Juan Luis Leonor v. Fred Britten

273 F. App'x 574

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
• Decided: April 11, 2008
• Docket: 06-4065
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

[UNPUBLISHED]

PER CURIAM.

Nebraska inmate Juan Luis Leonor appeals the district court’s 1 adverse grant of summary judgment in his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lawsuit. Having conducted de novo review, see Hartsfield v. Nichols, 511 F.3d 826, 829 (8th Cir.2008), we affirm. We need not reach the issue of qualified immunity, because we find that Leonor failed to establish any trialworthy issues regarding actual injury. See White v. Kautzky, 494 F.3d 677, 680 (8th Cir.2007) (because actual-injury requirement concerns standing to bring claim, actual-injury issue must first be decided; inmate must establish state has not provided opportunity to litigate claim challenging sentence in court of law, which resulted in actual injury, i.e., hindrance of nonfrivolous and arguably meritorious legal claim); Hartsfield, 511 F.3d at 832 (finding speculative inmate’s claim that any postconviction complaint inmate would have filed would have been insufficient); see also Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 354, 116 S.Ct. 2174, 135 L.Ed.2d 606 (1996) (rejecting proposition that state must enable inmate to litigate effectively once in court). We also find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s denial of relief under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e). See Parton v. White, 203 F.3d 552, 556 (8th Cir.2000) (per curiam) (standard of review).

Accordingly, we affirm and we deny as moot defendants’ motion for summary affirmance.

1 . The Honorable Richard G. Kopf, United States District Judge for the District of Nebraska.