LORENZO GREGGE, Jr. v. MATTHEW KATE; JAMES A. YATES, Warden

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
LORENZO GREGGE, Jr.,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
MATTHEW KATE; JAMES A. YATES,
Warden,
Defendants - Appellees.
No. 13-15346
D.C. No. 2:09-cv-02561-GEB-
CMK
MEMORANDUM*
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of California
Garland E. Burrell, Jr., District Judge, Presiding
Submitted July 22, 2014**
Before: GOODWIN, CANBY, and CALLAHAN, Circuit Judges.
California state prisoner Lorenzo Gregge, Jr., appeals pro se from the district
court’s judgment dismissing for failure to exhaust his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action
alleging that defendants were deliberately indifferent to his health in violation of
FILED
AUG 1 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.
** The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

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the Eighth Amendment. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We review
de novo, Sapp v. Kimbrell, 623 F.3d 813, 821 (9th Cir. 2010), and we reverse and
remand.
The district court dismissed Gregge’s action for failure to exhaust because
Gregge did not assert in his prison grievance that a prison policy resulted in the
denial of his constitutional rights, and thus did not put defendants on notice of the
alleged basis of liability. However, where prison grievance rules do not set forth a
level of factual specificity, as is the case here, a prisoner must merely alert “the
prison to the nature of the wrong for which redress is sought.” Griffin v. Arpaio,
557 F.3d 1117, 1120 (9th Cir. 2009) (citation and internal quotation marks
omitted). Gregge’s grievance sufficiently alerted the prison of the nature of the
alleged wrong. See id. at 1120 (explaining that a grievance “need not include legal
terminology or legal theory” and that the “primary purpose of a grievance is to
alert the prison to a problem and facilitate its resolution, not to lay groundwork for
litigation”). Accordingly, we reverse and remand for further proceedings.
REVERSED and REMANDED.
13-15346 2

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