Letourneau v. Aul et al

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND
DEVON LETOURNEAU, 	:
Plaintiff, 	:
:
v. 	: 	C.A. No. 14-421L
:
LINDA AUL, et al., 	:
Defendants. 	:
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
Patricia A. Sullivan, United States Magistrate Judge
For the second time, Plaintiff Devon Letourneau, a pro se prisoner at the Adult
Correctional Institutions (“ACI”), has asked the Court to order interim injunctive relief to assist
in the prosecution of this civil rights action. The first such motion was filed before the complaint
was served in a letter interpreted by the Court as a motion for temporary restraining order to
prevent several defendants from blocking his access to the prison law library. ECF No. 12. The
District Court denied that motion by text order. Plaintiff has now returned with a motion of a
similar hue; it contends that the Court’s denial of the first motion will cause him to “continue to
suffer unless this court acts.” ECF No. 29 at 2. The new motion seeks an order to require two
ACI officials, who are not named defendants, to provide him with copies of legal documents
more quickly and to “stay away from [his] legal work.” Id. For the reasons that follow, I
recommend that Plaintiff’s motion for relief against nonparties be denied. ECF No 29.
I. 	Background 1
1 A more detailed explication of the facts and travel is set out in the memorandum and order issued concurrently
with this report and recommendation. There are a total of six motions currently pending before the Court; five are
non-dispositive and addressed in the memorandum and order. This report and recommendation tackles the
remaining motion – Plaintiff’s Motion for Relief Against Nonparties (ECF No. 29) – because it could be interpreted
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Plaintiff claims that he is a member of a “culture” called the “Nation of Gods and Earths”
and that he has been deprived of reading material related to his beliefs; he also alleges that he has
been administratively confined for the same reason. ECF No. 1; ECF No. 38 at 12-14. He has
filed two motions seeking injunctive relief based on the limitations on his access to the law
library caused by the administrative confinement. His first motion was a one-page letter filed on
December 22, 2014, stating that an “urgent matter” had arisen in that one of the Defendants had
taken away his law library access and prevented him from performing legal work and research
“in order to proceed efficiently . . . as his Constitutional Gaurantee.” ECF No. 12. Although the
complaint had not been served yet, Plaintiff maintained these actions were taken in retaliation for
the Court’s decision on December 3, 2014, to allow his case to proceed past screening pursuant
to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e), 1915A. ECF No. 11. Plaintiff asked the Court for “TRO’s against said
Defendants, however, my law-library removal prohibits my ability to research procedures to
file.” ECF No. 12. This Court interpreted the letter as a motion for a temporary restraining order
and denied it by text order on February 5, 2015. See Text Order of Feb. 5, 2015.
Plaintiff’s second attempt to obtain interim injunctive relief is the “Motion For Relief
Against Nonparties” now pending before the Court. ECF No. 29. It is brought “pursuant to Rule
71” of the Federal Rules and Civil Procedure. 2 The motion claims that two ACI officials, who
are not named defendants, provide him with copies of material after he requests it, that they are
slow, taking up to a week, and that this pattern of behavior has been going on for over two
months. It has caused him to “becom[e] very frustrated.” ECF No. 29. He asks the Court to
as seeking injunctive relief. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) (magistrate judge may consider a motion for injunctive relief
only by report and recommendation).
2 Fed. R. Civ. P. 71 states: “When an order grants relief for a nonparty or may be enforced against a nonparty, the
procedure for enforcing the order is the same as for a party.”
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order that the two ACI officials “stay away from (my) legal work and (I) receive copies of upon
request for Court purposes as is (my): Plaintiff’s inalienable right.” ECF No. 29 at 2.
Defendants have objected to Plaintiff’s motion, not only because there is no underlying
order to enforce pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 71, but more importantly because Plaintiff has not
alleged or encountered any impediment or hindrance to the prosecution of his case. As
Defendants point out, since the case was initiated in September 2014, Plaintiff has successfully
filed ten motions, four requests for waiver of service and four versions of his complaint; this
activity evidences how little difficulty he has faced in aggressively prosecuting this action.
Importantly, eight of the ten motions and three of the four iterations of his complaint were filed
after Plaintiff alleges he was administratively confined and denied direct law library access.
II. 	STANDARD OF REVIEW
Interpreting the motion as one for interim injunctive relief, this Court must be guided by
traditional equity doctrines. Bourgoin v. Sebelius, 928 F. Supp. 2d 258, 267 (D. Me. 2013). “A
preliminary injunction is an extraordinary and drastic remedy that is never awarded as of right.”
Id. (quoting Peoples Fed. Sav. Bank v. People’s United Bank, 672 F.3d 1, 8–9 (1st Cir. 2012)).
To obtain a preliminary injunction, a plaintiff bears the burden of demonstrating by a fair
preponderance of the evidence: (1) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, (2) a
significant risk of irreparable harm if the injunction is withheld, (3) a favorable balance of
hardships, and (4) a fit (or lack of friction) between the injunction and the public interest.
Nieves–Marquez v. Puerto Rico, 353 F.3d 108, 120 (1st Cir. 2003); see Smith v. Newport Nat’l
Bank, 326 F. Supp. 874, 877 (D.R.I. 1971). A plaintiff seeking a preliminary injunction bears
the burden of demonstrating that each of the four factors weigh in his favor. Esso Standard Oil
Co. v. Monroig–Zayas, 445 F.3d 13, 18 (1st Cir. 2006). Likelihood of success on the merits is
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the most important prong. Sindicato Puertorriqueno de Trabajadores v. Fortuno, 699 F.3d 1, 7
(1st Cir. 2012).
A motion for injunction usually seeks to restrict a party from taking some action. The
purpose of the injunction “is to preserve the status quo, freezing an existing situation so as to
permit the trial court, upon full adjudication of the case’s merits, more effectively to remedy
discerned wrongs.” CMM Cable Rep., Inc. v. Ocean Coast Properties, Inc., 48 F.3d 618, 620
(1st Cir. 1995). However, a motion for injunction can also seek to change the status quo and
demand that a party take affirmative action – this is known as a “mandatory injunction.” See
Textron Fin. Corp. v. Freeman, No. CA 09-087S, 2010 WL 5778756, at *2 (D.R.I. Oct. 28,
2010). When the relief sought is a mandatory injunction, the court should exercise even a further
degree of caution. Ross-Simons of Warwick, Inc. v. Baccarat, Inc., 66 F. Supp. 2d 317, 327
(D.R.I. 1999) (citing Dahl v. HEM Pharm. Corp., 7 F.3d 1399, 1403 (9th Cir. 1993) (plaintiff’s
request for a mandatory injunction held to a standard of “heightened scrutiny”)); see Flores v.
Wall, No. CA 11-69 M, 2012 WL 4471103, at *7 (D.R.I. Sept. 5, 2012). A mandatory
injunction should not issue unless the facts and the law clearly favor the moving party. Robinson
v. Wall, No. C.A. 09-277-S, 2013 WL 4039027, at *2 (D.R.I. Aug. 7, 2013).
III. 	DISCUSSION
Plaintiff’s motion for relief against nonparties contains elements of both a standard
injunction and a mandatory injunction – it seeks an order requiring the two ACI officials to “stay
away” from his legal work (a request to restrict the officials’ actions) and to provide him with
copies of legal documents more quickly (a request to require the officials to take affirmative
action). No matter how the motion is framed, Plaintiff has not come close to clearing the high
bar required for such equitable relief.
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Focusing first on the most important of the factors that comprise the four-prong test,
substantial likelihood of success on the merits, I find that the lack of merit is plain – Plaintiff
alleges that he experiences a delay in receiving court documents of up to seven days, while the
Supreme Court has held that a delay as long as sixteen days is constitutionally permissible so
long as it is the product of prison regulations reasonably related to legitimate penological
interests. Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 362 (1996). Plaintiff’s unlikelihood of success is also
established by the District Court’s denial of his earlier request for an injunction. The theme of
Plaintiff’s current motion is the same – that prison officials are blocking his ability to efficiently
prosecute his case by restricting access to the law library (first motion) or by not providing court
filings fast enough (this motion). Plaintiff offers no reason for departing from the District
Court’s earlier decision. See Ellis v. United States, 313 F.3d 636, 646 (1st Cir. 2002) (“court
ordinarily ought to respect and follow its own rulings, made earlier in the same case”).
Relatedly, as Defendants correctly point out, the motion is grounded on Fed. R. Civ. P. 71, which
establishes the procedure for enforcing an order against a non-party; it presupposes that an order
has already been entered that binds the non-party to specific conduct. See Irwin v. Mascott, 370
F.3d 924, 931 (9th Cir. 2004) (when injunction addressed to non-party who is given notice, Rule
71 permits a district court to use same processes for enforcing obedience to order as if non-party
is party); see also Jackson v. Astrue, No. 3:08-CV-461-J-34TEM, 2011 WL 305004, at *1 (M.D.
Fla. Jan. 28, 2011); Llorens Pharm., Inc. v. Novis PR, Inc., No. CIV.04-2188 (JP), 2010 WL
521144, at *6 (D.P.R. Feb. 9, 2010). Here, the Court declined to enter the predicate order when
it denied the first motion for injunctive relief. For all of these reasons, I find that Plaintiff has
failed to establish likelihood of success on the merits of his motion.
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Turning to the second prong of the injunction test, at least some positive showing of
irreparable harm must be made, and there is no such showing here. See Braintree Labs., Inc. v.
Citigroup Global Mkts. Inc., 622 F.3d 36, 43 (1st Cir. 2010). Since he was denied access to the
law library and had to wait up to a week for copies, Plaintiff has filed three additional complaints
with numerous attachments and eight motions seeking many different forms of relief. By all
appearances, Plaintiff is aggressively litigating and ACI prison officials are dutifully providing
him with court documents, mailing his filings and filing responses. There is no evidence of
irreparable harm. See Paladino v. Newsome, No. CIV. 12-2021, 2012 WL 6005778, at *2
(D.N.J. Nov. 30, 2012) (no irreparable harm when prison officials threaten prisoner to drop
lawsuit but prisoner continues to prosecute case in court).
Plaintiff fares no better on the third and fourth prongs of the injunction inquiry. He
cannot show that the balancing of harm or the public interest require entry of injunctive relief.
At bottom, Plaintiff asks the Court to order ACI prison officials to change the way they conduct
business with no factual evidence they have impeded his access to the Court. On this record,
there is no basis to intrude on the inner workings of the ACI, a subject area that requires strong
deference by this Court. See Lewis, 518 U.S. at 361-62 (court must give adequate deference to
judgment of prison authorities; restrictions to law library for lockdown inmates appropriate); cf.
Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 717 (2005) (Congress anticipated that courts entertaining
prisoner religious practices cases would accord “due deference to the experience and expertise of
prison and jail administrators”). Whether framed as an injunction to bar the two non-party ACI
officials from interfering with Plaintiff’s legal activities, or as a mandatory injunction to require
the officials to provide him with court documents more quickly, Plaintiff simply has not shown
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that he is entitled to the “extraordinary and drastic remedy” of injunctive relief. Peoples Fed.
Sav. Bank, 672 F.3d at 8; see Ross-Simons of Warwick, Inc., 66 F. Supp. 2d at 327.
IV. 	CONCLUSION
Based on the foregoing, I recommend that Plaintiff’s motion for relief against nonparties
(ECF No. 29) be DENIED. Any objection to this report and recommendation must be specific
and must be served and filed with the Clerk of the Court within fourteen (14) days after its
service on the objecting party. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(2); DRI LR Cv 72(d). Failure to file
specific objections in a timely manner constitutes waiver of the right to review by the district
judge and the right to appeal the Court’s decision. See United States v. Lugo Guerrero, 524 F.3d
5, 14 (1st Cir. 2008); Park Motor Mart, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 616 F.2d 603, 605 (1st Cir.
1980).
/s/ Patricia A. Sullivan
PATRICIA A. SULLIVAN
United States Magistrate Judge
June 3, 2015
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