Timmons v. Bohinski

Brandon Timmons, concerned that prison employees he had previously sued might retaliate against him, approached a prison supervisor to discuss his concerns. That supervisor, Defendant Bohinski, called Mr. Timmons a “rat” and a “snitch” in front of other incarcerated individuals, putting him at serious risk of physical harm.

Mr. Timmons attempted to file a grievance about this incident, but the prison guard to whom he submitted the grievance read it, discarded it, and threatened Mr. Timmons that “inmates who file grievances [against] Bohinski get the shit beat out of them.”

Mr. Timmons described these events in a declaration attached to his opposition to Defendant Bohinski’s motion for summary judgment for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Yet the district court rejected Mr. Timmons’s declaration out of hand, deeming it “conclusory” and “self-serving” and thus insufficient to withstand summary judgment, and thus granted summary judgment to Defendant Bohinski on Mr. Timmons’s civil rights lawsuit against him.

The MacArthur Justice Center, alongside co-counsel at Jenner & Block, represents Mr. Timmons on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, to ensure that prisoners’ explanations of threats they receive that prevent them from pursuing the grievance process are believed, and that prisoners do not have to subject themselves to possible physical harm just to be able to get into federal court.