Lorenzo Gregge, Jr. v. Matthew Kate

MEMORANDUM

California state prisoner Lorenzo Gregge, Jr., appeals pro se from the district court’s judgment dismissing for failure to exhaust his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging that defendants were deliberately indifferent to his health in violation of the Eighth Amendment. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . We review de novo, Sapp v. Kimbrell, 623 F.3d 813, 821 (9th Cir.2010), and we reverse and remand.

The district court dismissed Gregge’s action for failure to exhaust because Gregge did not assert in his prison grievance that a prison policy resulted in the denial of his constitutional rights, and thus did not put defendants on notice of the alleged basis of liability. However, where prison grievance rules do not set forth a level of factual specificity, as is the case here, a prisoner must merely alert “the prison to the nature of the' wrong for which redress is sought.” Griffin v. Arpaio, 557 F.3d 1117, 1120 (9th Cir.2009) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Gregge’s grievance sufficiently alerted the prison of the nature of the alleged wrong. See id. at 1120 (explaining that a grievance “need not include legal terminology or legal theory” and that…