UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 16-6225
DARREL A. WHITE,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
DWAYNE A. TURNER, Unit Manager; JEFFREY ARTRIP, EBP Manager;
LIEUTENANT DAY; LARRY JARVIS; KELLY STEWART; E. MILLER; C.
STANLY; GILERHEART,
Defendants - Appellees
and
R.C. MATHENA, Warden; J.B. MESSER, Institutional
Ombudsman/Grievance Coordinator; CURTIS PARR, Regional
Ombudsman; GEORGE HINKLE, Regional Administrator/Alp; HAROLD
W. CLARKE, Director; J. WALRATH, Assistant Warden,
Defendants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western
District of Virginia, at Roanoke. Michael F. Urbanski, District
Judge. (7:14-cv-00505-MFU-RSB)
Submitted: September 1, 2016 Decided: December 15, 2016
Before DUNCAN, WYNN, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Darrel A. White, Appellant Pro Se. Richard Carson Vorhis,
Senior Assistant Attorney General, Richmond, Virginia, for
Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
Darrel A. White, a Virginia inmate, filed a 42 U.S.C.
§ 1983 (2012) action against various employees of Red Onion
State Prison (ROSP) and the Virginia Department of Corrections,
alleging violations of his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment
rights. After directing White to file an amended complaint, the
district court granted the Defendants’ motion for summary
judgment and denied White’s cross-motion for summary judgment.
White now appeals the district court’s orders terminating
certain Defendants named in the original complaint and granting
summary judgment in favor of the remaining Defendants. For the
reasons that follow, we affirm.
As an initial matter, White challenges the district court’s
construction of his amended complaint as substituting certain
Defendants named in the original complaint with other Defendants
named only in the amended complaint. * As a general rule, “an
amended pleading supersedes the original pleading, rendering the
original pleading of no effect.” Young v. City of Mount Ranier,
238 F.3d 567, 573 (4th Cir. 2001). The district court advised
White that his amended complaint would supersede all prior
* Although White did not designate the relevant May 28,
2015, order in his notice of appeal, we conclude that we have
jurisdiction to review that order. See Jackson v. Lightsey, 775
F.3d 170, 175-77 (4th Cir. 2014).
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pleadings and therefore should include all parties and claims
that he wished to address. Based on the caption of the amended
complaint and the specific factual allegations it raised, we
discern no error in the district court’s construction of that
complaint as seeking relief only against Defendants Turner,
Artrip, Day, Jarvis, Stewart, Miller, Stanley, and Gilerheart,
and in dismissing the remaining Defendants on that basis.
Turning to the district court’s summary judgment ruling, we
review de novo a district court’s grant of summary judgment,
viewing all facts and drawing all reasonable inferences in the
light most favorable to the nonmovant. Harris v. Norfolk S.
Ry., 784 F.3d 954, 962 (4th Cir. 2015). “Summary judgment is
proper if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as
to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a
matter of law.” Butler v. Drive Auto. Indus. of Am., Inc., 793
F.3d 404, 408 (4th Cir. 2015) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
Among other claims asserted in his amended complaint, White
raised several due process claims related to his security
classification at ROSP. The district court granted summary
judgment on these claims based in part on our decision in Slezak
v. Evatt, 21 F.3d 590 (4th Cir. 1994). Assuming, without
deciding, that the mode of analysis applied in Slezak has been
called into question by subsequent authority, see, e.g.,
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Wilkinson v. Austin, 545 U.S. 209, 222-23 (2005), we still find
no reversible error in the district court’s ruling, see Glynn v.
EDO Corp., 710 F.3d 209, 218 n.1 (4th Cir. 2013) (“[W]e can
affirm the district court’s decision on any grounds apparent
from the record.”). Our review of the record reveals that White
failed to provide evidence to support a finding that the
conditions of his confinement posed an atypical and significant
hardship in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life,
as required to establish a liberty interest giving rise to a due
process claim. See Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 484 (1995);
Incumaa v. Stirling, 791 F.3d 517, 526-32 (4th Cir. 2015);
Beverati v. Smith, 120 F.3d 500, 504 (4th Cir. 1997). We
therefore conclude that the court properly granted summary
judgment in favor of Defendants as to White’s due process
claims.
Our review of the record also reveals no reversible error
in the district court’s grant of summary judgment for Defendants
as to the remaining claims raised in White’s amended complaint.
We affirm the disposition of these claims substantially for the
reasons stated by the district court. White v. Turner, No.
7:14-cv-00505-MFU-RSB (E.D. Va. Dec. 8, 2015).
Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgment. We
deny White’s motions for appointment of counsel and for
transcripts at government expense. We dispense with oral
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argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately
presented in the materials before this court and argument would
not aid the decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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