Filed: Nov. 22, 1995
Latest Update: Mar. 02, 2020
Summary: IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 94-50782 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS COOPER, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus O. A. BROOKSHIRE, Sheriff of Ector County, Texas, ET AL., Defendant-Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas November 22, 1995 Before SMITH, WIENER, AND DeMOSS, Circuit Judges: WIENER, Circuit Judge: The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether, for the purposes of FED. R. CIV. P. 5(e), a prisoner's pro se complain
Summary: IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 94-50782 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS COOPER, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus O. A. BROOKSHIRE, Sheriff of Ector County, Texas, ET AL., Defendant-Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas November 22, 1995 Before SMITH, WIENER, AND DeMOSS, Circuit Judges: WIENER, Circuit Judge: The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether, for the purposes of FED. R. CIV. P. 5(e), a prisoner's pro se complaint..
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IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
No. 94-50782
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS COOPER,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
O. A. BROOKSHIRE, Sheriff of
Ector County, Texas, ET AL.,
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Texas
November 22, 1995
Before SMITH, WIENER, AND DeMOSS, Circuit Judges:
WIENER, Circuit Judge:
The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether, for the
purposes of FED. R. CIV. P. 5(e), a prisoner's pro se complaint is
"filed" on the date it is properly delivered to prison officials
pursuant to the prison's established procedures for prisoners'
mail,1 rather than the date it is received by the clerk of court.
1
We do not here address situations in which a prison maintains
facilities for inmates to deposit legal mail directly into a
mailbox of the U.S. Postal Service, and therefore the pro se
prisoner plaintiff in fact sends legal filings via the U.S. Postal
Agreeing with the conclusions uniformly reached by all four circuit
courts that have considered this question,2 we hold that Plaintiff-
Appellant Christopher Columbus Cooper's complaint against prison
officials in Ector County, Texas (Ector County officials) should be
deemed filed as of the date that he duly submitted it to prison
authorities for forwarding to the clerk of court. We therefore
reverse the magistrate judge's order granting the Ector County
officials' motion to dismiss, and remand for further proceedings.
I
FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
While incarcerated in a federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma,
Cooper drafted a pro se complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (§
1983). On July 11, 1994, a Monday, Cooper signed the complaint
before a notary public and deposited it in the prison's legal mail
system.3 Prison authorities forwarded Cooper's complaint to the
district court clerk, who received it on July 15, 1994, a Friday.
This case hinges on that date of receipt, as Cooper's cause of
Service.
2
See Dory v. Ryan, 999 F.2d 679 (2d Cir. 1993), modified on
reh'g on other grounds,
25 F.3d 81 (2d Cir. 1994); Garvey v.
Vaughn,
993 F.2d 776 (11th Cir. 1993); Lewis v. Richmond City
Police Department,
947 F.2d 733 (4th Cir. 1991); see also Faile v.
Upjohn,
988 F.2d 985, 988 (9th Cir. 1993) ("[W]e see no reason to
treat other civil `filing' deadlines differently than the filing
for a civil appeal.").
3
The Ector County officials contended at oral argument that
Cooper used the U.S. Postal Service to mail the complaint; however,
the record clearly establishes that Cooper in fact used the
prison's mailing system.
2
action accrued exactly two years and one day earlier.4 The
magistrate judge who heard the case found that a two-year statute
of limitations applied, and recommended dismissing Cooper's claim
as untimely. Cooper objected, arguing that under the Supreme
Court's holding in Houston v. Lack,5 his complaint should be
considered filed as of the date he placed it in the prison's mail
system. The district court agreed with Cooper and returned the
case to the original magistrate judge for further proceedings. The
Ector County officials then moved to dismiss on the grounds that
the complaint was time-barred. After both parties consented to
have the magistrate judge order the entry of a final judgment
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(c)--and despite the prior opinion of
the district judge to the contrary--the magistrate judge granted
the Ector County officials' motion and dismissed the complaint as
untimely.6 Cooper appealed the magistrate judge's order directly
4
Cooper's complaint asserted that the Ector County officials
violated his constitutional rights by placing him in solitary
confinement without notice or hearing and in a manner that amounted
to cruel and unusual punishment. The relevant period of solitary
confinement ended on July 14, 1992.
The complaint also asserted constitutional violations arising
from earlier periods of incarceration in the Ector County jail.
The magistrate judge dismissed those claims as clearly time-barred,
and Cooper does not appeal their dismissal.
5
487 U.S. 266 (1988).
6
For a magistrate judge to decline to follow a district
court's opinion may be unusual, but when (1) both parties consent
to the jurisdiction of the magistrate judge and (2) the district
court specifically designates the magistrate judge to conduct civil
proceedings, the magistrate judge "may act in the capacity of a
district court judge" and is not bound by prior opinions expressed
by the district judge. See McGinnis v. Shalala, 2 F.3d 548, 551
(5th Cir. 1993), cert. denied,
114 S. Ct. 1293 (1994); see also 28
U.S.C. § 636(c) (1988 & Supp. V 1993); Neals v. Norwood,
59 F.3d
3
to this court.7
II.
ANALYSIS
In Houston v. Lack, a state prisoner drafted a pro se notice
of appeal from the dismissal of a habeas corpus petition. He
deposited the notice into the prison mail system three days before
the thirty-day filing deadline set by FED. R. APP. P. 4(a)(1); but
the district court clerk did not receive the notice of appeal until
one day after the expiration of the filing period.8 The Supreme
Court held that the notice of appeal had been filed as of the
moment it was delivered to prison officials.9
A bright-line "mailbox rule" for pro se prisoners was thereby
established. The Supreme Court recognized that without a mailbox
rule, prisoners acting pro se would be unduly prejudiced in their
attempts to exercise their rights under the law:
Unskilled in law, unaided by counsel, and unable to leave
the prison, [a prisoner's] control over the processing of
his notice necessarily ceases as soon as he hands it over
to the only public officials to whom he has access--the
prison authorities--and the only information he will
likely have is the date he delivered the notice to those
prison authorities and the date ultimately stamped on his
notice.10
530, 532 (5th Cir. 1995).
7
See 28 U.S.C. § 636(c).
8
Houston v.
Lack, 487 U.S. at 268-69.
9
Id. at 270.
10
Houston, 487 U.S. at 271-72; see also Thompson v. Rasberry,
993 F.2d 513, 515 (5th Cir. 1993) (extending Houston's mailbox rule
to pro se prisoners' written objections to a magistrate's proposed
findings and recommendations).
4
The Houston Court reasoned that the mailbox rule also pretermits
time-consuming examinations of the circumstances behind any delay
in the delivery of prisoners' documents to the court clerk.11 The
Court emphasized the inevitable complexity of such examinations, as
"the pro se prisoner has no choice but to entrust the forwarding of
his notice of appeal to prison authorities whom he cannot control
. . . and who may have every reason to delay."12
The concerns underlying the Houston decision clearly apply to
instant case. Prisoners filing pro se complaints face the same
limitations as prisoners filing pro se notices of appeal: They
cannot visit the courthouse to ensure that their pleadings are
stamped "filed"; and they can neither place their complaints
personally in the hands of United States postal workers nor phone
the district court to ascertain that the papers have been
delivered.13 Moreover, by definition they have no attorney to
institute and monitor the process.
Finally, any delay between the submission of a complaint to
prison authorities and its arrival at the courthouse, like any
delay in the arrival of a notice of appeal, raises difficult issues
of possible neglect or even intentional interference. The
temptation for willful obstruction recognized in Houston as to
notices of appeal is even more compelling in the case of
complaints: When prisoners appeal, they have already lost the
11
See Houston, 487 U.S. at 275-76.
12
Houston, 487 U.S. at 271; see also
id. at 276.
13
See Houston, 487 U.S. at 270-71; Dory,
999 F.2d 682.
5
first round. If prison authorities have an incentive to delay a
filing under those circumstances,14 then they have an even greater
motivation to thwart the timely filing of new claims the merits of
which have yet to be determined.15
It is true that the Houston holding was based on an
interpretation of FED. R. APP. P. 4(a)(1) (Rule 4(a)(1)), whereas
the instant case involves FED. R. CIV. P. 5(e) (Rule 5(e)).
Regardless, the language of both rules is "so similar that an
identical interpretation [is] warranted."16 Both rules plainly
require that litigation papers be filed with the court clerk,17 yet
the Supreme Court refused to read the black letter of Rule 4(a)(1)
in a vacuum. Instead, the Court viewed the rule's language in the
broader context of its dominant purpose and overall equity, and
held that the filing requirement is met when a prisoner delivers a
14
See Houston, 487 U.S. at 271.
15
It should be noted that Cooper filed his § 1983 complaint
against the Ector County officials while he was incarcerated in an
independent, federal prison system. The authorities who received
his complaint therefore had less reason to delay than if they
themselves had been named defendants. Nonetheless, this
distinction is insufficient to merit the conclusion that the
Houston rule should not apply to Cooper's case, as it can be
assumed that prison officials generally are less than enthusiastic
about facilitating the lawsuits of prisoners.
16
Garvey, 993 F.2d at 782 (citing
Lewis, 947 F.2d at 736).
17
Compare FED. R. APP. P. 4(a)(1) ("[T]he notice of appeal
required by Rule 3 must filed with the clerk of the district court
within 30 days of the date of entry of the judgment . . . .") with
FED. R. CIV. P. 5(e) ("The filing of the papers with the court as
required by these rules shall be made by filing them with the clerk
of the court . . . .").
6
pro se notice of appeal to prison authorities.18 Noting that the
Houston opinion nowhere indicates that it should be limited to
habeas appeals,19 we join all other circuit courts that have
considered this issue and extend the Court's conclusion to the
filing of a prisoner's pro se complaint under Rule 5(e).
The Ector County officials argue that we should not extend the
Houston analysis to the filing of complaints, as Rule 4(a)(1)
allows only thirty days for the filing of a notice of appeal,
compared to the two-year period available for the filing of a §
1983 complaint.20 We decline to credit this argument for two
18
See Houston, 487 U.S. at 270. In 1993, after the Houston
opinion was handed down, FED. R. APP. P. 4 was amended to adopt the
mailbox rule for all prisoner notices of appeal. Rule 4(c) now
reads, "If an inmate confined in an institution files a notice of
appeal in either a civil case or a criminal case, the notice of
appeal is timely filed if it is deposited in the institution's
internal mail system on or before the last day for filing." See
FED. R. APP. P. 4(c).
The fact that similar changes have not been made to FED. R.
CIV. P. 5(e) is of no moment: Different committees draft changes to
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of
Appellate Procedure; and neither the committees nor Congress is
under an obligation to consider and incorporate every possible
implication of Supreme Court rulings.
19
See Hamm v. Moore, 984 F.2d 890, 892 (8th Cir. 1992) (citing
Hostler v. Groves,
912 F.2d 1158, 1161 (9th Cir. 1990), cert.
denied,
498 U.S. 1120 (1991)).
20
As there is no federal statute of limitations for § 1983
actions, the federal courts borrow the forum state's general
personal injury limitations period. See Jackson v. Johnson, 950
F.2d 263, 265 (5th Cir. 1992); Ali v. Higgs,
892 F.2d 438, 439 (5th
Cir. 1990). The applicable statute of limitations in Texas is two
years. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE ANN. § 16.003(a) (Vernon's
1986).
The Ector County officials also attempt to distinguish this
case from Houston on the grounds that the failure to file a notice
of appeal in a timely manner raises a jurisdictional barrier to
review, whereas the filing of a complaint beyond the limitations
period raises a procedural roadblock. This court has already
7
reasons. First, the difference in filing periods fairly reflects
the relative degrees of difficulty of the tasks involved. A notice
of appeal need only list the name of the appellant, the order or
judgment appealed from, and the name of the court to which the
appeal is taken.21 The notice typically consists of but one fairly
formulaic, easily adaptable paragraph.
A complaint, by contrast, must state the basis for the
jurisdiction of the trial court, a description of a claim or claims
upon which relief can be granted, and a demand for judgment for
relief sought.22 Frequently complaints contain multiple claims,23
and relief "in the alternative or of several different types may be
demanded."24 Thus, even though technical forms of pleadings are no
longer required,25 and pleadings--particularly pro se pleadings--are
generally construed liberally,26 a complaint requires considerably
more background research and individual attention than does a
extended Houston's mailbox rule to a purely procedural issue--the
filing of written objections to a magistrate's proposed findings
and recommendations. See Thompson, 993 F.2d at 515. Thus, in the
instant case, any dissimilarity between jurisdictional and
procedural issues amounts to a "distinction without a difference."
21
FED. R. APP. P. 3(c).
22
FED. R. CIV. P. 8(a).
23
FED. R. CIV. P. 8(e)(2).
24
FED. R. CIV. P. 8(a)(3).
25
FED. R. CIV. P. 8(e)(1).
26
See, e.g., Baton Rouge Bldg. & Const. v. Jacobs Constructors,
804 F.2d 879, 881 (5th Cir. 1986).
8
notice of appeal.27 Moreover, a great majority of prisoner pro se
filings consist of § 1983 complaints, which in almost every
instance must comply with the heightened pleading standard of
specificity.28
The Ector County officials' argument also fails because it is
blind to the underlying policy of the Houston opinion:
[Houston] simply provides that a statute of limitations
has the same practical effect on every pro se prisoner
litigant it governs. The length of the time restriction
involved is irrelevant. Limitations periods themselves
make no distinction between those who file early and
those who file late. The Houston rule merely serves to
create functionally equivalent time bars and provide
equal access to the courts for pro se prisoner
litigants.29
We are satisfied that pro se prisoner litigants are at least
as needful of a level playing field when filing complaints as are
such litigants when filing notices of appeal. Accordingly, we
reverse the magistrate judge's order dismissing Cooper's complaint
as untimely, and remand for further proceedings.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
27
Cooper's complaint, for example, comprises more than eighteen
handwritten pages.
28
See, e.g., Schultea v. Wood, 47 F.3d 1427 (5th Cir. 1995) (en
banc) (interpreting Elliott v. Perez,
751 F.2d 1472 (5th Cir.
1985)).
29
Lewis, 947 F.2d at 735.
9
