Williams, Jr. v. Department of Corrections

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA
MICHAEL B. WILLIAMS, JR.,
Plaintiff,
v.
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,
et al.,
Defendants.
No. 4:25-CV-00924
(Chief Judge Brann)
MEMORANDUM OPINION
FEBRUARY 24, 2026
Plaintiff Michael B. Williams, Jr., is a serial pro se litigant who is currently
incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania (SCI
Huntingdon). He filed the instant pro se Section 1983 1 action in 2025, alleging a
plethora of unrelated Section 1983 claims against hundreds of different defendants.
Williams’ complaint plainly violates multiple pleading rules and standards and will
therefore be dismissed with leave to amend.
I. 	STANDARD OF REVIEW
Courts are statutorily obligated to review, “as soon as practicable,” pro se
prisoner complaints targeting governmental entities, officers, or employees. 2
1 	42 U.S.C. § 1983. 	Section 1983 creates a private cause of action to redress constitutional
wrongs committed by state officials. The statute is not a source of substantive rights; it serves
as a mechanism for vindicating rights otherwise protected by federal law. See Gonzaga Univ.
v. Doe, 536 U.S. 273, 284-85 (2002).
2 	See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a).
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Because Williams proceeds pro se, his pleadings are to be liberally construed and
his complaint, “however inartfully pleaded, must be held to less stringent standards
than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers[.]” 3 This is particularly true when the
pro se litigant, like Williams, is incarcerated. 4
II. 	DISCUSSION
Williams is no stranger to federal court. It appears that he has filed multiple
lawsuits in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, 5
the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, 6 as well
as an unsuccessful appeal at the Third Circuit in one of those Pennsylvania cases. 7
In the case at bar, Williams attempts to sue nearly four hundred different
defendants, including police officers, prosecutors, judges, public defenders, private
attorneys, witnesses, medical practitioners, scientists, low-level corrections officers
at numerous state correctional institutions, prison administrative officials,
grievance officers, superintendents, and even the Secretary of the Pennsylvania
Department of Corrections (DOC). The named defendants are from geographically
diverse areas such as Detroit, Michigan; Erie, Pennsylvania; Frackville,
3 	Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (citations omitted).
4 	Dooley v. Wetzel, 957 F.3d 366, 374 (3d Cir. 2020) (citation omitted).
5 	See generally Williams v. Penman, No. 2:19-cv-12505 (E.D. Mich.); Williams v. Penman, No.
2:23-cv-11230 (E.D. Mich.); Williams v. Spagel, No. 2:25-cv-10860 (E.D. Mich.).
6 	See generally Williams v. Spagel, No. 15-cv-00304 (W.D. Pa.); Williams v. Spagel, No. 1:22-
cv-00334 (W.D. Pa.).
7 	See generally Williams v. Spagel, No. 24-1503 (3d Cir.).
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Pennsylvania; Collegeville, Pennsylvania; Albion, Pennsylvania; Bellefonte,
Pennsylvania; and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. 8
Williams’ sprawling, omnibus complaint spans 36 mostly single-spaced,
small-font pages, and contains vague, conclusory, and largely unrelated claims
against the hundreds of defendants named in his pleading. He appears to challenge
actions and conduct stretching back nearly two decades, and many of his outdated
claims have already been raised and adjudicated in his district court litigation.9
Because Williams’ excessively verbose and overlong complaint plainly violates
multiple pleading rules, the Court will dismiss it without prejudice and give him
the chance to try again.
A. 	Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Pleading Requirements
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) requires a pleading to contain “a short
and plain statement of the grounds for the court’s jurisdiction” and “a short and
plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” 10 Each
allegation of a pleading must be “simple, concise, and direct.”11 Together, Rules
8(a) and 8(d)(1) “underscore the emphasis placed on clarity and brevity by the
8 	See generally Doc. 1-2.
9 	See Williams v. Spagel, No. 24-1503, Doc. 18 at 3-4 (3d Cir. Aug. 9, 2024) (nonprecedential);
see generally Williams v. Penman, No. 2:23-cv-11230 (E.D. Mich.).
10 	FED. R. CIV. P. 8(a)(1), (2).
11 	FED. R. CIV. P. 8(d)(1).
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federal pleading rules.”12 A statement must be plain “to give the adverse party fair
notice of the claim asserted so as to enable [the party] to answer and prepare for
trial,” and must be short to avoid placing “an unjustified burden on the court and
the part[ies] who must respond to it because they are forced to select the relevant
material from a mass of verbiage.” 13 “Rule 8(a) requires that a complaint be
presented with clarity sufficient to avoid requiring a district court or opposing
party to forever sift through its pages in search of the nature of the plaintiff’s
claim.” 14 As the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has
explained, “a district court acts within its discretion when it dismisses an
excessively prolix and overlong complaint,” especially after the litigant has been
given an opportunity “to better tailor [his] pleading.” 15
Williams’ complaint is a model of excessively prolix and overlong pleading,
“constituting a significant departure from the spirit and letter of Rule 8.” 16 As
noted above, his complaint names almost four hundred different defendants and
spans 36 mostly single-spaced, small-font pages. Just reading through the
12 	In re Westinghouse Sec. Litig., 90 F.3d 696, 702 (3d Cir. 1996) (quoting 5 CHARLES A. W RIGHT
& ARTHUR R. M ILLER, Federal Practice and Procedure § 1217 at 169 (2d ed. 1990)).
13 	Folk v. Bureau of Prisons, No. 21-1543, 2021 WL 3521143, at *3 (3d Cir. Aug. 11, 2021)
(nonprecedential) (second alteration in original) (quoting Salahuddin v. Cuomo, 861 F.2d 40,
42 (2d Cir. 1988)).
14 	Glover v. F.D.I.C., 698 F.3d 139, 147 (3d Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks and citation
omitted)
15 	Garrett v. Wexford Health, 938 F.3d 69, 93 (3d Cir. 2019), cert. denied, __ U.S. __, 140 S. Ct.
1611 (2020) (alteration in original).
16 	Coit v. Malichaik, No. 1:23-CV-01124, 2024 WL 289335, at *3 (M.D. Pa. Jan. 25, 2024).
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complaint and attempting to make sense of it is an hours-long endeavor. Properly
responding to it, as defendants potentially must, would be a Herculean task.
Williams’ complaint, moreover, is “rife with irrelevant facts” and information that
compounds the difficulty of properly formulating a response. 17
Williams’ allegations are cluttered, long-winded, and confusing. He often
begins a paragraph by naming several dozen defendants, and then provides vague
and conclusory allegations in a run-on sentence that asserts some type of
collective, unconstitutional conduct.18
As just one example, on page 6 of his complaint, he asserts that fifty-four
different defendants “insofar of [sic] the DTU of the Local Agency S.C.I.
Rockview denied the Plaintiff [sic] Grievance’s [sic] thier [sic] appeal forms,
request slips to attend adequate law library in the preparation of legal documents
and seeking corrective process to deter their co-worker willfully judicial and
prosecutorail [sic] misconduct by encouragement / condoning deprivation of the
Plaintiff’s obligation to exhaust his state amendstrative [sic] remedies in order for
his Civil Action and it’s [sic] appeal to be dismiss [sic] as reasonable access to the
courts through cruel and unusal [sic] punishment by false imprisonment by solitory
[sic] confinement deprive of yard, group, shower, to be deprive [sic] of placing
mail in the mail box as reasonable access to the courts in joint omission victim D
17 	See Adderly v. Stofko, 646 F. App’x 138, 141 (3d Cir. 2016) (nonprecedential).
18 	See, e.g., Doc. 1 at 6, 10.
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by sunlight as medicial / phycological [sic] treatment as a hate crime for being
accuse [sic] of rape as articulated in the Hearing Examiner Action and place [sic]
in a cell with another inmate after having a fight to entice a fight between inmate’s
[sic] in order to place the Plaintiff in another cell without a matters [sic] and
deneied [sic] to watch T.V.”19 What Williams is claiming occurred, when it took
place, and who committed the particular act or acts, is anyone’s guess.
Not only is Williams’ complaint excessively long and hopelessly confused,
but it also contains innumerable disparate and unrelated claims against different
defendants, in violation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20(a)(2). As best as the
Court can tell, Williams is attempting to assert claims sounding in—among other
things—malicious prosecution, false imprisonment, due process, retaliation,
conspiracy, denial of access to the courts, cruel and unusual punishment, deliberate
indifference to serious medical needs, deprivation of property without due process
of law, discrimination, excessive force, unlawful conditions of confinement, theft,
extortion, prosecutorial misconduct, and sexual abuse. There is little to no
connection between any of these claims, and they are lodged against hundreds of
different defendants who are spread out over Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Williams, however, cannot bring these unrelated claims against diverse
defendants in a single complaint. They are plainly not part of the “same
19 	Doc. 1 at 6 ¶ (f).
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transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences,” nor is there a
“question of law or fact common to all defendants” such that these claims and
diverse defendants could be permissively joined together in a single action. 20 If
Williams desires to press these numerous, unrelated claims in federal court, he
would be required to file separate Section 1983 lawsuits (likely dozens of them)
and he would have to pay the filing fee for each case. He cannot attempt to
circumvent the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) by filing one lawsuit alleging
every perceived wrong by hundreds of state and local officials over the course of
several decades. 21
B. 	Leave to Amend
Generally, “plaintiffs who file complaints subject to dismissal under [the
Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995] should receive leave to amend unless
amendment would be inequitable or futile.” 22 Williams will be given leave to
amend but must adhere to the following pleading directions:
• 	The amended complaint must be a stand-alone document, complete in
itself and without reference to any previous pleading.
• 	The amended complaint should set forth Williams’ claim (or claims) in
short, concise, and plain statements, and in sequentially numbered
paragraphs. Williams must decide which claim or claims he is pursuing
20 	See FED. R. CIV. P. 20(a)(2)(B).
21 	See George v. Smith, 507 F.3d 605, 607 (7th Cir. 2007) (explaining that “[u]nrelated claims
against different defendants belong in different suits” not only to prevent confusion but also to
ensure that prisoners pay the required filing fees under the PLRA); Redding v. Bilinski, No.
3:15-cv-1047, 2015 WL 3710842, at *1-2 (M.D. Pa. June 12, 2015) (same).
22 	Grayson v. Mayview State Hosp., 293 F.3d 103, 114 (3d Cir. 2002).
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in this case and must have a proper basis for joinder of claims and
defendants.
• 	Williams must name proper defendants and specify the offending actions
taken by a particular defendant. He may not lump multiple defendants
together and assert that they collectively took unlawful action, as he does
throughout his initial complaint.
• 	Williams is admonished that he must comply with Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 20(a)(2) if attempting to join multiple defendants in a single
lawsuit.
• 	Failure to adhere to these directives will result in the Court summarily
striking any improper amended pleading.
If no appropriate amended complaint is timely filed, dismissal will automatically
convert to dismissal with prejudice and the Court will close this case.
III. 	CONCLUSION
Based on the foregoing, the Court will dismiss Williams’ complaint for
failure to comply with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8. An appropriate Order
follows.
BY THE COURT:
s/ Matthew W. Brann
Matthew W. Brann
Chief United States District Judge
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