Captain Romine, Sgt. T.J. Lingo, Julie L. Jones, Secretary of The Florida Department of Corrections, and Warden Coker v. Derrick Allen

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL

STATE OF FLORIDA

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No. 1D18-1590

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CAPTAIN ROMINE, SGT. T.J.

LINGO, JULIE L. JONES,

Secretary of The Florida

Department of Corrections, and

WARDEN COKER,

Petitioners,

v.

DERRICK ALLEN,

Respondent.

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Emergency Petition for Writ of Mandamus—Original

Jurisdiction.

December 28, 2018

PER CURIAM.

This petition for writ of mandamus seeks to compel the trial

court to apply section 57.085(6), Florida Statutes (2017), to a

complaint pending against Petitioners. Because Petitioners have

not established that they lack an adequate legal remedy, we deny

the petition.

Respondent Allen, a prisoner, filed a six-count complaint

against Petitioners in August 2016. He was declared indigent, and

summons issued. Petitioners moved to dismiss the complaint. The

trial court granted the motion, dismissing the complaint with leave

to amend. Respondent then filed a ten-count amended complaint.

Petitioners moved to dismiss the amended complaint. The trial

court denied the motion and permitted Respondent to amend the

complaint again. Respondent then filed a second amended

complaint raising fifteen claims against each Petitioner (sixty

claims in all). Petitioners did not move to dismiss this complaint,

but filed an answer instead. ∗ The trial court set an ambitious

discovery schedule and scheduled the trial to begin less than sixty

days later.

Petitioners moved to continue the trial, asserting that the case

was not ready for trial because the claims in the second amended

complaint had not been screened as required by section 57.085(6),

Florida Statutes. At a case management conference, the court

denied the motion, finding Petitioners had not shown good cause

for a continuance. When counsel for Petitioners inquired whether

the court had screened the claims in the second amended

complaint, the trial court responded that the statute related only

to initiation of the case, and therefore the trial court complied with

the statute by screening the claims in the original complaint.

Petitioners then filed a petition for writ of mandamus in this

Court, seeking to require the trial court to screen the claims in the

second amended complaint in compliance with section 57.085(6),

Florida Statutes, which provides as follows:

Before an indigent prisoner may intervene in or

initiate any judicial proceeding, the court must

review the prisoner’s claim to determine whether it

is legally sufficient to state a cause of action for

which the court has jurisdiction and may grant

relief. The court shall dismiss all or part of an

indigent prisoner’s claim which:

∗

Petitioners later filed a motion for summary judgment that

the trial court originally deemed to be untimely. The trial court

ruled on the motion while the mandamus petition was pending in

this Court.

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(a) Fails to state a claim for which relief may be

granted;

(b) Seeks monetary relief from a defendant who is

immune from such relief;

(c) Seeks relief for mental or emotional injury

where there has been no related allegation of a

physical injury; or

(d) Is frivolous, malicious, or reasonably appears to

be intended to harass one or more named

defendants.

“One seeking a writ of mandamus must show that he has a

clear legal right to the performance of a clear legal duty by a public

officer, and that he has no other available legal remedies.” Plymel

v. Moore, 770 So. 2d 242, 246 (Fla. 1st DCA 2000). “Mandamus

may be used only to enforce a clear and certain right; it may not be

used to establish such a right, but only to enforce a right already

clearly and certainly established in the law.” Id. Here, Petitioners

had a clear legal right for the trial court to perform a clear legal

duty under the statute.

The plain language of the statute provides that the court

“must” review an indigent prisoner’s “claim” and “shall” dismiss all

or part of the “claim” that runs afoul of the statute. The trial court

here determined that its duty to screen claims under the statute

was limited to screening the claims in the original complaint. We

disagree with the trial court’s interpretation of the statute, and we

agree with the other district courts that have held that the statute

requires trial courts to screen claims in amended complaints, not

just those set forth in the original complaints. See Reed v. Mims,

711 So. 2d 169, 172 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998) (affirming the dismissal of

the original complaint, but concluding that plaintiff was entitled

to leave to file an amended complaint, which “will trigger another

section 57.085 review” by the trial court). See also James v. Goryl,

62 So. 3d 1225, 1226 (Fla. 5th DCA 2011) (observing that an

“amended complaint will also be subject to preliminary review

under section 57.085(6)”).

As the Third District recognized in Reed, section 57.085 was

enacted in part to allow dismissal of frivolous inmate lawsuits to

avoid the unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer and judicial

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resources. 711 So. 2d at 170-71 (“One of the specific problems

identified by the Legislature in its preamble to the 1996 enactment

was that ‘under current law frivolous inmate lawsuits are

dismissible by the courts only after considerable expenditure of

precious taxpayer and judicial resources . . . .’ Ch. 96-106, at 93,

Laws of Fla. Accordingly the statute calls for prescreening of an

indigent inmate’s lawsuit by the court before it is accepted for

filing.”). Here, Respondent added forty new claims between the

time he filed the original complaint and the second amended

complaint. The trial court was required to screen these new

claims, no less than the claims set forth in the original complaint,

to perform the gatekeeping function that section 57.085(6)

requires.

But while the Petitioners have demonstrated that they had a

clear legal right for the trial court to perform a clear legal duty

under the statute, Petitioners have failed to establish that they

lack other available legal remedies. This is because pursuant to

the statute, the trial court may screen a claim set forth in a

complaint at any time, even before the plaintiff has accomplished

service of process. See Hall v. Knipp, 982 So. 2d 1196, 1199 (Fla.

1st DCA 2008) (noting that “[t]he statute calls for court review

before any judicial proceeding is initiated, and the trial court

conscientiously complied by conducting its review before

authorizing any service of process”). Thus, the trial court’s duty to

screen claims begins once a complaint is filed, and we conclude

that the duty to screen claims in compliance with the statute

remains until the trial court has performed the required review.

Nothing prevents a defendant from seeking a ruling from the trial

court as to whether a claim should be dismissed on grounds that

the claim is not legally sufficient.

Here, although Petitioners raised the screening issue during

a case management conference after the second amended

complaint was filed, Petitioners never sought a ruling on the legal

sufficiency of those claims. Thus, because Petitioners have an

adequate remedy at law available to them and have not met the

standard for this Court to grant mandamus relief, we deny the

petition.

ROWE, BILBREY, and KELSEY, JJ., concur.

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_____________________________

Not final until disposition of any timely and

authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or

9.331.

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Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General, and Erik Kverne, Assistant

Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Petitioners.

James V. Cook of the Law Office of James Cook, Tallahassee, for

Respondent.

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