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ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
APRIL 5, 2012
JOHN LEY
CLERK
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
BUREAU OF PRISONS,
WARDEN ANTHONY HAYNES,
FCI Jesup, Georgia,
DIRECTOR OF PRISONS HARLEY LIPPIN,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,
ROBERT A. BUTTERWORTH, et al.,
llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
Defendants-Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Georgia
________________________
(April 5, 2012)
problem, and had led to the denial of multiple motions for post-conviction relief.
His complaint sought declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief. After filing the
complaint, but before any defendant filed a response, Hope filed a motion to
amend his complaint to add a claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C.
1346, against the United States. He sought to allege that he had been subjected
to a retaliatory prison transfer resulting in the loss of some of his personal
property.
A magistrate judge screened the complaint under 28 U.S.C. 1915A(a) and
issued a report that recommended the district court dismiss the complaint. The
report concluded that Hope had made no factual allegations against the named
officials, apparently seeking to hold them liable based solely on their supervisory
positions. It also concluded that the federal agencies were not proper defendants
in a Bivens action, and Hope had not met his burden of persuasion to obtain
injunctive relief. The magistrate judge recommended denying Hopes motion to
amend his complaint because the FTCA claim was unrelated to the allegations in
the complaint. Hope filed objections to the report in which he conceded that he
could not assert Bivens claims against the Department of Justice and the Bureau of
Prisons and conceded that his FTCA claim for the loss of his property was
unrelated to his civil rights claims. He then filed a motion to amend his complaint
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to assert a second FTCA claim against the United States based on allegations
already in the complaint.
The district court overruled Hopes objections and adopted the magistrate
judges report and recommendations. The court also denied Hopes second
motion to amend because it concluded that access-to-courts claims could not be
brought against the United States under the FTCA. Hope filed a motion for
reconsideration, which the court denied, and he then filed this appeal.
II.
We review de novo the district courts dismissal of a claim for failure to
state a claim under 28 U.S.C. 1915(A)(b)(1) using the same standards that
govern dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Leal v. Ga.
Dept of Corr., 254 F.3d 1276, 127879 (11th Cir. 2001). We accept[] the
allegations in the complaint as true and constru[e] them in the light most favorable
to the plaintiff. Timson v. Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 872 (11th Cir. 2008). The
complaint must allege facts that, if true, state a claim to relief that is plausible on
its face, but conclusory statements alone are insufficient. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556
U.S. 662, __, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009) (quotation marks omitted). We
construe pro se pleadings liberally, Bingham v. Thomas, 654 F.3d 1171, 1175
(11th Cir. 2011), but pro se litigants must still conform to procedural rules, Albra
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Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons was error, it was invited error.
Hope conceded in his objections to the magistrate judges report that he could not
assert Bivens claims against those two federal agencies. Therefore we do not
review that issue on appeal.
The district court did not err by dismissing Hopes claims against the
individual defendants. Hopes complaint focuses on the individual defendants
roles overseeing the law libraries and the prisons in general. In a Bivens claim,
supervisors are liable for an alleged constitutional violation only if they personally
participate in it or if their actions cause the violation. Gonzalez v. Reno, 325 F.3d
1228, 1234 (11th Cir. 2003). The closest Hopes complaint comes to that kind of
allegation about any of the individual defendants is an allegation that Warden
Haynes did not investigate his claims of innocence. He alleges nothing that if true
would demonstrate that any of the individual defendants were personally
responsible for or causally connected to the supposed constitutional violation
created by the prison libraries alleged deficiencies.1
And the district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied Hope
Supervisor liability under 42 U.S.C. 1983 is essentially the same as under Bivens. See
Doe v. Sch. Bd. Broward Cnty., Fla., 604 F.3d 1248, 1266 (11th Cir. 2004). Thus, even if we
construe the Bivens claim against Florida Attorney General Butterworth as a claim under 1983,
it still fails for the same reason.
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