Carr v. Tewalt

District Court, D. Idaho·Decided August 11, 2022·No. 1:21-cv-00409·Unknown

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO

CASEY FARLEY, SHAWN PRUETT, RICHARD ROA, OMAR PADILLA, MATTHEW KITRELL, RONALD Case No. 1:21-cv-00409-BLW BAKER, RANDALL ERICKSON, RICHARD ROA, KYLIE HODGES- SECOND SUCCESSIVE FOOTE, SCOTT STONE, SCREENING ORDER CHRISTOPHER HARDING, BERIN AYMON, KYLE LASATER, DENNIS PETERSON,

Plaintiffs,

vs.

DIRECTOR JOSH TEWALT, CHAD PAGE, AMANDA GENTRY, JAY CHRISTENSEN, TIMOTHY McKAY, TYLER NICODEMUS, WARDEN RICHARDSON, LT. GIBNEY, MARK KUNBINSKI, and RACHAEL ALTIG,

Defendants.

Plaintiffs are prisoners in custody of the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC), who reside in the close custody unit of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution (IMSI). They desire to have their claims joined as a class action. The Court earlier notified the parties that “after the Plaintiffs submit their amended complaints, the Court will reconsider the appropriate procedural vehicle for the claims.” Initial Review Order, Dkt. 19, p. 1. The IMSI inmates who desire to proceed have submitted their Amended Complaints or notices to join. REVIEW OF SEVERANCE OF JODY CARR CLAIMS AND REASSIGNMENT REQUESTS IN AMENDED COMPLAINTS

Preliminarily, the Court must address the current Plaintiffs’ questions why the similar claims of former plaintiff Jody Carr have been severed from this action and why he will not be permitted to participate in this action. Carr prepared and filed the initial Complaint in this matter for several different prisoners, and he drafted all of the Amended Complaints. The first reason Carr’s claims have been severed into a separate action is that some of his allegations and claims may violate a confidential “Global Settlement Agreement”

(GSA) that Carr entered into in 2019 for the purpose of settling numerous cases with IDOC personnel. Whether Carr’s current allegations violate the confidential GSA cannot be briefed or discussed among other parties, including the current Plaintiffs in this action. Carr agreed that he was not permitted to take certain actions as a result of the GSA. Carr recently has been found in violation of the GSA in Case No. 1:20-cv-00146-DCN (Dkt.

44, Sealed Order). Second, Carr no longer resides at IMSI. He has been moved to a lower security classification, which he has requested many times. Therefore, he does not qualify to be a class representative for the IMSI close custody tier inmates’ claims. If current Plaintiffs’ claims qualify for class action status, the Court will appoint counsel, and counsel will

nominate class representatives. Third, Carr has a federal court history of inserting himself into other inmates’ actions to assert speculative, exaggerated claims that were unauthorized by those inmates and to file multiple motions unauthorized by court order. To inform the remaining

Plaintiffs of the reasons for the Court’s concerns about Carr’s actions in this matter, the Court provides the following instances from three of many other cases into which Carr has interjected himself: Case No. 1:20-cv-00059-BLW In Case No. 1:20-cv-00059-BLW (Case 59), the inmate asserted a straightforward

Eighth Amendment medical care claim in a complaint. The inmate was permitted to proceed. Carr prepared a motion to amend the complaint, asserting that Defendants exhibited more than deliberate indifference toward the inmate’s condition, intending to “murder” the inmate. Dkt. 21 p. 2, in Case 59. Murder is an especially serious allegation. The Court issued the following warning

to the plaintiff: Plaintiff has submitted a Motion to File an Amended Complaint and a proposed Amended Complaint. It is clear from the face and content of Plaintiff’s recent filings that he has engaged the help of Jody Carr, a frequent pro se prisoner litigator in this Court, whose habit is to include allegations of conspiracy and murder in all of his own cases.

Mr. Carr has recently “helped” several other prisoners amend their pleadings to assert that prison officials and medical professionals are conspiring against them and attempting to murder them. It is implausible that prison officials and medical professionals are engaged in so many conspiracies and that they have any motivation to “murder” prisoners—especially given that the common denominator in several recent lawsuits containing these allegations is Mr. Carr. Conclusory allegations that prison official defendants are trying to kill a prisoner, for example “by forcing him to work in extreme conditions despite his blood pressure condition,” do not meet the Iqbal/Twombly standard and do not support a claim for “imminent harm” under 28 U.S.C. §1915(g). See Martin v. Shelton, 319 F.3d 1048, 1050 (8th Cir. 2003); Brown v. Johnson, 387 F.3d 1344, 1350 (11th Cir. 2004).

The intrusion of Mr. Carr into this litigation has caused Plaintiff to edge into the unfortunate category ranging from frivolous filers to vexatious litigants. Plaintiffs in this category often warrant imposition of restrictions on them to avoid their burying plausible constitutional issues under a mountain of frivolous and speculative allegations and to avoid their wasting of scarce public resources. Placing Plaintiff in that category is not fair to him, unless he continues in that vein after fair warning by the Court. This Order serves as that fair warning to Plaintiff.

As to Mr. Carr, the Supreme Court of the United States has held that prisoners do not have a freestanding constitutional right to provide legal assistance to other inmates. Shaw v. Murphy, 532 U.S. 223 (2001). In Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483 (1969), the Supreme Court acknowledged that states “may impose reasonable restrictions and restraints upon the acknowledged propensity of prisoners to abuse both the giving and the seeking of assistance in the preparation of applications for relief: for example, by limitations on the time and location of such activities.” Id. at 490.

Here, the Court will not permit Plaintiff to work with Mr. Carr in Plaintiff’s case.

That means Plaintiff should not seek legal advice from Carr, have Carr write out legal documents that Plaintiff can reprint in his own handwriting, or otherwise have Carr involved in this action. Plaintiff is free to seek the help of another prisoner if he is unable to pursue his litigation on his own.

Case 59, Dkt. 25, pp. 3-5. In response to this letter, Jody Carr wrote a letter of apology to the Court. Case 59, Dkt. 27. Carr misrepresented the facts of his crime in his letter, asserting that he was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder for an accident, not mentioning his

intentional act after the accident that caused the victim’s death. Compare Case No. 1:20- 00059-BLW, Dkt. 27, with Case No. 3:10-cv-00237-EJL, Dkt. 75, p. 2. In response to the Court’s Order permitting the inmate to file a new amended complaint without the “assistance” of Carr, the inmate submitted the following Declaration:

I hereby state that inmate Jody Carr was the inmate who led me, and counseled me into filing the proposed amended complaint in this case.

When the initial complaint was filed, and when this Court issued the initial review order, I was housed/incarcerated at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution.

Eventually, I was moved to the Idaho State Corrections Center.

Upon arrival at the Idaho Correctional Center, I was approached by inmate Jody Carr. Inmate Jody Carr asked me if I had any pending legal cases, and if I did, could he please read any Court orders.

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Carr v. Tewalt, (D. Idaho 2022).

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