that case involved a grievance form that
misled the plaintiff into believing he could not file late under any circumstance.
Lanaghan, 902 F.3d at 689–90. There is no evidence of similar obfuscation here. We have
never established a rule requiring prisons to print certain instructions on their grievance
forms; we have simply required that the rules be “knowable.” See, e.g., Reid v. Balota,
962 F.3d 325, 329 (7th Cir. 2020); White v. Bukowski, 800 F.3d 392, 396 (7th Cir. 2015).
Without evidence that the prison concealed the procedure or misled him, Barrett has
not disputed the prison’s evidence of an “available” procedure.
AFFIRM

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