Steve R. Anctil v. Department of Corrections

2018 ME 53

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine
• Decided: April 19, 2018
• Status: Published

Opinion

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Reporter of Decisions Decision: 2018 ME 53 Docket: Ken-17-417 Submitted On Briefs: April 10, 2018 Decided: April 19, 2018

Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.

STEVE R. ANCTIL

v.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

PER CURIAM

[¶1] On August 18, 2017, Steve R. Anctil, an inmate at the Maine State

Prison, filed a petition in the Superior Court (Kennebec County) pursuant to

M.R. Civ. P. 80C, seeking review of a disciplinary decision of the Department of

Corrections. In his petition, Anctil identified the matter as “Disciplinary Case

Number MSP-2017-1051”; asserted that several procedural and constitutional

errors were committed in the report of, hearing on, and decision in that matter;

and requested that the Superior Court vacate the disciplinary decision and

award damages. With the petition, Anctil filed an application to proceed

without payment of fees, an indigency affidavit, and a certificate with attached

documentation establishing the balance in his prisoner trust account. Anctil

appeals from the court’s (Marden, J.) dismissal of his petition, which the court 2

entered sua sponte in a one-sentence decision: “After review of the pleadings

the Court ORDERS: case dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.”1 The record is

otherwise devoid of any indication of the basis on which the court concluded

that it lacked jurisdiction.

[¶2] Seven months before the Superior Court dismissed this petition, we

addressed the court’s similar action in another matter. In Mutty v. Department

of Corrections, as here, an inmate filed a petition pursuant to Rule 80C, seeking

review of a disciplinary decision of the Department of Corrections. 2017 ME 7,

¶ 3, 153 A.3d 775. The Superior Court, sua sponte, dismissed the matter for

failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted, stating, “The court

cannot determine its jurisdiction in the absence of its determination of the date

of the final agency action.” Id. ¶ 4 (quotation marks omitted). We determined

that although the court may dismiss a matter when a jurisdictional defect is

“clear from the petition, or when a party in the case raises the jurisdictional

defect, and the court then determines that the petition was untimely,” nothing

in the Maine Administrative Procedure Act, 5 M.R.S. §§ 8001-11008 (2017),

required that the petitioner allege the specific date of the final agency action.

1 The Department did not appear in the matter before the trial court and is not a party to the

appeal. 3

Mutty, 2017 ME 7, ¶¶ 10, 12, 153 A.3d 775. We held, “A petition that states a

claim for relief and facially meets statutory requirements is, at least

preliminarily, sufficient to establish jurisdiction.” Id. ¶ 11. We therefore

vacated the dismissal in the absence of any “affirmative basis in the record” to

support it. Id. ¶¶ 12-13; see Fleming v. Comm’r, Dep’t of Corr., 2002 ME 74,

¶¶ 8-12, 795 A.2d 692 (vacating the dismissal of an inmate’s Rule 80C petition

and holding that the petitioner’s failures to call his pleading a “petition,” strictly

comply with notice requirements, and ensure that the Department filed the

agency record did not deprive the court of jurisdiction even when the pleading

included a request for damages and injunctive relief); cf. Tomer v. Me. Human

Rights Comm’n, 2008 ME 190, ¶¶ 14-16, 962 A.2d 335 (affirming the dismissal

of a Rule 80C action after concluding that, on its face, the petition did not seek

review of any final agency action).

[¶3] Just as was true in Mutty, no jurisdictional defect is apparent from

the record here. We therefore vacate the judgment dismissing Anctil’s

complaint and remand the matter to the Superior Court for the court to act on

Anctil’s application to proceed without payment of fees. See M.R. Civ. P. 91;

Mutty, 2017 ME 7, ¶ 13, 153 A.3d 775. 4

The entry is:

Judgment vacated. Remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Steve R. Anctil, appellant pro se

Kennebec County Superior Court docket number AP-2017-45 FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY