Dewey v. Rodriguez

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA FORT WAYNE DIVISION CHARLES LEE DEWEY, III, Plaintiff, v. CAUSE NO. 1:24-CV-527 DRL-SJF RODRIGUEZ, POEPPEL, KALI, Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER Charles Lee Dewey, III, a prisoner without a lawyer, filed a complaint with unrelated claims. ECF 1. Claims are related in a legal sense either if the same defendant is involved in each claim or if the claims all stem from the same transaction or occurrence and there is a common question of law or fact. Fed. R. Civ. P. 18(a), 20(a)(2). In this complaint, Mr. Dewey raises issues about Officer Rodriguez and Officer Poeppel serving him medically inappropriate food and denying him grievance forms while he was housed on F-Block from May 14-17, 2024. Separately, he complains that Nurse Kali failed to administer his prescriptions while he was in F-Block, forcing him to go without his medication those days. These two issues are not related simply because they both happened while he was housed in F-Block. “[U]nrelated claims against different defendants belong in different suits,” George v. Smith, 507 F.3d 605, 607 (7th Cir. 2007). When a plaintiff files a complaint with unrelated or mis-joined claims, the court may allow the plaintiff to decide which properly joined and related claims to pursue in the current case and when (or if) to bring the other claims in separate suits. See Wheeler v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 689 F.3d 680, 683 (7th Cir. 2012) (court may direct a plaintiff “to file separate complaints, each confined to one group of injuries and defendants”). Mr. Dewey needs to decide which claim to bring in this case.

To do so, he must file an amended complaint with only related claims. To file an amended complaint, he needs to write this cause number on a Pro Se 14 (INND Rev. 2/20) Prisoner Complaint form, which is available from his law library. He needs to write the word “Amended” on the first page above the title “Prisoner Complaint” and send it to the court after he properly completes the form. If he wants to pursue any other claims, he must file a separate complaint, which will be assigned a new case number and assessed a separate filing fee for each group of claims.

For these reasons, the court: (1) GRANTS Charles Lee Dewey, III until May 29, 2025, to file an amended complaint containing only related claims; and (2) CAUTIONS Charles Lee Dewey, III if he does not respond by the deadline, the court will select a claim and dismiss the others.

SO ORDERED.

April 28, 2025 s/ Damon R. Leichty Judge, United States District Court