Buckley v. Finney et al

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
SOUTHERN DIVISION
DEMETRIUS BUCKLEY #449071,
Plaintiff, 	Hon. Hala Y. Jarbou
v. 	Case No. 1:25-cv-470
MDOC CORRECTIONS OFFICERS
FINNEY, et al.,
Defendants.
____________________________________/
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
This matter is before me on Defendant Sprague’s Motion for Summary Judgment for
Failure to Exhaust Administrative Remedies. (ECF No. 51.) The motion is fully briefed and ready
for decision. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B), I recommend that the Court GRANT the
motion and dismiss Plaintiff’s retaliation claim against Defendant Sprague without prejudice.
I. Background
The factual background of this prisoner civil rights case is fully set forth in my December
10, 2025 Report and Recommendation (ECF No. 159) and need not be repeated in full here. For
purposes of the instant motion, the pertinent allegations are that on August 24, 2023, at Richard
A. Handlon Correctional Facility (MTU), Defendant Sprague retaliated against Plaintiff for an
article he published on Prisonreports.org by moving him from his cell in the college unit to a cell
with prisoner Perry. Plaintiff alleges that the move constituted adverse action because prisoner
Perry had mental health issues and a history of violently assaulting, and possibly murdering, his
previous cellmates. (ECF No. 1 at PageID.160 (citing ECF No. 1 at PageID.2–4).) Over the next
few nights, prisoner Perry hit Plaintiff while he was sleeping. Although Plaintiff spoke to various
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officers about Perry’s behavior and Plaintiff’s concern for his safety, he was not moved. On August
30, 2023, about a week after being moved into the cell with Perry, Perry attacked Plaintiff in the
middle of the night by striking him with a padlock wrapped around a belt. (Id. at PageID.161
(citing ECF No. 1 at PageID.4).)
Plaintiff’s retaliation claim is his sole remaining claim against Defendant Sprague.
Defendant Sprague now seeks summary judgment on the basis that Plaintiff failed to exhaust his
administrative remedies against him on this claim.
II. Motion Standard
Summary judgment is appropriate if there is no genuine issue as to any material fact, and
the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). Material facts
are facts that are defined by substantive law and are necessary to apply the law. Anderson v. Liberty
Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A dispute is genuine if a reasonable jury could return
judgment for the non-moving party. Id.
The court must draw all inferences in a light most favorable to the non-moving party but
may grant summary judgment when “the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of
fact to find for the non-moving party.” Agristor Fin. Corp. v. Van Sickle, 967 F.2d 233, 236 (6th
Cir. 1992) (quoting Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587
(1986)).
While a moving party without the burden of proof need only show that the opponent cannot
sustain his burden at trial, a moving party with the burden of proof faces a “substantially higher
hurdle.” Arnett v. Myers, 281 F.3d 552, 561 (6th Cir. 2002). Where the moving party has the
burden, “his showing must be sufficient for the court to hold that no reasonable trier of fact could
find other than for the moving party.” Calderone v. United States, 799 F.2d 254, 259 (6th Cir.
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1986). The Sixth Circuit has emphasized that the party with the burden of proof “must show that
the record contains evidence satisfying the burden of persuasion and that the evidence is so
powerful that no reasonable jury would be free to disbelieve it.” Arnett, 281 F.3d at 561 (quoting
Cockrel v. Shelby Cnty. Sch. Dist., 270 F.3d 1036, 1056 (6th Cir. 2001)). Accordingly, summary
judgment in favor of the party with the burden of persuasion “is inappropriate when the evidence
is susceptible of different interpretations or inferences by the trier of fact.” Hunt v. Cromartie, 526
U.S. 541, 553 (1999).
III. Discussion
Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), a prisoner must exhaust all available administrative
remedies before filing a lawsuit with respect to prison conditions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See
Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 524 (2002). Prisoners are no longer required to demonstrate
exhaustion in their complaints. See Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 216 (2007). Instead, failure to
exhaust administrative remedies is “an affirmative defense under the PLRA,” which the defendant
bears the burden of establishing. Id. With respect to what constitutes proper exhaustion, the
Supreme Court has stated that “the PLRA exhaustion requirement requires proper exhaustion,”
defined as “compliance with an agency’s deadlines and other critical procedural rules.” Woodford
v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 90-93 (2006). In Bock, the Court reiterated:
Compliance with prison grievance procedures, therefore, is all that is required by
the PLRA to “properly exhaust.” The level of detail necessary in a grievance to
comply with the grievance procedures will vary from system to system and claim
to claim, but it is the prison’s requirements, and not the PLRA, that define the
boundaries of proper exhaustion.
Bock, 549 U.S. at 218.
MDOC Policy Directive 03.02.130 sets forth the applicable grievance procedure for
prisoners in MDOC custody. Prior to submitting a grievance, a prisoner is required to “attempt to
resolve the issue with the staff member involved within two business days after becoming aware
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of a grievable issue, unless prevented by circumstances beyond his/her control or if the issue is
believed to fall within the jurisdiction of Internal Affairs.” Mich. Dep’t of Corr. Policy Directive
03.02.130 ¶ Q (effective 03/18/2019). If this attempt is unsuccessful (or is inapplicable), the
prisoner may submit a Step I grievance. Id. The Step I grievance must be submitted within five
business days after attempting to resolve the matter with staff. Id. The issues asserted in a grievance
“should be stated briefly but concisely,” and the “[d]ates, times, places, and names of all those
involved in the issue being grieved are to be included.” Id. at ¶ S.
If the prisoner is dissatisfied with the Step I response, or does not receive a timely response,
he may appeal to Step II within ten business days of the response, or if no response was received,
within ten business days after the response was due. Id. at ¶ DD. If the prisoner is dissatisfied with
the Step II response, or does not receive a timely Step II response, he may appeal the matter to
Step III. Id. at ¶ HH. The Step III grievance must be submitted within ten business days after
receiving the Step II response, or if no Step II response was received, within ten business days
after the date the Step II response was due. Id.
To satisfy his burden of proving non-exhaustion, Defendant Sprague submits a Step III
Grievance Report for Plaintiff dated June 23, 2025, which shows the grievances arising out of
MTU that Plaintiff filed at Step I in September 2023 and pursued through Step III. (ECF No. 52-
2.) The Step III Grievance Report discloses that Plaintiff filed the following grievances: (1) MTU-
23-09-0669-28e (0669 Grievance); (2) MTU-23-09-0670-28i (0670 Grievance); (3) MTU-23-09-
0671-28c (0671 Grievance); (4) MTU-23-09-0672-26a (0672 Grievance); and (5) MTU-23-09-
0674-17z (Id. at PageID.300–18.)
The 0669 and 0670 Grievances mention only Defendant Jones and complain about
comments he made to Plaintiff while investigating the August 30, 2023 incident with prisoner
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Perry. (Id. at PageID.312, 318.) The 0672 Grievance complains about Defendants Jones, Dobias,
and Lien’s use of pepper spray on Plaintiff in the segregation shower following the incident with
Perry on August 30, 2023. (Id. at pageID.303.) The 0674 Grievance complains about Defendant
Sprague searching Plaintiff’s cell on September 10, 2023, in retaliation for Plaintiff’s grievance
activity against Sprague and other corrections officers. In particular, Plaintiff wrote that Sprague
told Plaintiff that he “better get [his] head right or [he]’ll be in a bad situation like before, pertaining
to [Plaintiff] being gassed [in the segregation shower].” (Id. at PageID.308.) Finally, the 0671
Grievance describes the August 24, 2023 transfer into the cell with prisoner Perry and complains
about Defendant Sprague’s and dismissed-Defendant Finney’s denials of Plaintiff’s requests to be
moved to a different cell. Specifically with regard to Sprague, Plaintiff wrote, “CO Sprague told
me he found that spot [with Perry] for me and he wasn’t going to move me.” (Id. at PageID.315.)
A grievance need not “allege a specific legal theory or facts that correspond to all the
required elements of a particular legal theory” to satisfy the exhaustion requirement. Bell v.
Konteh, 450 F.3d 651, 654 (6th Cir. 2006) (quotation marks and citations omitted). Still, it “must
be measured against the claim brought in the prisoner’s subsequent suit[.]” Id. In addition, well-
established Sixth Circuit law provides that a grievant’s failure to name a defendant at Step I
generally amounts to a failure to properly exhaust administrative remedies. Reed-Bey v.
Pramstaller, 603 F.3d 322, 324 (6th Cir. 2010); see also Brown v. McCullick, No. 18-2226, 2019
WL 5436159, at *3 (6th Cir. Apr. 23, 2019) (stating that “because Brown failed to name Rivard,
McCullick, Parsons, and Williams at step I of this grievance, he failed to exhaust his claims against
them”). Thus, “[t]he issues [a plaintiff] may raise, and the defendants he may name, in his lawsuit
are limited to the specific issues raised, and the specific individuals mentioned, in his grievance.”
Vandiver v. Martin, 48 F. App’x 517, 519 (6th Cir. 2002).
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As noted, Plaintiff’s sole claim against Defendant Sprague is that he retaliated against
Plaintiff for the article Plaintiff published in Prisonreports.org by moving him into the cell with
prisoner Perry. This means that the 0669, 0670, and 0672 Grievances could not have exhausted
any claim against Defendant Sprague because they did not name him and were unrelated to the
actual cell placement with prisoner Perry. While the 0674 Grievance named Defendant Sprague
and alleged retaliation, it did not exhaust the retaliation claim at issue because the alleged
retaliatory action—a search of Plaintiff’s cell—occurred on September 10, 2023, and was
retaliation for Plaintiff’s grievances against Sprague and other corrections officers, not the
Prisonreports.org article (or any other article). Thus, this grievance cannot exhaust the claim at
issue.
The final grievance, the 0671 Grievance addressing Plaintiff’s request to be moved out of
the cell with prisoner Perry, comes closest to addressing the claim at issue. In it, Plaintiff
mentioned his interaction with Defendant Sprague asserting his request to be moved due to his
concerns about Perry’s mental issues and alleged penchant for hitting his cellmates with locks
while they slept. However, it still fails to exhaust a retaliation claim. A prisoner complaining of
retaliation need not use the term “retaliation” in his grievance, but he must at least suggest some
retaliatory motive sufficient to place prison officials on notice that the prisoner is complaining of
retaliation. See Doe v. Anderson, No. 15-13852, 2017 WL 4684614, at *4 (E.D. Mich. Oct. 18,
2017); Jackson v. Huss, No. 1:14-CV-426, 2015 WL 5691026, at *7 (W.D. Mich. Sept. 28, 2015).
Nothing in the Step I grievance described any circumstance that would have alerted prison officials
that Plaintiff was claiming that Defendant Sprague had retaliated against him by moving him into
the cell with prisoner Perry (or even by refusing to move him from the cell with Perry) due to
retaliatory animus. See Keel-Haywood v. Toogood, No. 1:24-cv-303, 2025 WL 1732835, at *2
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(W.D. Mich. June 23, 2025) (“By failing to disclose any indication of retaliatory animus, Plaintiff
did not provide fair notice of his constitutional claim.”). In particular, Defendant Sprague’s alleged
statement that “he found the spot for [Plaintiff],” coupled with his rejection of Plaintiff’s request
to be moved, do not, without more, indicate retaliatory animus.1 While Plaintiff did claim in his
Step II appeal that he “had been retaliated against by staff” (id. at PageID.314), this assertion at
Step II does not cure Plaintiff’s failure to allege any fact suggesting retaliatory animus in his Step
I grievance, especially since the Step II and III appeal responses (id. at PageID.313–14) never
addressed retaliation. See Mays v. Pynnonen, No. 2:17-cv-167, 2021 WL 469041, at *7–8 (W.D.
Mich. Jan. 5, 2021), adopted by 2021 WL 266620 (W.D. Mich. Jan. 27, 2021) (finding the
plaintiff’s retaliation claim unexhausted where the plaintiff first raised retaliation in his Step II
appeal and the Step II and III responses addressed only the issues raised at Step I); Dykes v. Fuller,
No. 18-11528, 2019 WL 4744433, at *5 (E.D. Mich. Sept. 30, 2019) (“The text of the Pay
Grievance at Step I – set forth above – clearly demonstrates that Dykes did not indicate in any way
that he was complaining about retaliation. Thus, the reference to retaliation at Step III did raise a
new issue and was not sufficient to exhaust his administrative remedies.”); Newson v. Steele, No.
09-10346, 2010 WL 3123295, at *5 (E.D. Mich. July 1, 2010), adopted by 2010 WL 3123288
(E.D. Mich. Aug. 9, 2010) (“Plaintiff cannot raise a new issue in a grievance appeal and have it be
deemed exhausted, unless the MDOC proceeded to address that new claim on the merits.” (citing
Cain-El v. Burt, No. 02-73050, 2003 WL 21648721, at *7 (E.D. Mich. Mar. 31, 2003))).2
1 In his response, Plaintiff asserts that he included these statements in his amended complaint to
support the retaliation claim against Defendant Sprague (ECF No. 54 at PageID.334), but the
amended complaint, as well as the original complaint—which prison officials did not have at the
time they considered the 0671 Grievance—contained factual allegations pertaining to retaliation
that were not set forth in the 0671 Grievance.
2 Defendant Sprague cites Reyes v. Palmer, No. 17-cv-755, 2018 WL 3406882, at *5 (W.D. Mich.
June 11, 2018), adopted by 2018 WL 3388292 (W.D. Mich. July 12, 2018), for the proposition
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Failing to point to any one grievance demonstrating proper exhaustion of his retaliation
claim, Plaintiff weaves a grievance tapestry with statements from different sources to show
exhaustion. He first couples his statement in the hearing investigation report on the major
misconduct he received for the August 30, 2023 incident with prisoner Perry, that “[n]one of the
officers . . . like[d] me because I reported on their actions against inmates through articles” (ECF
No. 54-1 at PageID.341), with Sprague’s alleged statement in the 0674 Grievance that he would
enter Plaintiff’s “room daily for writing grievances” (ECF No. 52-2 at PageID.308), to show that
he exhausted his retaliation claim. (ECF No. 54 at PageID.334.) But Plaintiff cites no pertinent
authority for this type of piecemeal approach to exhaustion combing grievance statements with
misconduct reports.
His reliance on Judge Quist’s decision in White v. Goodell, No. 2:17-CV-99, 2021 WL
1152891 (W.D. Mich. Mar. 26, 2021), is misplaced, as the issue there was whether the plaintiff
had exhausted his retaliation claim based on a misconduct ticket by raising retaliation in the
misconduct hearing. Id. at *1. In contrast to Plaintiff’s suggested approach, Judge Quist referenced
only the misconduct hearing materials and the plaintiff’s affidavit concerning the hearing, not
misconduct hearing and grievance materials. Moreover, Plaintiff does not allege that Sprague
issued him a retaliatory misconduct, so his claim can only be exhausted through the grievance
procedure.
that a prisoner cannot cure a failure to grieve retaliation at Step I by raising the issue for the first
time at Step II or III. Reyes is consistent with the cases cited above. See Reyes, 2018 WL 3406882,
at *5 (“[P]laintiff did not include any retaliation claims in his grievance filed at Step I. Plaintiff’s
Grievance 3045 did not properly exhaust any retaliation claims against defendants.”). Plaintiff’s
effort to distinguish Reyes is meritless, as Plaintiff did not allege a factual basis for retaliatory
animus in the 0671 Grievance.
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Finally, the court in Hill v. Grover, No. 2:23-cv-156, 2024 WL 2863432 (W.D. Mich. Jan.
24, 2024), adopted by 2024 WL 2717392 (W.D. Mich. May 28, 2024), rejected this very same
approach. In Grover, the plaintiff argued “that he satisfied the aims of the PLRA by putting the
MDOC on notice of his claims during his misconduct hearing,” id. at *6, but the court rejected the
argument because proper exhaustion of the non-misconduct-related retaliation claims requires
exhaustion through the grievance procedure. The court observed that “the affidavits that [the
plaintiff] presented during his misconduct hearing and attached to his misconduct appeal are
irrelevant to whether he exhausted his claims that [the defendant] retaliated against him [in ways
other than through issuance of misconducts] . . . .” Id.
Plaintiff also attempts to weave together statements from two grievances against Defendant
Sprague—the 0671 Grievance complaining about not being moved from his cell with Perry and
the 0674 Grievance regarding the cell search—to show that he exhausted a claim of retaliatory cell
placement against Defendant Sprague. This argument is meritless as it ignores the requirement that
prison officials be given fair notice of a prisoner’s complaint. The content of the 0674 Grievance
would not have reasonably alerted prison officials that Plaintiff was alleging a retaliatory cell
placement in the 0671 Grievance. It also ignores the case law cited above that a prisoner may not
exhaust a retaliation (or any other) claim by raising it for the first time in a Step II or III appeal.
Here, Plaintiff relies on allegations not from a Step II or III appeal concerning the same incident,
but from a completely different grievance concerning events that occurred weeks later to create an
issue of retaliation omitted from Step I of the 0671 Grievance.
Plaintiff says that Kennedy v. Curtis, No. 2:19-cv-13210, 2021 WL 5987146 (E.D. Mich.
July 12, 2021), adopted by 2021 WL 5104577 (E.D. Mich. Nov. 3, 2021), supports his position,
as the court considered two grievances together to find that the plaintiff sufficiently exhausted his
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claim that the defendant issued a retaliatory misconduct ticket. Apart from the fact that Kennedy
is not binding on this Court, the circumstances there were materially different from those in the
present case. The defendant in Kennedy issued the plaintiff a misconduct ticket, which the plaintiff
successfully defended at a hearing. After defending the misconduct, the plaintiff wrote a grievance
alleging retaliation and complaining that he had “not been placed in H-Unit even though he is
registered in the college program and still a member of the Warden’s Forum as a form of retaliation
for being rendered a not guilty finding on the charges that were bestowed upon him by [the
defendant].” 2021 WL 5987146, at *3. About a week later, the plaintiff filed a grievance alleging
that the defendant had falsified the misconduct. Id. at *4. The defendant argued that the plaintiff
did not exhaust his retaliatory misconduct claim because he did not specifically allege that the
defendant “issued the ticket in retaliation for his complaints during the Warden’s Forum
meetings.” 	Id. (italics omitted). The court disagreed, finding that the initial grievance provided
the defendant sufficient notice of the plaintiff’s claim that the defendant issued the misconduct
ticket in retaliation for the plaintiff’s actions as a member of the Warden’s Forum. The court further
noted that, although the second grievance did not mention retaliation specifically, the falsification
allegation reasonably indicated that the misconduct was issued without good cause, i.e., “for an
improper purpose.” Id.
In contrast to Kennedy, the 0671 Grievance filed first did not complain about retaliatory
treatment, and other than being directed at Sprague, there is no factual overlap between the 0671
Grievance and the 0674 Grievance as in Kennedy. Accordingly, Defendant Sprague has shown
that Plaintiff failed to exhaust his retaliation claim.
IV. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, I recommend that the Court grant Defendant Sprague’s motion
for summary judgment and dismiss Plaintiff’s claim against him without prejudice.
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Dated: June 8, 2026 	/s/ Sally J. Berens
SALLY J. BERENS
U.S. Magistrate Judge
NOTICE
OBJECTIONS to this Report and Recommendation must be filed with the Clerk of Court
within 14 days of the date of service of this notice. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C). Failure to file
objections within the specified time waives the right to appeal the District Court’s order. See
Thomas v. Arn, 474 U.S. 140 (1985); United States v. Walters, 638 F.2d 947 (6th Cir. 1981).
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