Filed: Feb. 22, 2006
Latest Update: Feb. 21, 2020
Summary: FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS February 22, 2006 TENTH CIRCUIT Elisabeth A. Shumaker Clerk of Court ANDREW WOLTERS, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. No. 05-3408 (D. Ct. No. 05-CV-3034-SAC) J.T. SMITH; D.W. REED; FNU LNU, (D. Kan.) Unknown BOP Employees, Defendants - Appellees. ORDER AND JUDGMENT* Before TACHA, Chief Circuit Judge, HARTZ, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges. After examining the briefs and the appellate record, this three-judge panel has deter
Summary: FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS February 22, 2006 TENTH CIRCUIT Elisabeth A. Shumaker Clerk of Court ANDREW WOLTERS, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. No. 05-3408 (D. Ct. No. 05-CV-3034-SAC) J.T. SMITH; D.W. REED; FNU LNU, (D. Kan.) Unknown BOP Employees, Defendants - Appellees. ORDER AND JUDGMENT* Before TACHA, Chief Circuit Judge, HARTZ, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges. After examining the briefs and the appellate record, this three-judge panel has determ..
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FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
February 22, 2006
TENTH CIRCUIT Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
ANDREW WOLTERS,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v. No. 05-3408
(D. Ct. No. 05-CV-3034-SAC)
J.T. SMITH; D.W. REED; FNU LNU, (D. Kan.)
Unknown BOP Employees,
Defendants - Appellees.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT*
Before TACHA, Chief Circuit Judge, HARTZ, and TYMKOVICH, Circuit Judges.
After examining the briefs and the appellate record, this three-judge panel has
determined unanimously that oral argument would not be of material assistance in the
determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The
case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument.
Plaintiff-Appellant Andrew Wolters, a prisoner in federal custody, filed this pro se
Bivens suit against named and unnamed Bureau of Prison (“BOP”) employees. The
District Court dismissed Mr. Wolters’s case, disposing of some claims as time-barred and
*
This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of
law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. This court generally disfavors the
citation of orders and judgments; nevertheless, an order and judgment may be cited under
the terms and conditions of 10th Cir. R. 36.3.
the remaining claims for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. We take jurisdiction
under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and AFFIRM.
I. BACKGROUND
Mr. Wolters filed a three-count complaint on January 26, 2005. In Count One Mr.
Wolters alleges that in July 2002, he was assaulted by BOP correction officer D.W. Reed,
who later filed a false incident report charging Mr. Wolters with fighting. In Count Two
he alleges that BOP correction officer J.T. Smith assaulted him in November 2003 in
retaliation for his seeking redress for the July incident involving Mr. Reed. In Count
Three Mr. Wolters alleges that unknown prison officials engaged in a variety of other
retaliatory acts due to his pursuit of these and other federal claims.
In accordance with the requirements of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, the
District Court ordered Mr. Wolters to provide documentation demonstrating that he had
exhausted available administrative remedies. See 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). After reviewing
Mr. Wolters’s response, the District Court found that Count One and part of Count Three
were time-barred and dismissed those claims with prejudice. The District Court
dismissed the remaining claims for failure to meet the total exhaustion rule. See Ross v.
County of Bernalillo,
365 F.3d 1181, 1189–90 (10th Cir. 2004) (adopting the total
exhaustion requirement which ordinarily requires a district court to dismiss a prisoner’s
entire complaint without prejudice if it contains any unexhausted claims). Mr. Wolters
timely appeals the dismissal of his complaint.
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II. DISCUSSION
A. Time-Barred Claims
We review the application of a statute of limitations de novo. Nelson v. State
Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co.,
419 F.3d 1117, 1119 (10th Cir. 2005).
Mr. Wolters’s Bivens claims are “subject to the statute of limitations of the general
personal injury statute in the state where the action arose.” Indus. Constructors Corp. v.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation,
15 F.3d 963, 968 (10th Cir. 1994). In Kansas, that time
period is two years. See Kan. Stat. Ann. § 60-513(a)(4). Because the alleged assault in
Count One and related incidents in Count Three occurred two-and-a-half years prior to
the filing of this complaint, the District Court dismissed that portion of Mr. Wolters’s suit
as time-barred.
On appeal, Mr. Wolters argues that the District Court erred when it dismissed
Count One and part of Count Three because those claims are related to a case that was
filed in 2003, well within the applicable statute of limitations period. The prior case was
dismissed without prejudice on April 1, 2004, for failure to exhaust administrative
remedies. See Wolters v. Conner,
2004 WL 723585 at *6 (D. Kan. Apr. 1, 2004). The
fact that Mr. Wolters made these claims in a prior case, however, is irrelevant to the
District Court’s application of the two-year statute of limitations in the instant case. First,
to the extent that Mr. Wolters argues that the claims in his 2005 complaint relate back to
the prior case, it is well-settled that “a separately filed claim, as opposed to an amendment
or a supplementary pleading, does not relate back to a previously filed claim.” Benge v.
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United States,
17 F.3d 1286, 1288 (10th Cir. 1994). Second, although Kansas does have
a savings statute, see Garrett v. Fleming,
362 F.3d 692, 697 (10th Cir. 2004) (applying
state’s tolling provision in Bivens claim), it permits refiling outside the applicable statute
of limitations only when the prior case was dismissed without prejudice and when the
refiled case was brought within six months of the original dismissal, see Kan. Stat. Ann.
§ 60-518. Here, because Mr. Wolters’s 2005 claim was filed nearly ten months after the
dismissal of his earlier case, the Kansas savings statute is inapplicable. Moreover, it
appears that when Mr. Wolters’s prior claim was dismissed, he still had three months to
refile before the statute of limitations expired. Therefore, the District Court correctly
dismissed Count One and portions of Count Three as time-barred.
B. Failure to Exhaust Administrative Remedies
Mr. Wolters next argues that the District Court held him to a standard that was too
stringent for a pro se plaintiff when it dismissed his remaining claims for failure to
exhaust administrative remedies. He also argues that the court misconstrued his
arguments relating to alleged First Amendment violations and that the court ignored
material from his 2003 complaint that was relevant to the issue of exhaustion.
“To ensure compliance with [§ 1997e(a)], a prisoner must provide a
comprehensible statement of his claim and also either attach copies of administrative
proceedings or describe their disposition with specificity.” Steele v. Fed. Bureau of
Prisons,
355 F.3d 1204, 1211 (10th Cir. 2003). We review de novo a district court’s
dismissal for failure to exhaust administrative remedies under § 1997e(a). Jernigan v.
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Stuchell,
304 F.3d 1030, 1032 (10th Cir. 2002).
After carefully reviewing the record, we find Mr. Wolters’s arguments to be
without merit. First, the District Court’s order more than adequately demonstrates that
Mr. Wolters’s claims were considered with care and that Mr. Wolters was not held to the
same standard that would be expected of an attorney. Moreover, the record clearly
supports the conclusion that several of Mr. Wolters’s claims of retaliation were not
administratively exhausted prior to filing this suit.1 Because the presence of a single
unexhausted claim mandates the dismissal of the entire complaint, see
Ross, 365 F.3d at
1189, the District Court did not err in dismissing Mr. Wolters’s remaining claims.
III. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the District Court’s dismissal with prejudice of Mr. Wolters’s claims
regarding the 2002 incident, and the dismissal without prejudice of all other claims for
failure to exhaust administrative remedies completely. Mr. Wolters’s motion for oral
argument and request for excerpts of the record from a prior case are DENIED. Finally,
1
Specifically, the District Court found that the plaintiff did not demonstrate
exhaustion pertaining to his claims that: (1) prison administrators attempted to frame him
for drug use by obtaining urine samples with the intent to switch the samples with that of
other inmates on at least fifty occasions; (2) unnamed prison staff instructed the law
library staff to remove legal resources and a typewriter to interfere with his access to the
courts; and (3) he received at least fifty false incident reports in retaliation for his use of
legal and administrative remedies.
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Mr. Wolters is reminded that he is obligated to continue making partial payments toward
the balance of his appellate filing fee until it is paid in full.
ENTERED FOR THE COURT,
Deanell Reece Tacha
Circuit Judge
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