Anctil v. Dep't of Corr.
Anctil v. Dep't of Corr.
Opinion of the Court
[¶ 1] On August 18, 2017, Steve R. Anctil, an inmate at the Maine State Prison, filed a petition in the Superior Court (Kennebec County) pursuant to M.R. Civ. P. 80C, seeking review of a disciplinary decision of the Department of Corrections. In his petition, Anctil identified the matter as "Disciplinary Case Number MSP-2017-1051"; asserted that several procedural and constitutional errors were committed in the report of, hearing on, and decision in that matter; and requested that the Superior Court vacate the disciplinary decision and award damages. With the petition, Anctil filed an application to proceed without payment of fees, an indigency affidavit, and a certificate with attached documentation establishing the balance in his prisoner trust account. Anctil appeals from the court's (Marden, J. ) dismissal of his petition, which the court entered sua sponte in a one-sentence decision: "After review of the pleadings the Court ORDERS: case dismissed for lack of jurisdiction."
[¶ 2] Seven months before the Superior Court dismissed this petition, we addressed the court's similar action in another matter. In Mutty v. Department of Corrections , as here, an inmate filed a petition pursuant to Rule 80C, seeking review of a disciplinary decision of the Department of Corrections.
[¶ 3] Just as was true in Mutty , no jurisdictional defect is apparent from the record here. We therefore vacate the judgment dismissing Anctil's complaint and remand the matter to the Superior Court for the court to act on Anctil's application to proceed without payment of fees. See M.R. Civ. P. 91 ; Mutty ,
The entry is:
Judgment vacated. Remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
The Department did not appear in the matter before the trial court and is not a party to the appeal.
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