Daniel DILLEY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Bryan S. GUNN, Warden; Norma Wells; Sgt. Butler; B. Schelke, Defendants-Appellants

64 F.3d 1365 95 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 7120 , 95 Daily Journal D.A.R. 12,145 Daniel DILLEY, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Bryan S. GUNN, Warden; Norma Wells; Sgt. Butler; B. Schelke, Defendants-Appellants. No. 94-55133. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted June 6, 1995. Decided Sept. 8, 1995. Timothy C. Foote, Deputy Attorney General, San Diego, CA, for defendants-appellants. Timothy B. Taylor, Karin Dougan Vogel, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, San Diego, CA, for plaintiff-appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. Before: FLETCHER, WIGGINS, and FERNANDEZ, Circuit Judges. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge: 1 The defendants, prison officials at Calipatria State Prison ("Calipatria"), appeal a district court order requiring them to improve inmates' access to the prison's law library. The district court issued the order after entering summary judgment in favor of plaintiff Daniel Dilley, an inmate at Calipatria, on his claim that the defendants violated his right of access to the courts by failing to provide adequate access to the law library. We do not address the validity of the district court's order…

concurring:

I concur in the majority opinion with one . caveat. I think it would be the rarest of rare cases when an injunction could continue in full force and effect even though the matter had become moot.

Injunctions are not general statutes. They run in favor of a party and direct the other party to do something for the first party’s benefit. If the first party can no longer have any legal interest in the relief in question, it is most difficult to see how the injunction can possibly remain in place. I know of no case of ours which even hints that it can. See, e.g., Sample v. Borg, 870 F.2d 563 (9th Cir.1989); Kitlutsisti v. ARCO Alaska, Inc., 782 F.2d 800, 801 (9th Cir.1986). Of course, that is not to say that all of the findings which support the injunction must be dismantled. They could be left in place, just as findings supporting any other judgment could be. But the relief itself — the injunction — must fall. At least, it must in every case that I can foresee.

However, because my powers of vaticination are not infinite, on the off chance that some confluence of circumstances will show that this injunction can continue, I concur. Thus, with misgivings, I refrain from…

The defendants, prison officials at Calipat-ria State Prison (“Calipatria”), appeal a district court order requiring them to improve inmates’ access to the prison’s law library. The district court issued the order after entering summary judgment in favor of plaintiff Daniel Dilley, an inmate at Calipatria, on his claim that the defendants violated his right of access to the courts by failing to provide adequate access to the law library. We do not address the validity of the district court’s order granting injunctive relief because this case became moot upon Dilley’s transfer from Calipatria to another state prison facility-

I

Daniel Dilley, who then was an inmate in the “C” facility at Calipatria, filed a first amended complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging among other things that the defendants had violated his right of access to the courts under Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817 , 97 S.Ct. 1491 , 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977), by failing to provide reasonable access to the Facility “C” law library. The district court found that the undisputed facts alleged in Dilley’s complaint established that the defendants had failed to provide Dilley constitutionally adequate access to the law…