Eaves v. Stancil

25CA1373 Eaves v Stancil 06-25-2026

COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 25CA1373
El Paso County District Court No. 25CV133
Honorable Gregory R. Werner, Judge

Rodney Douglas Eaves,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

Moses Stancil, as executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections,

Defendant-Appellee.

JUDGMENT AFFIRMED

Division IV
Opinion by JUDGE SCHOCK
Welling and Lum, JJ., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e)
Announced June 25, 2026

Rodney Douglas Eaves, Pro Se

Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Mark C. Lockefeer, Assistant Attorney
General, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellee
¶1 Plaintiff, Rodney Douglas Eaves, appeals the dismissal of his

C.R.C.P. 106(a)(2) petition against defendant, Moses Stancil, the

executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections

(CDOC), for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be

granted. We affirm.

I. Background

¶2 Eaves is an inmate in the custody of the CDOC. He filed a

petition for mandamus relief under C.R.C.P. 106(a)(2), asking the

court to compel Stancil to (1) order grievance officers to “properly

investigate or seek meaningful remedies” and “stop providing false

or misleading responses in order to deny meaningful relief”; (2) give

Eaves adequate access to the courts by providing him with legal

services; and (3) provide Eaves with procedural due process before

restricting his rights or privileges. As the source of Stancil’s alleged

duties, Eaves cited section 17-1-103, C.R.S. 2025, and various

CDOC administrative regulations. Eaves also sought damages.

¶3 Stancil moved to dismiss the petition under C.R.C.P. 12(b)(5)

for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. He

argued that Eaves did not make any specific allegations that could

1
entitle him to relief because his petition was based solely on

Stancil’s “generalized duties” to enforce administrative regulations.

¶4 Eaves argued in response that Stancil had a clear duty to

enforce the administrative regulations, and he cited three

regulations that he claimed required the actions he sought to

compel. In the last sentence of his response, Eaves requested leave

to amend his petition if the court deemed his claims to be deficient.

¶5 The district court dismissed the petition. It cited the lack of

specific allegations regarding, among other things, the nature of any

deficient investigations, any actions CDOC officers failed to perform,

the alleged false or misleading statements, or how Eaves had been

denied access to the courts. The court also concluded that,

regardless of specificity, Eaves’s claim would fail because

“mandamus relief cannot be used to enforce duties generally.”

II. Dismissal of Petition

¶6 Eaves contends that the district court erred by dismissing his

petition because he properly completed Judicial Department Form

(JDF) 662 — the judicial branch’s self-help form for a C.R.C.P.

106(a)(2) petition. See JDF 662, Petition to Compel Action (revised

Mar. 2023), https://perma.cc/U2DD-NTTW. We disagree.

2
A. Standard of Review and Applicable Law

¶7 We review de novo the dismissal of a complaint under

C.R.C.P. 12(b)(5) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be

granted. Bewley v. Semler, 2018 CO 79, ¶ 14. We accept the

factual allegations in the complaint as true and view them in the

light most favorable to the plaintiff to determine whether the

plaintiff has stated a plausible claim for relief. Id.; Warne v. Hall,

2016 CO 50, ¶ 2. Dismissal is proper when the allegations cannot,

as a matter of law, support the claim for relief. Bewley, ¶ 14.

¶8 Mandamus is an “extraordinary remedy that requires public

officials to perform plain legal duties they owe by virtue of their

offices.” Owens v. Carlson, 2022 CO 33, ¶ 21. A party seeking

mandamus relief bears a “demanding burden” to show (1) a clear

right to the relief sought; (2) a clear duty of the defendant to

perform the act requested; and (3) the lack of any other available

remedy. Id. Mandamus relief is not available to “enforce duties

generally, or to control and regulate a general course of official

conduct for a long series of continuous acts to be performed under

varying conditions.” Rocky Mountain Animal Def. v. Colo. Div. of

Wildlife, 100 P.3d 508, 517 (Colo. App. 2004) (citation omitted).

3
B. Analysis

¶9 We agree with the district court that the allegations in Eaves’s

petition did not state a plausible claim for mandamus relief.

¶ 10 First, Eaves’s allegations did not support a clear right to relief.

Owens, ¶ 21. Although Eaves cited various CDOC regulations, he

did not explain how “the challenged action was contrary to the plain

language” of those regulations. Lewis v. Stancil, 2026 COA 8, ¶ 19.

The regulations do not require any particular form of investigation.

See DOC Admin. Reg. 850-04(IV)(C)(5), (E)(1), (F)(1); DOC Admin.

Reg. 750-01(I)(A), (F); DOC Admin. Reg. 650-06(IV)(C)(3). But even

if they did, Eaves did not allege how the unspecified investigations

fell short of those standards or how the unspecified officers’

responses were “false or misleading.” And although DOC Admin.

Reg. 750-01(I)(A) states a policy of ensuring offenders’ right of

access to the courts, Eaves did not allege how he had been denied

that right. Nor did he say what procedures he had been denied in

connection with any restrictions of his rights or privileges.

¶ 11 Second, Eaves did not adequately allege that Stancil had a

“clear duty” to perform the requested acts. For the source of that

duty, Eaves cited only section 17-1-103(1)(a) and (b), which

4
generally requires the CDOC executive director to “manage,

supervise, and control the correctional institutions” and “supervise

the business, fiscal, budget, personnel, and financial operations” of

the CDOC. At most, this statute imposes on Stancil a general duty

to supervise prison operations rather than any specific “ministerial

duty” to perform the requested acts — acts that are themselves

quite general. Owens, ¶ 21 (citation omitted). Mandamus is not

available to control or regulate such a general, inherently judgment-

based duty. See id.; Rocky Mountain Animal Def., 100 P.3d at 517.

¶ 12 Third, Eaves made no allegations as to why other remedies

were not available. He did not, for example, allege that he had

exhausted all available administrative remedies. See Gramiger v.

Crowley, 660 P.2d 1279, 1281 (Colo. 1983) (“[M]andamus will not

issue until all forms of alternative relief have been exhausted.”).

¶ 13 Eaves nevertheless contends that his petition should have

been deemed sufficient because he faithfully followed JDF 662,

providing all the information requested by that form. But the form

does not change the well-established pleading requirements. And

although we liberally construe Eaves’s pro se petition, he remains

subject to those rules. See Gandy v. Williams, 2019 COA 118, ¶ 8.

5
¶ 14 Nor is this a situation where the pro se form conflicts with the

pleading standard. Cf. Bennett v. Colo. Dep’t of Revenue, 2024 COA

97, ¶ 31 (holding that plaintiff had shown good cause for not

completing service in accordance with Colorado Rules of Civil

Procedure where JDF form was inaccurate). True, the form does

not detail the legal standard or require any particular degree of

specificity in the allegations. But it does not say otherwise either.

Rather, JDF 662 pointed Eaves in the right direction by instructing

him to identify (1) the “specific action” Stancil was required to take;

(2) the “law or other authority” giving rise to that duty; and (3) the

specific basis for any damages. It was incumbent on Eaves to

complete the form with sufficient detail to establish the clear right

and clear duty that mandamus relief requires. See Owens, ¶ 21.

¶ 15 Thus, because the allegations in Eaves’s petition were

insufficient as a matter of law to state a claim for C.R.C.P. 106(a)(2)

mandamus relief, the district court correctly dismissed the petition.

III. Request to Amend

¶ 16 Eaves also asserts that the district court erred by failing to

consider his request for leave to amend his petition if the court

determined the petition failed to state a claim for relief. But

6
because Stancil had not filed a responsive pleading, Eaves did not

need leave to file an amended petition while the motion to dismiss

was pending. See C.R.C.P. 15(a); Schulz v. Laszlo & Assocs., LLC,

2025 COA 24, ¶¶ 14-15. At that point, he could have filed one; he

just did not. Nor did Eaves move to amend his petition under

C.R.C.P. 59 or C.R.C.P. 60 after the petition was dismissed, as he

could have done. See Schaden v. DIA Brewing Co., 2021 CO 4M,

¶ 39. His failure to do so means there is no district court ruling for

us to review. See Patterson v. James, 2018 COA 173, ¶ 12 (holding

that the plaintiff waived her argument that the district court should

have permitted her to amend her complaint instead of dismissing it

by failing to “urge the . . . court to rule on the matter”).

¶ 17 Moreover, Eaves did not file a separate motion to amend his

petition; instead, he embedded his alternative request to amend in

his response to Stancil’s motion to dismiss. “A motion shall not be

included in a response . . . to the original motion.” C.R.C.P. 121,

§ 1-15(1)(d); see Patterson, ¶ 9. Thus, “[s]imply suggesting in [his

response] that [Eaves] would amend [his] complaint if the court

believed the complaint was unclear is not a motion for leave to

amend.” Patterson, ¶ 10. By failing to file a separate motion for

7
leave to amend his complaint — and failing to press for a district

court ruling on the issue — Eaves failed to preserve this issue.

See id. at ¶¶ 9-10, 12. We therefore decline to address it further.

IV. Disposition

¶ 18 The judgment is affirmed.

JUDGE WELLING and JUDGE LUM concur.

8