Mark Anthony Jones v. CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS; KENNETH CLARK, Warden; COUCH, CDC ISU Officer

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
MARK ANTHONY JONES,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF
CORRECTIONS; KENNETH CLARK,
Warden; COUCH, CDC ISU Officer,
Defendants - Appellees.
No. 12-17484
D.C. No. 1:08-cv-00069-LJO-
GBC
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of California
Lawrence J. O’Neill, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted April 10, 2014
San Francisco, California
Before: SILVERMAN, W. FLETCHER, and BYBEE, Circuit Judges.
Appellant Mark Jones appeals from the district court’s judgment dismissing
his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. We
FILED
APR 22 2014
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.

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have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. Our review is de novo, Sapp v.
Kimbrell, 628 F.3d 813, 821 (9th Cir. 2010), and we affirm.
Jones alleges that he exhausted his remedies because the California
Department of Corrections (“CDC”) ignored his grievances. It is peculiar that the
CDC ignored Jones’s grievances in this case because the CDC did not ignore the
numerous grievances that Jones previously filed. Nevertheless, even if the CDC
wrongfully ignored Jones’s informal and formal first-level grievances, the district
court properly dismissed the action because there is no evidence that Jones
exhausted his administrative remedies before filing his First Amendment
retaliation complaint in federal court. See Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 90-92
(2006). Jones’s formal first-level grievance alleges that Officer Couch violated
Mrs. Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights, but makes no mention of Officer Couch’s
threat to send Jones to the Security Housing Unit if he filed a grievance, which is
the basis for his First Amendment claim. As such, Jones did not exhaust his First
Amendment claim because he did not “put[ ] the prison on adequate notice of the
problem for which [Jones] [sought] redress.” Sapp v. Kimbrell, 623 F.3d 813, 824
(9th Cir. 2010).
AFFIRMED.
2

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