Lee #892205 v. Saginaw Correctional Facility et al

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
______
DAMARCUS JAVELL LEE,
Plaintiff,
v.
SAGINAW CORRECTIONAL
FACILITY et al.,
Defendant.
____________________________/
Case No. 1:25-cv-1202
Honorable Sally J. Berens
OPINION
This is a civil rights action brought by a state prisoner under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The Court
has granted Plaintiff leave to proceed in forma pauperis in a separate order. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
§ 636(c) and Rule 73 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Plaintiff consented to proceed in all
matters in this action under the jurisdiction of a United States Magistrate Judge. (ECF No. 1,
PageID.4.)
This case is presently before the Court for preliminary review under the Prison Litigation
Reform Act, Pub. L. No. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321 (1996) (PLRA), pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
§§ 1915(e)(2) and 1915A(b), and 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c). The Court is required to conduct this initial
review prior to the service of the complaint. See In re Prison Litig. Reform Act, 105 F.3d 1131,
1131, 1134 (6th Cir. 1997); McGore v. Wrigglesworth, 114 F.3d 601, 604–05 (6th Cir. 1997).
Service of the complaint on the named defendants is of particular significance in defining
a putative defendant’s relationship to the proceedings. “An individual or entity named as a
defendant is not obliged to engage in litigation unless notified of the action, and brought under a
court’s authority, by formal process.” Murphy Bros., Inc. v. Michetti Pipe Stringing, Inc., 526 U.S.
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344, 347 (1999). “Service of process, under longstanding tradition in our system of justice, is
fundamental to any procedural imposition on a named defendant.” Id. at 350. “[O]ne becomes a
party officially, and is required to take action in that capacity, only upon service of a summons or
other authority-asserting measure stating the time within which the party served must appear and
defend.” Id. (citations omitted). That is, “[u]nless a named defendant agrees to waive service, the
summons continues to function as the sine qua non directing an individual or entity to participate
in a civil action or forgo procedural or substantive rights.” Id. at 351. Therefore, the PLRA, by
requiring courts to review and even resolve a plaintiff’s claims before service, creates a
circumstance where there may only be one party to the proceeding—the plaintiff—at the district
court level and on appeal. See, e.g., Conway v. Fayette Cnty. Gov’t, 212 F. App’x 418 (6th Cir.
2007) (“Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the district court screened the complaint and dismissed it
without prejudice before service was made upon any of the defendants . . . [such that] . . . only [the
plaintiff] [wa]s a party to this appeal.”).
Here, Plaintiff has consented to a United States Magistrate Judge conducting all
proceedings in this case under 28 U.S.C. § 636(c). That statute provides that “[u]pon the consent
of the parties, a full-time United States magistrate judge . . . may conduct any or all
proceedings . . . and order the entry of judgment in the case . . . .” 28 U.S.C. § 636(c). Because the
named Defendants have not yet been served, the undersigned concludes that they are not presently
parties whose consent is required to permit the undersigned to conduct a preliminary review under
the PLRA, in the same way they are not parties who will be served with or given notice of this
opinion. See Neals v. Norwood, 59 F.3d 530, 532 (5th Cir. 1995) (“The record does not contain a
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consent from the defendants[; h]owever, because they had not been served, they were not parties
to this action at the time the magistrate entered judgment.”).1
Under the PLRA, the Court is required to dismiss any prisoner action brought under federal
law if the complaint is frivolous, malicious, fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted,
or seeks monetary relief from a defendant immune from such relief. 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e)(2),
1915A; 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c). The Court must read Plaintiff’s pro se complaint indulgently, see
Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520 (1972), and accept Plaintiff’s allegations as true, unless they
are clearly irrational or wholly incredible. Denton v. Hernandez, 504 U.S. 25, 33 (1992). Applying
these standards, the Court will dismiss Plaintiff’s complaint for failure to state a claim upon which
relief can be granted.
Discussion
Factual Allegations
Plaintiff is presently incarcerated with the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC)
at the Ionia Correctional Facility (ICF) in Ionia, Ionia County, Michigan. The events about which
he complains occurred when he was transferred from the Saginaw Correctional Facility (SRF) in
Freeland, Saginaw County, Michigan, to ICF. Plaintiff sues SRF/the SRF mailroom, ICF/the ICF
1 But see Coleman v. Lab. & Indus. Rev. Comm’n of Wis., 860 F.3d 461, 471 (7th Cir. 2017)
(concluding that, when determining which parties are required to consent to proceed before a
United States Magistrate Judge under 28 U.S.C. § 636(c), “context matters” and the context the
United States Supreme Court considered in Murphy Bros. was nothing like the context of a
screening dismissal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e)(2) and 1915A(b), and 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c));
Williams v. King, 875 F.3d 500, 503–04 (9th Cir. 2017) (relying on Black’s Law Dictionary for
the definition of “parties” and not addressing Murphy Bros.); Burton v. Schamp, 25 F.4th 198, 207
n.26 (3d Cir. 2022) (premising its discussion of “the term ‘parties’ solely in relation to its meaning
in Section 636(c)(1), and . . . not tak[ing] an opinion on the meaning of ‘parties’ in other contexts”).
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mailroom,2 ICF Start Program, ICF Inspector Unknown Salinas, ICF Assistant Deputy Warden
Mario Williams, and ICF Deputy Warden Janna Garcia. (Compl., ECF No. 1, PageID.1–2.)
In Plaintiff’s complaint, Plaintiff states that from April 15, 2025, to April 18, 2025, he was
in segregation at SRF. (Id. PageID.3.) During this time, Plaintiff alleges his mail “was put in a
folder until [his] release.”3 (Id.) When Plaintiff was transferred to ICF, Plaintiff claims Defendant
SRF did not forward his mail to him “even after [he] wrote a letter to them.” (Id.) Plaintiff also
asked Defendant ICF mailroom about the missing mail. (Id.) The ICF mailroom told Plaintiff they
are “not doing it” and told Plaintiff to ask the inspector, Defendant Salinas. (Id.) Plaintiff sent a
kite to Defendant Salinas. (Id.) Defendant Salinas “never responded until 3 months later after
promise of filing a lawsuit and said [Plaintiff] never had [] mail.” (Id.) Plaintiff alleges that
Defendant Salinas’s response was false because, at some point, Plaintiff logged on to JPay and
saw he had mail before he logged off. (Id.) Plaintiff states that he could not read the mail, he “just
seen it was there because [he is] in a program where [he] can’t use JPay[.]” (Id.) Then, Plaintiff
states that he told Defendants Salinas, Williams, and Garcia that he had mail, but “they said no
[Plaintiff] didn’t.” (Id.)
Plaintiff alleges that, at some point, he was able to access JPay again and saw “they deleted
all [of his] mail.” (Id.) Plaintiff states “personal mail” was deleted that would “help get [him] out
of prison” and the deletion of which “set [Plaintiff] back with pending litigation and hindered [him]
from family support, who now [he] has lost contact with.” (Id.) Plaintiff asserts the deletion of the
2 In the case caption of the complaint, Plaintiff indicates that he is suing “Mailroom at ICF” and in
the list of Defendants, Plaintiff indicates that he is suing “Ionia Correctional Facility Mailroom.”
(Compl., ECF No. 1, PageID.1, 2.) Out of an abundance of caution, the Court construes Plaintiff’s
complaint to sue both ICF and the ICF mailroom.
3 In this opinion, the Court corrects the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation in quotations from
Plaintiff’s complaint.
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mail was a “devastating blow to [Plaintiff’s] mental health and progress [he] was making.” (Id.)
Plaintiff explains that his “hands are tied because [he] is in this emotional based program so all
[he] can do is [] file a lawsuit, anything else will set [Plaintiff] back and hinder [him] from parole.”
(Id.)
Based on the foregoing allegations, the Court broadly construes Plaintiff’s complaint to
raise a due process claim based on the alleged violation of Plaintiff’s liberty interest in receiving
mail and deprivation of property.4 As relief, Plaintiff requests “all [of his] JPay mail from April
until now that they deleted and failed to send [him]” and requests a “JPay player now [and] access
to JPay right now every day for an hour a day.” (Id., PageID.4.) Plaintiff further requests additional
unspecified “injunctive and declaratory relief.” (Id.)
Failure to State a Claim
A complaint may be dismissed for failure to state a claim under Rule 8 if it fails to “give
the defendant fair notice of what the . . . claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.” Bell Atl.
Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47 (1957)).
While a complaint need not contain detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff’s allegations must
include more than labels and conclusions. Id.; Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)
(“Threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action, supported by mere conclusory
statements, do not suffice.”). The court must determine whether the complaint contains “enough
facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570. “A claim has
facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the
reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at
4 See, e.g., Stanley v. Vining, 602 F.3d 767, 769 (6th Cir. 2010) (discussing that prisoners have a
liberty interest in receiving mail protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments).
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678. Although the plausibility standard is not equivalent to a “‘probability requirement,’ . . . it asks
for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id. (quoting Twombly,
550 U.S. at 556). “[W]here the well-pleaded facts do not permit the court to infer more than the
mere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has alleged—but it has not ‘show[n]’—that the
pleader is entitled to relief.” Id. at 679 (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2)); see also Hill v. Lappin,
630 F.3d 468, 470–71 (6th Cir. 2010) (holding that the Twombly/Iqbal plausibility standard applies
to 	dismissals 	of 	prisoner 	cases 	on 	initial 	review 	under 	28 	U.S.C. 	§§ 1915A(b)(1) 	and
1915(e)(2)(B)(ii)).
To state a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a plaintiff must allege the violation of a right
secured by the federal Constitution or laws of the United States, and must show that the alleged
deprivation was committed by a person acting under color of state law. West v. Atkins, 487 U.S.
42, 48 (1988); Street v. Corr. Corp. of Am., 102 F.3d 810, 814 (6th Cir. 1996). “[A] plaintiff must
plead that each Government-official defendant, through the official’s own individual actions, has
violated the Constitution.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 676. Because section 1983 is a method for
vindicating federal rights, not a source of substantive rights itself, the first step in an action under
section 1983 is to identify the specific constitutional right allegedly infringed. Albright v. Oliver,
510 U.S. 266, 271 (1994).
A. 	Defendants SRF/SRF Mailroom, ICF/ICF Mailroom, and ICF Start Program
Plaintiff names SRF and ICF as Defendants. (Compl., ECF No. 1, PageID.1.) Then, in the
section labeled “Parties” on the following page of the complaint, Plaintiff lists the SRF mailroom
and ICF mailroom as Defendants. (Id., PageID.2.) Whether Plaintiff intends to name SRF and ICF,
the SRF mailroom and ICF mailroom, or all of these entities, as Defendants, Plaintiff may not
maintain a section 1983 action against these entities and the ICF Start Program, as explained
below.
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As an initial matter, SRF and ICF are not separate entities that are capable of being sued.
See, e.g., Ryan v. Corizon Health Care, No. 1:13-cv-525, 2013 WL 5786934, at *7 (W.D. Mich.
Oct. 28, 2013) (discussing that “individual prisons named as Defendants . . . (ICF, IBC, LRF and
RGC) are buildings used by the MDOC to house prisoners,” and “[t]hey are not the proper public
entity for suit”). SRF and ICF are correctional institutions “operated by the MDOC,” and are not
proper public entities subject to suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Poole v. Michigan Reformatory, No.
09-CV-13093, 2009 WL 2960412, at *1 (E.D. Mich. Sept. 11. 2009). Likewise, the ICF Start
Program is not a separate entity capable of being sued. Therefore, SRF, ICF, and the ICF Start
Program, are properly dismissed as Defendants.
As to Defendants SRF mailroom and ICF mailroom, any “[s]ummary reference to a single,
five-headed ‘Defendants’ [or ‘they’] does not support a reasonable inference that each Defendant
is liable….” Boxill v. O’Grady, 935 F.3d 510, 518 (6th Cir. 2019) (citing Heyne v. Metro. Nashville
Pub. Sch., 655 F.3d 556, 564 (6th Cir. 2011)). Under section 1983, the alleged deprivation of a
right must be caused by a person acting under color of state law. Poole, 2009 WL 2960412, at *1.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit “has consistently held that damage claims
against government officials arising from alleged violations of constitutional rights must allege,
with particularity, facts that demonstrate what each defendant did to violate the asserted
constitutional right.” Heyne, 655 F.3d at 564 (citation omitted); see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 676.
Plaintiff alleges that he sent a letter to the SRF mailroom regarding his mail, but he does not state
whether he received a response. (Compl., ECF No. 1, PageID.3.) Plaintiff asserts that he then sent
the ICF mailroom a kite about his missing mail, and “they said they’re not doing it.” (Id.) Then,
Plaintiff asserts that “they deleted all [his] mail.” (Id.) Refences to the SRF mailroom, ICF
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mailroom, and “they,” do not support a reasonable inference that each person working for those
entities violated Plaintiff’s constitutional rights. See Boxill, 935 F.3d at 518.
Accordingly, for these reasons, Plaintiff’s claims against Defendants SRF, ICF, ICF Start
Program, SRF mailroom, and ICF mailroom will be dismissed for failure to state a claim.
B. 	Defendants Salinas, Williams, and Garcia
Plaintiff alleges that Defendant ICF Inspector Salinas, Defendant ICF Deputy Warden
Garcia, and Defendant ICF Assistant Deputy Warden Williams, falsely told Plaintiff that he did
not have any mail from the time that Plaintiff was incarcerated at SRF. (Compl. ECF No. 1,
PageID.3.) Plaintiff also asserts that “they deleted all [his] mail” from SRF, and the Court
generously construes this to be a reference to Defendants Salinas, Williams, and Garcia. (Id.)
However, Plaintiff fails to allege any facts to allow the Court to draw the reasonable
inference that Defendants Salinas, Williams, and Garcia were personally involved in the deletion
of his mail. “[A] plaintiff must plead that each Government-official defendant, through the
official’s own individual actions, has violated the Constitution.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 676. Plaintiff’s
complaint asserts that, when he was transferred from SRF to ICF, his mail from SRF was not
forwarded to him at ICF. (Compl., ECF No. 1, PageID.3.) Plaintiff concludes this mail was deleted.
(Id.) Although Plaintiff alleges in a conclusory manner that “they deleted all [his] mail,” Plaintiff
does not set forth any facts to suggest that Defendants Salinas, Williams, and Garcia were
responsible for deleting Plaintiff’s mail from SRF. (See generally id.) Moreover, these Defendants
are ICF employees and cannot be held liable for actions of staff at SRF. See Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 676.
And to the extent Plaintiff claims these Defendants failed to remedy unconstitutional actions of
the SRF staff, a claim under section1983 cannot be based upon “a mere failure to act[,]” and must
“be based on active unconstitutional behavior.” Shehee v. Luttrell, 199 F.3d 295, 300 (6th Cir.
1999).
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Accordingly, Plaintiff’s claim against Defendants Salinas, Williams, and Garcia will be
dismissed for failure to state a claim.
Conclusion
Having conducted the review required by the PLRA, the Court determines that Plaintiff’s
complaint will be dismissed without prejudice for failure to state a claim under 28 U.S.C.
§§ 1915(e)(2) and 1915A(b), and 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c). The Court must next decide whether an
appeal of this action would be in good faith within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3). See
McGore v. Wrigglesworth, 114 F.3d 601, 611 (6th Cir. 1997), overruled on other grounds, Jones
v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 211–212 (2007). For the same reasons the Court concludes that Plaintiff’s
claims are properly dismissed, the Court also concludes that any issue Plaintiff might raise on
appeal would be frivolous. Coppedge v. United States, 369 U.S. 438, 445 (1962). Accordingly, the
Court certifies that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
A judgment consistent with this opinion will be entered.
Dated: 	June 26, 2026 	/s/ Sally J. Berens
SALLY J. BERENS
United States Magistrate Judge
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