Filed: Aug. 19, 2014
Latest Update: Mar. 02, 2020
Summary: Case: 14-10605 Date Filed: 08/19/2014 Page: 1 of 7 [DO NOT PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT _ No. 14-10605 Non-Argument Calendar _ D.C. Docket No. 3:12-cv-00735-BJD-PDB LESTER MATHIS, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus DAVID ADAMS, HOWARD CAREY, Defendants-Appellees. _ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida _ (August 19, 2014) Before HULL, MARCUS and BLACK, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Case: 14-10605 Date Filed: 08/19/2014
Summary: Case: 14-10605 Date Filed: 08/19/2014 Page: 1 of 7 [DO NOT PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT _ No. 14-10605 Non-Argument Calendar _ D.C. Docket No. 3:12-cv-00735-BJD-PDB LESTER MATHIS, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus DAVID ADAMS, HOWARD CAREY, Defendants-Appellees. _ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida _ (August 19, 2014) Before HULL, MARCUS and BLACK, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Case: 14-10605 Date Filed: 08/19/2014 ..
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Case: 14-10605 Date Filed: 08/19/2014 Page: 1 of 7
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 14-10605
Non-Argument Calendar
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 3:12-cv-00735-BJD-PDB
LESTER MATHIS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
DAVID ADAMS,
HOWARD CAREY,
Defendants-Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
________________________
(August 19, 2014)
Before HULL, MARCUS and BLACK, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Case: 14-10605 Date Filed: 08/19/2014 Page: 2 of 7
Lester Mathis, an inmate of the Florida Department of Corrections, appeals
the district court’s order striking his objections to the magistrate judge’s report and
recommendation (R&R) and its grant of summary judgment to the defendants on
his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim. Mathis claimed the defendants, prison guards David
Adams and Howard Carey, used excessive force against him during an altercation
in the prison shower room. On appeal, Mathis argues the district court abused its
discretion by not excusing the untimeliness of his objections and that the district
court erred in determining that uncontroverted video evidence so blatantly
contradicted his account that the court was not required to adopt his version of the
facts for the purposes of ruling on the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
Based on the latter argument, Mathis argues the district court erred in granting
summary judgment to the defendants and in determining that they are entitled to
qualified immunity. Upon review, we affirm in part and vacate and remand in part.
I. DISCUSSION
A. Striking Mathis’s Objections to the R&R
Rule 72(b)(2) required Mathis to file and serve his written objections to the
R&R no later than 14 days after the R&R was served on him. However, Rule
6(b)(1)(B) authorized the court, on Mathis’s motion, to extend the time for filing
objections for good cause if Mathis had “failed to act because of excusable
neglect.” “We review a district court’s determination of excusable neglect for
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abuse of discretion.” Advanced Estimating Sys., Inc. v. Riney, 130 F.3d 996, 997
(11th Cir. 1997).
The district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Mathis had
failed to show any justification for the untimeliness of his objections because
Mathis failed to file a motion as required for an after-the-fact extension under Rule
6(b)(1)(B) and because, by Mathis’s own account, his failure to turn his objections
in on time resulted from his decision to wait for the objections to be typewritten,
even though he knew handwritten objections were sufficient. The district court
was therefore within its discretion to strike Mathis’s objections as untimely. See
Pioneer Inv. Servs. Co. v. Brunswick Assocs. Ltd., 507 U.S. 380, 395 (1993)
(considering “whether [the delay] was within the reasonable control of the movant”
in determining whether it resulted from excusable neglect); see also Young v. City
of Palm Bay, Fla.,
358 F.3d 859, 863 (11th Cir. 2004) (“The district court has a
range of options; and so long as the district court does not commit a clear error in
judgment, we will affirm the district court’s decision.”).
B. Granting Summary Judgment to the Defendants
“We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, applying
the same legal standards that controlled the district court’s decision.” Levinson v.
Reliance Standard Life Ins. Co., 245 F.3d 1321, 1325 (11th Cir. 2001). Ordinarily,
this entails viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party,
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but “[w]hen opposing parties tell two different stories, one of which is blatantly
contradicted by the record, so that no reasonable jury could believe it, a court
should not adopt that version of the facts for purposes of ruling on a motion for
summary judgment.” Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 380 (11th Cir. 2007). More
specifically, when uncontroverted video evidence is available, the court should
view the facts in the light depicted by the video recording.
Id. at 380-81.
In the instant case, Mathis and the defendants told contradictory stories
about what happened after the defendants took Mathis and another inmate into the
shower area for their evening showers. According to Mathis, after the defendants
put the other inmate in the far shower stall, the defendants improperly removed his
handcuffs before securing his shower gate and then assaulted him in his stall by
punching and kicking him, stabbing him with the shower keys, and spraying him
with mace. Mathis claimed this assault lasted approximately thirty minutes before
the defendants called for backup.
The defendants, meanwhile, claim that after they brought Mathis to his stall,
he managed to slip his handcuff and punched Adams in the face, requiring Adams
and Carey to use physical force, including using mace, to restrain him. The
defendants further claimed that they had only entered the shower area for
approximately one minute before the assault took place and Adams radioed for
backup.
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The video evidence showed that Adams and Carey brought Mathis to the
shower area at approximately 5:50 p.m. and that approximately one minute after
entering the shower Adams radioed for backup. The video evidence further
established that a total of approximately five minutes elapsed from the time Adams
and Carey first took Mathis into the shower area to the time Mathis was taken
away to receive medical attention. The video evidence did not, however, depict
what happened in the shower stall.
In light of the uncontroverted video evidence, the district court was required
to view the facts in the light depicted by the video even if Mathis’s allegations
contradicted its depiction. Id. As a result, the district court could not credit
Mathis’s allegation that the defendants beat him for thirty minutes, as that
allegation was “blatantly contradicted by the record, so that no reasonably jury
could believe it.”
Id. at 380. However, the district court erred insofar as it credited
the defendants’ version of the facts over Mathis’s on issues not depicted by video
evidence. For example, the video evidence could not directly establish whether
Mathis or Adams struck first. While the video evidence may have made it less
likely that Adams struck first in that it may not have been very sensible to assault a
prisoner and then immediately call for backup, it did not “so utterly discredit” that
allegation “that no reasonable jury could have believed [it].”
Id. And if Adams
struck Mathis first prior to any provocation, such an assault could support a finding
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that Adams applied force “maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of
causing harm” in connection with an excessive-force claim under § 1983. See
Thomas v. Bryant, 614 F.3d 1288, 1304 (11th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks
omitted); see also Griffin v. City of Opa-Locka,
261 F.3d 1295, 1303 (11th Cir.
2001) (“[T]o prevail on a civil rights action under § 1983, a plaintiff must show
that he or she was deprived of a federal right by a person acting under color of state
law.”).
The district court also erred by interpreting our decision in O’Bryant v.
Finch, 637 F.3d 1207 (11th Cir. 2011), to mean that Mathis, in asserting his
excessive-force claim, could not dispute the factual findings made in internal
prison disciplinary hearings. In O’Bryant, we held that “[i]f a prisoner is found
guilty of an actual disciplinary infraction after being afforded due process and
there was evidence to support the disciplinary panel’s fact finding, the prisoner
cannot later state a retaliation claim against the prison employee who reported the
infraction in a disciplinary report.”
Id. at 1215-16. We did not hold in O’Bryant
that internal prison proceedings could usurp judicial fact finding outside the
context of a retaliation claim. The district court erred insofar as it interpreted
O’Bryant to limit its ability to review the factual allegations underlying Mathis’s
excessive-force claim under the traditional standard applicable to a motion for
summary judgment.
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For these reasons, at least one disputed issue of material fact existed, and the
district court erred in granting summary judgment to the defendants. Similarly, the
district court erred in concluding the defendants were entitled to qualified
immunity 1 because in making this determination it failed to resolve a disputed
question of material fact—i.e., whether Adams or Mathis struck first—in Mathis’s
favor. See Bryant v. Jones, 575 F.3d 1281, 1295 (11th Cir. 2009).
II. CONCLUSION
In light of the foregoing, we will affirm the district court’s decision to strike
Mathis’s objections to the R&R as untimely, and we will vacate the district court’s
grant of summary judgment in the defendant’s favor and remand for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
AFFIRMED IN PART, VACATED AND REMANDED IN PART.
1
We review a district court’s decision to grant or deny qualified immunity de novo.
Bryant v. Jones, 575 F.3d 1281, 1294 (11th Cir. 2009).
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