Hector Huertas v. Gina Clark

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• Decided: June 9, 2025
• Docket: 24-2549
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ___________

No. 24-2549 __________

HECTOR HUERTAS, Appellant

v.

GINA CLARK, Superintendent; MADELINE QUINN, Superintendent Assistant __________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 2:23-cv-01685) District Judge: Honorable John M. Gallagher __________

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) March 25, 2025 Before: KRAUSE, PHIPPS, and ROTH, Circuit Judges

(Opinion filed: June 9, 2025) ___________

OPINION * ___________

PER CURIAM

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not constitute binding precedent. Hector Huertas appeals the District Court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of

Gina Clark and Madeline Quinn. We will affirm, with one modification.

I.

Huertas is a Pennsylvania state prisoner. On October 1, 2022, he was charged

with a misconduct for conspiring with another inmate to bring drugs into SCI Chester and

placed in the Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) for 60 days. While in the RHU, he filed

numerous grievances related to his alleged treatment there. In late November 2022, Gina

Clark, the Superintendent of SCI Chester, sought and received approval to have Huertas

transferred from SCI Chester to SCI Forest.

On November 27, 2022, Huertas filed a grievance alleging that the transfer was

requested in retaliation for his prior grievances. That grievance was processed on

December 27, 2022, and denied on January 10, 2023. Huertas’ appeal of that decision to

the facility manager, submitted on March 14, 2023, was denied as untimely on March 28,

2023. Huertas filed the complaint in this case on April 24, 2023, asserting First

Amendment retaliation claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Clark and Madeline

Quinn, then-assistant superintendent of SCI Chester. In the complaint, he alleged that he

never received a response from the facility manager to his March 14th appeal.

The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment in which they asserted that

Huertas’s claims were barred because he never exhausted his administrative remedies as

required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). They submitted evidence that the

Secretary’s Office of Inmate Grievances and Appeals (SOIGA) never received a final

appeal from Huertas, despite notifying him of their decision on several occasions and

2 giving him multiple extensions to do so. When Huertas was deposed during discovery,

he testified that he did, in fact, file the final required appeal. He also attached an affidavit

to his response to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment in which he asserted that

he submitted his appeal to the SOIGA on May 11, 2023.

The District Court granted the motion for summary judgment. It reasoned that

Huertas’ affidavit and deposition testimony failed to create a genuine issue of material

fact regarding whether Huertas properly exhausted his claims because they “are merely

conclusory and self-serving.” ECF No. 44 at 8. Huertas timely filed a motion for

reconsideration, to which he attached a handwritten appeal to the SOIGA dated May 11,

2023. He also filed a notice of appeal. The appeal was stayed pending the District

Court’s disposition of the motion for reconsideration, which it denied. The matter is now

fully briefed.

II.

We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. “We review the District

Court’s grant of summary judgment de novo.” Jutrowski v. Twp. of Riverdale, 904 F.3d

280, 288 (3d Cir. 2018). Summary judgment is proper when, viewing the evidence in the

light most favorable to the nonmoving party and drawing all inferences in favor of that

party, there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled

to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a); Kaucher v. County of Bucks,

455 F.3d 418, 422–23 (3d Cir. 2006). We construe Huertas’s pro se filings liberally, see

Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (per curiam), and may affirm on any basis

3 supported by the record. See Murray v. Bledsoe, 650 F.3d 246, 247 (3d Cir. 2011) (per

curiam).

“Under the PLRA, prisoners who seek to challenge their conditions of

confinement must exhaust all available administrative remedies.” Prater v. Dep’t of

Corr., 76 F.4th 184, 203 (3d Cir. 2023) (citing 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a)). Exhaustion must

be complete before the prisoner files suit. See Ahmed v. Dragovich, 297 F.3d 201, 209

(3d Cir. 2002); Neal v. Goord, 267 F.3d 116, 117-18 (2d Cir. 2001) (“[F]ailure to

[exhaust] must result in dismissal, notwithstanding efforts by the inmate-plaintiff to

pursue administrative remedies while simultaneously seeking relief in federal court.”).

The Pennsylvania DOC’s inmate grievance process requires completion of a three-part

procedure: initial review, appeal to the Facility Manager, and final appeal to the SOIGA.

See Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F.3d 218, 232 (3d Cir. 2004).

The District Court did not err in granting summary judgment after concluding that

Huertas’ claims were barred by his failure to exhaust. Huertas asserted specific facts in

his deposition testimony and affidavit regarding the submission of his final appeal to the

SOIGA, and, under different circumstances, this would have created a genuine issue of

material fact regarding whether his claims were properly exhausted. See Paladino v.

Newsome, 885 F.3d 203, 209 (3d Cir. 2018) (“[A] single, non-conclusory affidavit or

witness’s testimony, when based on personal knowledge and directed at a material issue,

is sufficient to defeat summary judgment.” (quoting Lupyan v. Corinthian Colls., Inc.,

761 F.3d 314, 320 (3d Cir. 2014))). However, Huertas asserts that he submitted that final

appeal to the SOIGA on May 11, 2023—over two weeks after he filed the complaint in

4 this case. Dismissal of his claims was therefore required, 1 and we will affirm the District

Court’s judgment.

However, the District Court did not specify whether its dismissal of Huertas’

claims was with or without prejudice. We will therefore modify its judgment to be

without prejudice. See Garrett v. Wexford Health, 938 F.3d 69, 81 n.16 (3d Cir. 2019)

(explaining that we “allow[] complaints filed prematurely to be dismissed without

prejudice and then refiled when the administrative remedies [are] exhausted”).

1 Huertas argues that our holding in Shifflett v. Korszniak, 934 F.3d 356, 359 (3d Cir. 2019), means that when he did not receive notice of the facility manager’s denial of his intermediate appeal before the expiration of the 15-day deadline prescribed by ADM 804, the prison’s administrative remedies were no longer available to him, and his claims were thus properly exhausted. In Shifflett, we held that a prisoner “exhausted his remedies and acquired the right to come into federal court when the prison did not decide the initial appeal of his grievances within the time limits specified by the grievance policy.” Shifflett does not apply here because unlike in that case, the prison here did timely decide the appeal in accordance with its policy and has presented evidence of numerous efforts to notify Huertas of that decision. 5