O R D E R
Paul Blake, an Illinois prisoner, appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment based on his failure to exhaust administrative remedies under 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). We affirm.
In 2015, while incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center, Blake was diagnosed with a hernia. The doctor informed him that Wexford Health Sources, Inc., (the company that contracted with the Illinois Department of Corrections to provide medical care to inmates) would approve surgery to repair his hernia only if it burst or became strangulated, neither of which had happened. So the doctor prescribed pain medication. Blake was seen several more times that year for hernia pain and eventually received a hernia belt. In 2016, he was transferred to Western Correctional Center and continued to have medical visits for pain.
In August of 2018, Blake filed his first of three grievances about Wexford's denial of corrective hernia surgery and treatment for unrelated back pain.1Blake maintains that the grievance was returned by his grievance officer, Tara Goins, for failing to specify the dates of the complained-of incidents. He asserts that he then resubmitted the grievance with the relevant dates, but Goins never responded, apart from telling him repeatedly to be patient while it was under review.
In November of 2019, Blake reprised his complaints in a second grievance (No. 19-2572), which he marked as an emergency. The prison's chief administrative officer returned the grievance to Blake after determining that the circumstances did not constitute a true emergency. Blake appealed to the Administrative Review Board, but the Board declined to review the grievance because he did not provide necessary materials (a copy of the original grievance and the prison's response) or specify the dates of the complained-of incidents.
In May of 2020, Blake filed a third grievance (No. 20-1794), stating that Wexford caused him months of unnecessary pain by denying him an MRI that a doctor had recommended in October of 2018. Wexford did not approve the MRI until June of 2019.
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After receiving the MRI, Blake was approved for unspecified injections to ease his pain and was told that if the pain did not improve, he would be considered for surgery in six to eight weeks.2Because Blake received the MRI in June of 2019, a grievance officer denied the grievance as moot. Days later, Blake appealed the denial to the Administrative Review Board, which dismissed the grievance as untimely. In October of 2020, Blake brought this deliberate indifference suit, asserting that Wexford denied him effective hernia treatment in violation of his rights under the Eighth Amendment. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The district judge screened Blake's complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A and allowed him to proceed on his claim that Wexford maintained a policy or practice of denying effective hernia treatment to prisoners in the Illinois Department of Corrections. See Monell v. Dep't of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 694-95
(1978).
Wexford moved for summary judgment for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, as required under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). Wexford argued that Blake filed only two grievances related to his Monell claim and that those two grievances were procedurally defective. The district judge referred Wexford's motion to a magistrate judge to conduct a hearing under Pavey v. Conley, 544 F.3d 739, 742 (7th Cir. 2008), in order to resolve disputed facts about exhaustion.
At the hearing, the magistrate judge heard testimony from five witnesses. First, Wexford presented testimony from a grievance officer about why he denied Grievance No. 20-1794 as moot. Wexford also presented testimony from Goins, who denied having received any grievance in August of 2018 and explained why she found Grievance No. 19-2572 to be procedurally defective. Blake then presented testimony from two prisoners who asserted that they had submitted grievances to Goins that were later lost. Finally, Blake testified about the process by which he submitted each of his three grievances.
In a report and recommendation, the magistrate judge recommended granting summary judgment to Wexford based on Blake's failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The magistrate judge found that (1) Grievance No. 19-2572 was procedurally defective because Blake failed to attach the required documents in his appeal to the Administrative Review Board; (2) Grievance No. 20-1794, dated May 2020, was
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untimely because it was not filed within 60 days of the problem giving rise to the grievance—the lack of treatment in late 2018 or early 2019; and (3) the administrative remedies for any non-documented grievance could not have been exhausted by conversations Blake may have had with Goins. On this latter point, the magistrate judge credited Goins's denial that she spoke with Blake about the non-documented grievance. Over Blake's objections, the district judge adopted the magistrate judge's findings and granted summary judgment to Wexford.
On appeal, Blake maintains that the magistrate judge erred by finding that none of his three grievances was sufficient to exhaust administrative remedies. We review the magistrate judge's findings of fact and credibility assessments from the Pavey hearing for clear error. See Wilborn v. Ealey, 881 F.3d 998, 1004 (7th Cir. 2018). First, regarding the non-documented first grievance, Blake argues that the magistrate judge should have viewed the record in the light most favorable to him, the nonmovant, and credited his testimony that he filed a grievance in August of 2018. But the judge, having held a Pavey hearing, was entitled to make findings about disputed facts over exhaustion.3Id. And though the administrative process would be deemed unavailable if Goins had thwarted Blake's efforts, see Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632, 644 (2016), we cannot say here that the magistrate judge—having heard the testimony of several witnesses—clearly erred in finding more credible Goins's testimony that she never received, lost, or destroyed Blake's grievances.
Next, regarding Grievance No. 19-2572, Blake argues that his "emergency"
appeal to the Administrative Review Board should not have been rejected for lack of documentation because the decisionmakers had notice of his ongoing hernia problem and could have addressed it. But to exhaust administrative remedies, prisoners must strictly comply with the prison's administrative rules. Breyley v. Fuchs, 156 F.4th 845, 847-48 (7th Cir. 2025); Pozo v. McCaughtry, 286 F.3d 1022, 1025 (7th Cir. 2002). Illinois
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requires that appeals to the Board be supplemented with copies of the grievance officer's report and the chief administrative officer's decision. 20 Ill. Admin. Code § 504.850(a). Because Blake did not supply the Board with those materials, the magistrate judge rightly found that Blake failed to comply with administrative procedures.
As for Grievance No. 20-1794, Blake challenges the finding that it was untimely and urges that Wexford's policy toward hernia treatment constituted a continuing violation of his constitutional rights. The continuing violation doctrine applies when the state actor has a policy or practice that creates a "fresh violation each day". Tobey v. Chibucos, 890 F.3d 634, 646 (7th Cir. 2018) (internal quotation omitted). A violation is continuing if "it would be unreasonable to require or even permit [a prisoner] to sue separately over every incident of the defendant's unlawful conduct." Turley v. Rednour,
729 F.3d 645, 651 (7th Cir. 2013) (quoting Heard v. Sheahan, 253 F.3d 316, 319 (7th Cir. 2001)). Blake suggests that the magistrate judge construed his grievance too narrowly— characterizing it as complaining only about the lack of treatment between October of 2018 and July of 2019—and overlooked other statements that allude to the continuing nature of ineffective treatment. In the grievance, Blake says, for instance, he "was told that Wexford only repaired hernias in emergencies." He also lists many medical appointments for hernia pain between April of 2015 and December of 2019, none of which resulted in surgery.
We cannot say that the magistrate judge's interpretation of the grievance was clearly erroneous. Blake devotes most of the grievance to complaining about Wexford's delay in conducting an MRI that his doctor had recommended in October of 2018. As he expressly says in the grievance, "I am grieving the fact that Wexford denied [the doctor]'s original assessment of my condition and recommended treatment of having an MRI done to determine the best course of treatment." This episode is the crux of the grievance, which, filed as it was in May of 2020, was well beyond 60 days of the underlying events. See 20 Ill. Admin. Code § 504.810(a).
We have reviewed Blake's remaining arguments, and none has merit.
AFFIRMED
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