Williams, Jovan v. Young, Rebecca et al

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN
JOVAN WILLIAMS,
Plaintiff,
v.
REBECCA YOUNG, NICHOLAS ROEN,
BRITTANY HIBMA, SHANE HINTON,
BOWYN WILSON, GINA STREHLOW,
OFFICER SULLIVAN, OFFICER KRASOVEK,
OFFICER GENSKE, OFFICER REWEY,
OFFICER MORGAN,
and DR. ENGLISH,
Defendants.
OPINION and ORDER
25-cv-252-jdp
Plaintiff Jovan Williams, proceeding without counsel, alleges that prison staff at
Columbia Correctional Institution failed to promptly address his threats of suicide and failed
to give him adequate medical care after he attempted suicide by overdosing on medication.
Defendants move for partial summary judgment, contending that Williams failed to exhaust
his administrative remedies for his claims based on defendants’ refusal to put him in soft
restraints when he was in the hospital after the overdose. Dkt. 36.1 For the reasons stated
below, I will grant defendants’ motion and dismiss the restraints claims.
1 Defendant Gina Strehlow is represented by different counsel than all the other defendants,
because she was not a Department of Corrections employee when she worked at the prison.
But after the DOC defendants moved for partial summary judgment, Strehlow moved to join
that motion in full. Dkt. 40. Accordingly, I will treat the motion for partial summary judgment
as brought by all the defendants.
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ANALYSIS
The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) requires inmates to exhaust all available
administrative 	remedies 	before 	filing 	a 	lawsuit 	in 	federal 	court 	about 	“prison
conditions.” 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). To comply with § 1997e(a), a prisoner must take each step
in the administrative process, Pozo v. McCaughtry, 286 F.3d 1022, 1025 (7th Cir. 2002), which
includes following instructions for filing an initial grievance, Cannon v. Washington, 418 F.3d
714, 718 (7th Cir. 2005), as well as filing all necessary appeals, Burrell v. Powers, 431 F.3d 282,
284–85 (7th Cir. 2005), “in the place, and at the time, the prison’s administrative rules
require,” Pozo, 286 F.3d at 1025.
To exhaust administrative remedies in Wisconsin, inmates ordinarily must follow the
Inmate Complaint Review System process as set forth in Wisconsin Administrative Code
Chapter DOC 310. The purpose of these requirements is to give the prison administrators a
fair opportunity to resolve the grievance without litigation. Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81,
88–89 (2006). Failure to exhaust administrative remedies under § 1997e(a) is an affirmative
defense that must be proven by defendants. Davis v. Mason, 881 F.3d 982, 985 (7th Cir. 2018).
The PLRA doesn’t apply to Williams’s state-law negligence claims. But Wisconsin
imposes a similar exhaustion requirement for state law claims, prohibiting prisoners from filing
“a civil action or special proceeding . . . with respect to the prison or jail conditions in the
facility in which he is or has been incarcerated, imprisoned or detained until the person has
exhausted all available administrative remedies that the department of corrections had
promulgated by rule.” Wis. Stat. § 801.02(7)(b). Because Wisconsin’s law is based on the
federal PLRA, a court may take guidance from federal PLRA case law. See Compton v. Cox, No.
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12-cv-837-jdp, 2017 WL 933152, at *6 (W.D. Wis. Mar. 8, 2017) (plaintiff “is free to use
federal PLRA case law in analyzing the Wisconsin version”).
Williams asserts that defendants Sullivan, Krasovek, Genske, Rewey, Morgan, and
English violated the Eighth Amendment and Wisconsin negligence law by refusing to put
Williams in soft restraints while he was in the hospital after his overdose, even though they
knew that Williams’s restraints were causing injury to his wrists and ankles. Defendants move
for summary judgment on the restraints claims, contending that Williams’s September 16,
2024, grievance about the overdose incident didn’t put defendants on notice about the
restraints issue. CCI-2024-13749, Dkt. 38-2.
In the absence of particular grievance rules mandating more, a prisoner does not have
to plead legal theories in their grievances. Riccardo v. Rausch, 375 F.3d 521, 524 (7th Cir. 2004).
But a prisoner must still “provide[ ] notice to the prison of ‘the nature of the wrong for which
redress is sought.’” Schillinger v. Kiley, 954 F.3d 990, 995 (7th Cir. 2020) (quoting Strong v.
David, 297 F.3d 646, 650 (7th Cir. 2002)). The key question is whether the prisoner’s
grievance provided “prison officials a fair opportunity to address his complaint.” Jackson v. Esser,
105 F.4th 948 (7th Cir. 2024) (quoting Maddox v. Love, 655 F.3d 709, 722 (7th Cir. 2011));
see also Wis. Admin. Code § DOC 310.07(6) (“A complaint must contain sufficient information
for the department to investigate and decide the complaint.”).
The parties agree that the September 16 grievance is the only complaint Williams filed
about the events at issue in this case. Williams identified the subject of that grievance as, “CCI
staff members didn’t properly respond to my serious health needs.” Dkt. 38-2, at 10. In his
description of the incident, he wrote, “The issue that I am addressing in this complaint is that
the officers and supervisor didn’t properly respond to my overdose incident.” He then wrote
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several paragraphs describing how prison staff failed to prevent him from overdosing, failed to
supervise him after he overdosed, and failed to act quickly to send him to a hospital. 	Id at
10–11. Williams’s only reference to restraints is in the last paragraph of the grievance. Williams
wrote:
I then woke up in the hospital out of a coma over 24 hours later
very confused with many injuries. As a result staff had to remove
me from the room with force, leave me in restraints that was tight,
I almost died and gina/the delay of not getting me to the hospital
sooner not by EMS Ambulance could’ve caused me my life due to
all 	of 	the 	responsible 	staff 	members 	at 	CCI 	not 	properly
responding to my overdose. This is a clear violation of my
constitutional 	rights 	and 	total 	disregard 	of 	the 	DAI 	Work
Rules/Policies given to them that shall be investigated.
I conclude that the September 16 grievance did not fairly notify prison officials about
Williams’s restraints claims. Williams wrote that he was complaining about how prison staff
responded to his overdose, so prison officials would have had no reason to know that he was
also complaining about prison staff’s failure to use soft restraints. Nor does the mention of
restraints in the last paragraph provide enough information to notify prison officials about the
restraints claims. Williams mentioned the restraints only in the context of explaining his
injuries from the overdose, suggesting that his being left in restraints was part of the harm he
suffered from the overdose, not a separate issue. Williams described the restraints as “tight,”
but he didn’t identify any injury he suffered from the restraints, explain whether he had
complained to staff about the restraints, or otherwise say anything that might have led prison
officials to investigate the restraints issue as a separate claim. See Page v. Inmate Call Sols.,
No. 21-cv-761-WMC, 2023 WL 7408089 (W.D. Wis. Nov. 9, 2023) (grievance must provide
“sufficient basis to prompt the [complaint examiner] to investigate.”).
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Williams points out that he provided additional information about the restraints issue
when he appealed the grievance, saying, “staff members . . . left me in excessive restraints for
more than 24-hrs, causing me many injuries.” Dkt. 38-2, at 30. He argues that this statement
shows that he did raise the restraint issue in his grievance and that he was “just explaining more
on that issue” in his appeal. Dkt. 41, at 3. But Williams’s raising the restraints issue in his
appeal is irrelevant. Prison regulations require inmates to raise issues by first filing a grievance
at the institution level, so issues raised for the first time on appeal are not properly exhausted.
See Wis. Admin. Code §§ DOC 310.07(1), 310.09(1); Berg v. Babcock, No. 18-cv-842-jdp, 2020
WL 869170, at *2 (W.D. Wis. Feb. 21, 2020). Williams did not fairly raise the restraints issue
in his September 16 grievance, so he did not exhaust his administrative remedies for those
claims.
CONCLUSION
Williams 	did 	not 	exhaust 	his 	administrative 	remedies 	for 	his 	claims 	based 	on
defendants’ failure to put him in soft restraints, so I will grant defendants’ motion for partial
summary judgment on those claims. These are the only claims against defendants Sullivan,
Krasovek, Genske, Rewey, Morgan, and English, so I will dismiss them from the case.
Dismissals for failure to exhaust are always without prejudice, Ford v. Johnson, 362 F.3d 395,
401 (7th Cir. 2004), although it is probably too late for Williams to properly exhaust his
restraints claims.
This case will proceed on Williams’s Eighth Amendment and Wisconsin-law negligence
claims against Roen, Wilson, Young, Hibma, Hinton, and Strehlow based on their alleged
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failure to prevent Williams from overdosing and failure to provide him with prompt medical
care after he overdosed.
ORDER
IT IS ORDERED that:
1. 	Defendants’ motion for partial summary judgment, Dkt. 36, and defendant Gina
Strehlow’s motion to join, Dkt. 40, are GRANTED.
2. 	Plaintiff Jovan Williams’s claims against defendants Sullivan, Krasovek, Genske,
Rewey, Morgan, and English are DISMISSED without prejudice.
3. 	Defendants 	Sullivan, 	Krasovek, 	Genske, 	Rewey, 	Morgan, 	and 	English 	are
DISMISSED from the case.
4. 	Defendants’ motion to stay discovery, Dkt. 42, and plaintiff’s motion for a status
update on partial summary judgment, Dkt. 57, are DENIED as moot.
Entered February 17, 2026.
BY THE COURT:
/s/
________________________________________
JAMES D. PETERSON
District Judge
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