Case: Bownes v. Washington
2:14-cv-11691 | U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Filed Date: April 28, 2014
Case Ongoing
Clearinghouse coding complete
Case Summary
An incarcerated individual in the custody of the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) filed this lawsuit on April 28, 2014, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, on behalf of a class of similarly situated individuals, against the Director of the MDOC and the general dentist of the MDOC (in their official capacities). MDOC policy detailed that a person became eligible for routine dental care only after being incarcerated for two years. The plaintiff claimed that the denial of routine dental care constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Specifically, the complaint alleged that MDOC was deliberately indifferent to incarcerated persons’ dental needs and thus caused serious health complications. Plaintiff sought declaratory and injunctive relief. The plaintiff was represented by a private attorney and the Michigan State law school's civil rights clinic; the case was assigned to District Judge Laurie J. Michelson.
The MDOC divided dental services into three categories: emergency (delay in treatment may result in death or permanent impairment), urgent (conditions medically necessary in the opinion of a qualified medical professional) and routine (anything non-urgent or non-emergent). In 2013, the MDOC instituted the policy of providing routine dental services only after two years of uninterrupted incarceration. The rule reduced the wait list for dental care by 75% from 8,000 to 2,000 people.
On February 2, 2015, the court allowed the plaintiff to amend his complaint to include five other named plaintiffs incarcerated in different facilities operated by MDOC. On February 3, 2015, the plaintiffs filed a motion seeking class certification of one “General Class” and five subclasses. The General Class constituted all prisoners confined in MDOC facilities denied dental care and treatment (including those whose custody was officially under MDOC but who located in local jails). The five subclasses referred to were individuals:
- to whom dental care was denied due to the written policy not providing routine dental care until at least two years after arrival at the prison;
- who were within one year of release date and denied dental care because of a different written policy;
- whose teeth were in need of repairs but were given only the option of extraction;
- whose dentures or bridge(s) were worn out, broken, or lost and replacement was denied based on another written policy of the defendant; and
- (5) who had been incarcerated more than two years and were not within one-year of release, and who have lost natural teeth that required replacement.
The magistrate judge recommended class certification on August 11, 2015. The defendants objected to all aspects of the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation, prompting review of the report by the district judge. On September 25, 2015, the district judge denied without prejudice the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification and rejected the magistrate judge’s report. The court denied the motion for three primary reasons: plaintiffs failed to offer sufficient proof of their as-applied claims constituting a systemic issue; plaintiffs might not have been "adequate" class representatives and their claims might have been atypical of those they sought to represent; and plaintiffs may have failed the definiteness requirement, also referred to as ascertainability, for the class definitions. 2015 WL 5634446.
The defendants were given leave to move for summary judgment multiple times. On November 6, 2015, the magistrate judge recommended that the named plaintiffs who were no longer incarcerated be dismissed from the case. 2015 WL 10521551. On March 17, 2016, the district judge adopted this recommendation and dismissed the cases of the plaintiffs no longer incarcerated. 2016 WL 1060449.
On January 19, 2016, the magistrate judge further recommended granting the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, in large part because all of the named plaintiffs except for the first one had failed to complete the MDOC’s formal grievance process before bringing the case, which meant that many of the plaintiffs had not complied with the pre-lawsuit exhaustion requirement of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Specifically, the magistrate judge found that because none of the plaintiffs’ grievances named the general dentist, plaintiffs did not properly exhaust their claims against her. 2016 WL 8231172. Defendants objected to the magistrate judge’s finding because she did not address their broader argument that plaintiffs’ claims were more comprehensively unexhausted; defendants argued that plaintiffs had failed to exhaust all their claims, not merely those against the general dentist.
On review, the district judge found for the plaintiffs; referring to Sixth Circuit precedent, the district judge found that the PLRA did not allow MDOC officials to complain during litigation of a defect it had previously overlooked or forgiven during the grievance process. Further, because failure to exhaust is an affirmative defense, defendants bore the burden of convincing the court that no reasonable jury could find that plaintiffs exhausted their claims. 2016 WL 1253266.
There was then yet another round of litigation over administrative exhaustion: another named defendant filed an exhaustion-related motion to dismiss or for summary judgment on the claims of two plaintiffs. Plaintiffs complained that exhaustion related to their diagnosis of periodontal disease was "unavailable" to them, under the statute, because dental staff never informed them of that diagnosis. The district judge disagreed on Sept. 12, 2017, dismissing plaintiffs’ claims that MDOC violated the Eighth Amendment by (1) denying necessary dental care during the first two years of incarceration; and (2) denying periodontal care. 2017 WL 4038890.
While and after the exhaustion issue was under consideration, the plaintiffs renewed their request for class certification. Then they filed a fourth amended complaint on January 14, 2018 with a broader list of named plaintiffs. In their response on February 22, 2018, defendants reiterated the following assertions: (1) plaintiffs failed to exhaust their available administrative remedies; (2) plaintiffs’ claims were moot, making them unsuitable as class representatives; and (3) class certification would be improper because the proposed classes lacked commonality.
Finally, class status was adjudicated on February 13, 2019. The district judge’s order noted that the MDOC had revised policies for tracking and treating periodontal disease according to some of the alternatives outlined in plaintiffs’ expert report. In this opinion, as modified after a motion for reconsideration, the district court rejected certification for Proposed Class I (all prisoners with fewer than two years of consecutive incarceration), and Class IVA (all prisoners on the Routine Dental Appointment List); the court held these were too broad and likely to include significant variation in dental health. However, the court held, the lack of class certification did not preclude plaintiffs from pursuing their claim that the MDOC’s two-year rule violated the Eighth Amendment. 330 F.R.D. 452.
In total, the end result of class certification was:
- Class IIA: “prisoners incarcerated in an MDOC correctional facility who have caries [tooth decay] that have reached the dentin [the main part of the tooth] or have early (or worse) periodontitis.”
- Class IIB: "all prisoners incarcerated in an MDOC correctional facility with healthy gums or gingivitis"
- Class IIC: “all prisoners incarcerated in an MDOC correctional facility with early, moderate, or advanced periodontitis who have not received all necessary scaling and root planing and follow-up treatment.”
- Class III: all imprisoned people who requested and qualified for dentures
- Class IVB: all prisoners whom the MDOC had identified as awaiting urgent dental care.
330 F.R.D. 452; 2021 WL 3700867.
On February 23, 2022, the court dismissed the claim of Class IVB (those awaiting urgent dental care) at the request of both parties.
The parties each sought summary judgment in August 2022. On January 26, 2023, the court granted MDOC's motion in part, and denied the plaintiffs' motion. 2023 WL 424259. After dismissing several claims as moot or improperly raised, what was left was:
- Class IIA: noting remaining faculty disputes whether the defendants had been deliberately indifferent to the risk of serious harm to the class members in failing to perform certain tests to determine if the inmates had periodontitis.
- Class IIB: the court allowed the survival of claims by class members with gingivitis who had not yet served two years, but dismissed claims for class members who had served two years and for those who had inadequate-diagnosis claims. (The court also dismissed claims from people in Class IIB with healthy gums because not having a cleaning for two and a half years, or not receiving tests that would lead to a periodontitis diagnosis, did not create a substantial risk for them.)
- Class IIC: noting remaining factual disputes about both whether MDOC dentists completed dental procedures such as scaling and root planing, as treatment for periodontitis, and also about whether people in this subclass were at “a substantial risk of serious harm,” because periodontitis progresses differently depending on how early it is caught, each individual’s oral hygiene routine, and if and when treatment begins.
With summary judgment out of the way, the case settled in October 2023. Under the settlement, all current or future MDOC inmates became eligible to receive:
- routine dental services as 12 months of continuous incarceration within the MDOC
- periodontal screening and recording at dental intake,
- treatment for periodontitis.
In addition, the settlement agreement stipulated that MDOC would update its dental policies and manual to be consistent with this settlement agreement and provide updates every 180 days for two years to plaintiffs' counsel so they could determine if "material terms of the settlement agreement are being met." Lastly, the settlement agreement required MDOC to pay $600,000 in plaintiffs' attorney's fees, with costs of litigation (such as expert fees, depositions, and filing fees) to be paid by the plaintiffs' attorneys out of this amount. The settlement explained "It is anticipated that the implementation of the Settlement Agreement will be completed within a total of 90 days of the Court’s order approving the Settlement Agreement."
Several class members filed objections to the settlement, but on Feb. 23, 2024, the court approved it. A week later, the parties stipulated to the case's dismissal. There is nothing more on the docket (except a notice from one of the members of the plaintiffs' counsel team that he was withdrawing because he was retiring). Presumably the settlement remains in effect through Feb. 2026.
Summary Authors
Hannah Juge (3/28/2022)
Venesa Haska (10/30/2023)
People
For PACER's information on parties and their attorneys, see: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4292463/parties/bownes-v-washington/
Barkman, Cori E. (Michigan)
Dalzell, Kathryn M. (Michigan)
Dean, Michael R. (Michigan)
Donnelly, Mark E. (Michigan)
Farrell, James T. (Michigan)
Dalzell, Kathryn M. (Michigan)
Froehlich, Joseph T. (Michigan)
Gittleman, Tracie R. (Michigan)
Govorchin, A. Peter (Michigan)
Grossi, Christina M. (Michigan)
Manville, Daniel E. (Michigan)
Meingast, Heather S. (Michigan)
Nelson, Margaret A. (Michigan)
Schneider, Clifton B. (Michigan)
Southerland, Kristin M. (Michigan)
Documents in the Clearinghouse
Docket
See docket on RECAP: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4292463/bownes-v-washington/
Last updated April 18, 2026, 4:40 a.m.
Case Details
State / Territory:
Case Type(s):
Healthcare Access and Reproductive Issues
Special Collection(s):
Post-WalMart decisions on class certification
Key Dates
Filing Date: April 28, 2014
Case Ongoing: Yes
Plaintiffs
Plaintiff Description:
Individuals incarcerated in the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) who have been denied routine dental care.
Plaintiff Type(s):
Public Interest Lawyer: Yes
Filed Pro Se: No
Class Action Sought: Yes
Class Action Outcome: Granted
Defendants
State
Michigan Department of Corrections
Defendant Type(s):
Facility Type(s):
Case Details
Causes of Action:
Ex parte Young (federal or state officials)
Constitutional Clause(s):
Other Dockets:
Eastern District of Michigan 2:14-cv-11691
Available Documents:
Injunctive (or Injunctive-like) Relief
Outcome
Prevailing Party: Plaintiff OR Mixed
Relief Granted:
Injunction / Injunctive-like Settlement
Source of Relief:
Form of Settlement:
Court Approved Settlement or Consent Decree
Content of Injunction:
Amount Defendant Pays: $600,000
Order Duration: 2024 - 2026
Issues
General/Misc.:
Jails, Prisons, Detention Centers, and Other Institutions:
Medical/Mental Health Care:
Case Summary of Bownes v. Washington, Civil Rights Litig. Clearinghouse, http://www.dev.clearinghouse.net/case/18148/ (last updated 10/30/2023).