On April 9, 2009, an inmate at the John J. Moran correctional facility filed this lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island. He sued the Rhode Island Department of Corrections under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law. The plaintiff alleged that he had been retaliated against for issuing a statement in a local newspaper denouncing a Department of Corrections policy that limited publications available to inmates. Specifically, he asserted that administrators fired him from his job in the prison kitchen and destroyed his personal property. The plaintiff further claimed that, when he attempted to report the retaliation to prison authorities, administrators placed him in solitary confinement and revoked his good time and a recommendation for transfer to a less restrictive facility. Represented by the ACLU of Rhode Island and private counsel, the plaintiff sought a declaratory judgment that these actions violated his First, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. He also asked for a permanent injunction to bar further violations and for monetary damages to compensate him for his harms.

On April 28, the plaintiff filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to prohibit Department of Corrections employees from talking to him about the lawsuit and to enjoin the Department of Corrections from threatening and punishing him because of the lawsuit. But the temporary restraining order was denied by Judge William Smith on April 29. On May 29, 2009, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss.

The motion to dismiss was denied as moot because on January 25, 2010, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint, alleging that he had been transferred to a less safe cell block and placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for filing this lawsuit.

The defendants filed a new motion to dismiss the amended complaint on March 16. On June 25, Judge Smith granted a protective order staying discovery until the motion to dismiss was ruled on. Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond issued a Report and Recommendations on the motion to dismiss on September 17, 2012. 2013 WL 773444. On February 28, 2013, Judge Smith adopted in part the Report and Recommendation. 2012 WL 7634322. Specifically, the court followed the magistrate judge's recommendation to dismiss the Eighth Amendment claims because the plaintiff did not allege the "wanton infliction of [physical] pain" necessary to support such a claim. The court also followed the recommendation to deny the motion to dismiss the First Amendment claim, because the plaintiff had alleged retaliation for public speech protected by the First Amendment. Judge Smith rejected the magistrate judge's recommendation to dismiss the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process claim. While no single instance alleged by the plaintiff might have risen to the level of a due process issue, Judge Smith found that the incidents taken as a whole may have violated the plaintiff's rights.

Following the ruling on the motion to dismiss, the parties engaged in discovery until February 13, 2015, when the defendants filed a motion for summary judgment. The motion was never ruled on, because the case settled on October 27, 2015. The Department of Corrections agreed, while denying liability, to pay the plaintiff $7,500 in damages and attorney’s fees. The parties stipulated to a dismissal and the case is now closed.

Brian Remlinger - 02/16/2019


compress summary