There’s more to litigating prison cases than “exhausting” the prison’s administrative grievance system. In fact, there’s a trap for the unwary built into the process.
Some California inmates know about the need to file a 602 grievance form, and then to completely exhaust the appellate process, in order to go to court related to any sort of incident in prison. That’s a mandatory requirement of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) if the person who files the complaint in court is in custody.
What most folks don’t realize is that there is a second, parallel process that should also be going on at the same time that administrative exhaustion is happening: the inmate should also be submitting a government tort claim form. Without submitting that tort claim form, inmates risk being unable to raise causes of action under California law, because rejection of the tort claim is a requirement for asserting such state claims.
The “trap” created by these two different systems is that an inmate may focus on the “exhaustion” piece of the process and burn up precious time, not realizing that they only have six months from the time of the underlying incident (normally) to submit the tort claim.
By the time they’ve “exhausted” their claim, the time to file the tort claim may have run.
Don’t fall for the trap! Get your paperwork going right away. If you need help, get in touch.