The opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
PENSACOLA DIVISION
ADRIAN FRANCIS WILLIAMS,
Plaintiff,
v. Case No. 3:25cv643-AW-HTC
SANTA ROSA CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION,
et al.,
Defendants.
____________________________/
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
Adrian Francis Williams, a prisoner proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis,
has filed a civil rights complaint against seven correctional officers for failing to
protect him from gang members while at Santa Rosa Correctional Institute. Doc. 1.
Upon review, the undersigned recommends this action be DISMISSED for
Plaintiff’s failure to truthfully disclose his litigation history.
I. STANDARD OF REVIEW
Pursuant to the Prison Litigation Reform Act, (“PLRA”), the court shall
review “as soon as practicable” any prisoner’s complaint seeking redress from
governmental employees and, upon such review, shall “dismiss the complaint, or
any portion of the complaint, if the complaint is (1) frivolous, malicious, or fails to
state a claim upon which relief can be granted; or (2) seeks monetary relief from a
defendant who is immune from such relief.” See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(a–b); see also
28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B) (setting the same standard for in forma pauperis litigants).
II. FAILURE TO DISCLOSE
As part of this Court’s complaint form, prisoners are asked to disclose their
litigation history. Section VIII.A. of the form asks Plaintiff whether he has “had any
case in federal court, including federal appellate court, dismissed as frivolous, as
malicious, or for failure to state a claim, or prior to service.” Id. at 22. In response,
Plaintiff disclosed two prior 1983 cases: (1) Williams v. Bryant, et al., 4:13-vc-
00298-MW-MAF and (2) Williams v. Burch, et al., 4:20-cv-00288-TKW-MAF.
Doc 1 at 22-23. However, he failed to truthfully disclose the disposition of those
cases.
In Williams v. Bryant, et al, 4:13-cv-00298-MW-MAF, the court dismissed
Plaintiff’s case for failure to state a claim. Doc. 110 at 1. On appeal, the Eleventh
Circuit affirmed the dismissal. Doc. 129 at 2. Nonetheless, Plaintiff wrongly
claimed in his complaint that “[T]he 11th Circuit found 3 of the Defendants listed in
my § 1983 negligen[t] due to these repeated issues of deliberate indifference issues.”
Doc. 1. at 22. In Williams v. Burch et al, 4:20-cv-00288-TKW-MAF, the Plaintiff
wrote: “I dismissed it and forgave Florida D.O.C. in God’s name.” Doc. 1. at 23.
However, the docket reflects that a motion to dismiss some of Plaintiff’s claims was
granted, and that summary judgment was eventually granted as to the remaining
claims.
Williams also failed to truthfully answer Question III.C., which asks whether
Plaintiff has filed any other lawsuit, habeas petition, or appeal in state or federal
court either challenging his conviction or relating to the conditions of his
confinement. Doc. 1 at 23. Although the Plaintiff checked “Yes” to Question C he
did not identify any cases.
As a matter of course, the Court attempts to make an independent
investigation into whether litigants truthfully complete the complaint forms,
especially when a lack of candor in informing the Court of prior lawsuits may affect
the Court’s jurisdiction. The time spent verifying the cases a plaintiff has filed but
failed to identify, as well as the claims raised in those cases and their disposition,
can be considerable. Upon such an investigation, the undersigned takes judicial
notice of the following four (4) habeas petitions that Plaintiff filed but failed to
disclose:
Williams v. Secretary, Dept. of Corrections et al., No. 3:12-cv-01296-
BJD-MCR (M.D. Fla. July 1, 2015) (dismissed with prejudice)
Williams v. Secretary, Dept. of Corrections et al., No. 3:14-cv-00706-
MMH-JBT (M.D. Fla. July 5, 2017) (dismissed with prejudice)
Williams v. The Secretary of the Florida Dept. of Corrections et al, No.
3:19-cv-00121-TJC-PDB (M.D. Feb. 20, 2019) (dismissed without
prejudice for lack of jurisdiction)
Williams v. Secretary of the Florida Dept. of Corrections, No. 3:19-cv-
00397-BJD-JK (M.D. Fla. Sep. 10, 2021) (dismissed with prejudice)
Plaintiff appealed each of these denials in USCA #14-13686, #15-13112, #17-
14655, and #21-13317, respectively. However, he failed to disclose any of these
federal actions despite the complaint form’s clear instructions and his answer to
Question C.
Plaintiff seeks to be excused from being forthright with the Court by
contending he does not have access to all his legal work and alleges officials are
stealing the legal work or gang members are doing so. He argues without this
information he cannot “properly answer these questions.” Doc. 1 at 23. The Court
disagrees. First, if Plaintiff’s legal work is being stolen, he has both administrative
and civil remedies he can pursue. Second, Plaintiff can request a listing of the cases
he has filed and pay for copies of the complaints or disposition of the cases from the
courts. See Sheffield v. Brown, 2023 WL 9105658 at *3 (N.D. Fla. Dec. 14, 2023)
(“Plaintiff could have requested his litigation history from the appropriate clerks of
the various courts…[a]s such, Plaintiff simply cannot blame his faulty memory for
his failure to respond to the questions.”); see also Owens v. Oliver, 2020 WL
6302330 at *2 (N.D. Fla. Sep. 23, 2020) (“Thus, Owens’s explanation—a faulty
memory regarding cases filed long away—rings hollow. His explanation simply is
not credible. Furthermore, Owens could have—but failed to—seek a list of his cases
from the respective clerk of courts to ensure that he had not omitted any cases from
his litigation history.”) Indeed, the Court’s complaint form directs prisoners to “err
on the side of caution,”1 and Plaintiff could have (and should have) identified as
much information he could – leaving the section blank and identifying no cases is
not acceptable. See McClain v. Nelson, 2011 WL 675030, at *1 (S.D. Ga. Feb. 3,
2011), report and recommendation adopted, 2011 WL 674894 (S.D. Ga. Feb. 17,
2011) (“The Court rejects McClain's explanation. Even if he no longer had access
to the older lawsuit documents, he surely retained some personal memory of them,
and nothing stopped him from truthfully telling the Court that prior lawsuits existed
and beckon[ing] the Court to look them up.”). Thus, the Court does not find
Plaintiff’s purported lack of access to legal work justifies his failure to truthfully
disclose his litigation history. See Beshears v. Marion County Board of County
Comm’rs, 2020 WL 5949790, at * 2 (11th Cir. April 20, 2020) (“District Court acted
within its discretion in finding that Mr. Beshears’s explanation for his failure to
disclose this information - … that he suffered from memory loss – was not credible
or persuasive reason for failing to disclose his numerous other lawsuits”).
The Court has the authority to control and manage matters pending before it,
and Plaintiff’s pro se status does not excuse him from conforming to acceptable
1 Although Plaintiff used the Court’s complaint form, he omitted some pages from the form when
he filed the document, including the instructions for completing the “prior litigation” section of
the form. Nonetheless, he is bound to those instructions regardless of whether he chose to file the
entire complaint form.
standards in approaching the Court. If the Court cannot rely on the statements or
responses made by the parties, it threatens the quality of justice. The Court will not
tolerate false responses or statements in any pleading or motion filed before it. If
Plaintiff suffered no penalty for his untruthful responses, there would be little or no
disincentive for his attempt to evade or undermine the purpose of the form. Thus,
the Court should not allow Plaintiff’s misrepresentation to go unpunished.
An appropriate sanction for the Plaintiff’s failure to provide the Court with
true factual responses is to dismiss this case without prejudice. See Bratton v. Sec’y
DOC, 2012 WL 2913171, at *1 (M.D. Fla. July 16, 2012) (dismissing case without
prejudice when prisoner failed to disclose one prior federal case that was dismissed
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)). Johnson v. Crawson, Case No. 5:08cv300-RS-
EMT, 2010 WL 1380247 (N.D. Fla. Mar. 3, 2010) (dismissing case without
prejudice when prisoner failed to disclose one prior federal case); see also Strickland
v. United States, 739 F. App’x 587, 588 (11th Cir. 2018) (“A sanction less than
dismissal would signal that a failure to disclose filings is an infraction without
consequence.”).
As another judge from this District stated in a similar ruling, “If the
requirement for prisoner plaintiffs to disclose their prior lawsuits is to serve its
purpose, a plaintiff must provide accurate information. If word got around the
prisons that inaccurate or incomplete information could be provided with no
effective sanction, the form would serve little purpose.” Rodriguez v. Inch, No.
4:19cv191-RH-HTC, at Doc. 52 (N.D. Fla. June 7, 2020).
Indeed, “[a] plaintiff’s affirmative misrepresentation regarding his prior legal
history, when the complaint form required disclosure of such history and the
plaintiff’s statements were made under penalty of perjury, constitutes abuse of the
judicial process warranting dismissal of the case without prejudice as ‘malicious’
under the PLRA, § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i). See Myrick v. Martin, No.
3:14CV77/LAC/EMT, 2014 WL 1744156, at *2 (N.D. Fla. May 1, 2014)
(dismissing case as “malicious” under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i) and 28 U.S.C. §
1915A(b)(1) for plaintiff's failure to disclose two prior actions).
Accordingly, it is respectfully RECOMMENDED:
1. This case be DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE under 28 U.S.C. §
1915(e)(2)(B)(i) and 28 U.S.C. § 1915A(b)(1) as malicious for abuse of the judicial
process due to Plaintiff's failure to disclose his litigation history.
2. The clerk be directed to close the file.
At Pensacola, this 2nd day of July, 2025.
/s/ Hope Thai Cannon
HOPE THAI CANNON
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
NOTICE TO THE PARTIES
Objections to these proposed findings and recommendations may be filed within
fourteen (14) days of the date of the Report and Recommendation. Any different
deadline that may appear on the electronic docket is for the court's internal use only
and does not control. A copy of objections shall be served upon the magistrate judge
and all other parties. A party failing to object to a magistrate judge's findings or
recommendations contained in a report and recommendation in accordance with the
provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1) waives the right to challenge on appeal the
district court's order based on unobjected-to factual and legal conclusions. See 11th
Cir. R. 3-1.