Opinion
Civil Action No. 3:97CV-202-S
April 15, 1999
MEMORANDUM OPINION
This matter is before the court on motion of the defendant, Jefferson County Department of Corrections ("Corrections"), for summary judgment in this action brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The action arose from an incident which occurred while the plaintiff, John O. Hall ("Hall"), was incarcerated in the Jefferson County Hall of Justice in a sixteen-man dormitory. During the night of August 8, 1996 while Hall was sleeping in a bunk in the "A" wing of the dormitory, three inmates from the "B" wing allegedly jimmied the electronic door separating the wings from the day room and attacked him. The attackers bludgeoned Hall, injuring him with bars of soap which they wielded in socks, then returned to their bunks in the "B" wing. There does not appear to be any question that the attack occurred and Hall was injured. The issue now before us is whether Hall was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment at the hands of Corrections due to the circumstances under which this incident occurred.
A party moving for summary judgment has the burden of showing that there are no genuine issues of fact and that the movant is entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law. Adickes v. S.H. Kress Co., 398 U.S. 144, 151-60, 90 S. Ct. 1598, 16 L. Ed. 2d 142 (1970); Felix v. Young, 536 F.2d 1126, 1134 (6th Cir. 1976). Not every factual dispute between the parties will prevent summary judgment. The disputed facts must be material. They must be facts which, under the substantive law governing the issue, might affect the outcome of the suit. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 106 S. Ct. 2505, 2510 (1986). The dispute must also be genuine. The facts must be such that if they were proven at trial, a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the non-moving party. Id. at 2510. The disputed issue does not have to be resolved conclusively in favor of the non-moving party, but that party is required to present some significant probative evidence which makes it necessary to resolve the parties' differing versions of the dispute at trial. First National Bank of Arizona v. Cities Service Co., 391 U.S. 253, 288-89 (1968). The evidence must be construed in a light most favorable to the party opposing the motion. Bohn Aluminum Brass Corp. v. Storm King Corp., 303 F.2d 425 (6th Cir. 1962).
"A section 1983 claimant must show `1) the deprivation of a right secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States and 2) the deprivation was caused by a person acting under color of state law.' [citations omitted]." Street v. Corrections Corporation of America, 102 F.3d 810, 814 (6th Cir. 1996). "A prison official's `deliberate indifference' to a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate violates the Eighth Amendment." Street, 102 F.3d at 814, citing, Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). The court in Street went on to explain:
Prison officials can be held liable for an Eighth Amendment violation when an inmate shows: (1) "that he is incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm," and (2) that the prison official had "the state of mind . . . of `deliberate indifference' to inmate health or safety." Farmer, 511 U.S. at ___, 114 S.Ct. at 1977 (citations omitted) . . . [A] prison official cannot be found liable under the Eighth Amendment for denying an inmate humane conditions of confinement unless the official knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health and safety; the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference.Street, 102 F.3d at 814-15. See also, Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1979; McGhee v. Foltz, 852 F.2d 876, 881 (6th Cir. 1988) (Warden had no knowledge of any danger to inmate, problems in the cell block, or threats against plaintiff or any group of which he was a part). Additionally, since Hall is proceeding only against Jefferson County on a theory of municipal liability, he must show that the Constitutional deprivation of which he complains resulted from a policy or custom attributable to the county. Monell v. Department of Social Services, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). In the case before us, we do not find any evidence of a substantial risk of serious harm to inmates of which Corrections officials were aware. Hall was incarcerated in a dormitory section of the jail, consisting of a day room flanked by two sleeping wings. This section housed general population inmates who were free to move about the dormitory, and to choose a bunk in either sleeping wing. Hall was designated as a general population inmate. He did not indicate that he believed he was at risk of harm from other inmates, nor that he was a member of any identifiable group associated with increased violence in the Jefferson County Hall of Justice.
Corrections was unaware of any substantial risk to Hall's safety. He has not alleged that he was inappropriately housed in the dormitory, nor that any substantial risk to his safety was evident and was ignored. "The known risk of injury must be `a strong likelihood, rather than a mere possibility' before a guard's failure to act can constitute deliberate indifference. [citations omitted]." Brown v. Hughes, 894 F.2d 1533 (11th Cir. 1990). See also, Street, 102F.3d at 815 (quoting Farmer, 114 S.Ct. at 1981-82):
[I]f an Eighth Amendment plaintiff presents evidence showing that a substantial risk of inmate attacks was "longstanding, pervasive, well-documented, or expressly noted by prison officials in the past, and the circumstances suggest that the defendant-official being sued had been exposed to information concerning the risk and thus "must have known" about it, then such evidence could be sufficient to permit a trier of fact to find that the defendant-official had actual knowledge of the risk.Falls v. Nesbitt, 966 F.2d 375, 378 (8th Cir. 1992) (Isolated incident is ordinarily insufficient to establish a pervasive risk of harm).
Hall contends that the corrections officers were aware that the electronic doors to the sleeping wings were frequently jimmied by inmates after "lights out," but did nothing to prevent this from occurring. He suggests that corrections officers were lax in securing the doors at night, and, on occasion, deliberately left the doors when the sleeping wings were excessively hot or cold. Hall contends that because Corrections' own policies require that the doors be secured, failure of the corrections officers to follow these policies resulted in a violation of his Eighth Amendment right.
We reject Hall's argument concerning the failure to secure the doors. There is no evidence that the doors were not secured by the corrections officers on duty on the night in question, or that they were deliberately left open for ventilation. Thus the argument regarding failure to secure the doors is irrelevant to this action.
The remaining issue is whether the failure to ensure that the doors were jimmy-proof gives rise to a Constitutional violation. We believe that, under the facts of this case, it does not. The purported violation of Corrections' policies, without more, is insufficient to establish an Eight Amendment violation. See, Gibson v. Foltz, 963 F.2d 851, 853-54 (6th Cir. 1992). Corrections policy required doors to be secure and malfunctions to be reported. However, a failure to follow policy must be shown to pose a substantial risk of serious harm to inmates before it rises to the level of a Constitutionally cognizable claim. In the affidavit of O. Joseph Payne, Jr., Deputy Chief of the Jefferson County Corrections Department, he states that "[t]he separation doors described by Hall are not intended to be security doors . . ." General population inmates are not kept segregated from one another in the dormitory setting. See also, Davis depo., pg. 46; Rose depo., 73; Ernst depo., pg. 18.
Hall was housed in dormitory-style confinement which did not provide individually secure sleeping quarters. He does not contend that he should have been housed elsewhere. He slept in a wing with seven other inmates, and had unrestricted interaction with fifteen other inmates during waking hours. He testified that he had witnessed two prior altercations in the dormitory. These incidents occurred during the daytime hours when the inmates were free to intermingle and interact, and the doors to the sleeping wings were open. These incidents did not involve Hall. Hall kept to himself and read books. He was not a member of an at-risk group, nor had he been threatened with an assault. There was testimony from a corrections officer, Valerie Rose, that inmates jimmied the doors at night in what she termed "goofing off," throwing water on each other. There has been no evidence presented of other incidents of violence such as occurred on August 8, 1996, which would have put Corrections on notice of an increased risk of assault associated with the jimmying of the separation doors. Therefore, there is no evidence that any failure to address the problem placed Hall at substantial risk of harm.
As noted in McGhee v. Foltz, 852 F.2d at 880,
Prisons are by definition places where violent people are housed involuntarily. All prisons experience incidents of crime that exceed the levels of the outside. Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 526, 104 S.Ct. 3194, 3200, 82 L.Ed.2d 393 (1984) . . . While "much less than proof of a reign of violence and terror in the particular institution" is required to demonstrate a pervasive risk of harm, a single incident or several isolated incidents are not sufficient. Withers v. Levine, 615 F.2d 158, 161 (4th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 849, 101 S.Ct. 136, 66 L.Ed.2d 59 (1980).
Hall testified that the daytime incidents witnessed by him were handled promptly by the corrections officers, and the inmates were removed from the dormitory. With respect to his own situation, Hall did not believe that he was at risk, and the corrections officers had no basis for taking any preventative action for an incident that they had no reason to know or suspect would occur.
For the reasons set forth herein above, the motion of Corrections for summary judgment must be granted with respect to the claim for failure to protect Hall from attack by other inmates.
The defendant has not moved for summary judgment with respect to the claim for inadequate medical care raised in ¶ 9 of the complaint, nor has it addressed the viability of the claims for emotional distress and gross negligence.
A separate order will be entered herein this date in accordance with this opinion.
IT IS SO ORDERED.