Opinion
2:19-cv-960-SLH-KAP
09-01-2021
LAVOND HILL, Plaintiff v. JOHN E WETZEL, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections et al., Defendants
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION RECOMMENDATION
KEITH A. PESTO, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE.
Defendants Berger and Pillai's motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim, ECF no. 45, should be granted and the complaint against them dismissed with prejudice. Further, the balance of the complaint should be dismissed with prejudice for violation of Fed.R.Civ.P. 20, without leave to amend.
Report
Plaintiff Hill, currently an inmate at S.C.I. Houtzdale, filed a complaint in state court in 2019 complaining about events that allegedly took place at S.C.I. Greene in 2016 and thereafter, and defendants removed the complaint to this court. Plaintiff then filed meritless motions for preliminary injunctive relief that were denied, and an unsuccessful interlocutory appeal of the denial of those motions. I meanwhile screened the complaint and recommended dismissal for failure to state a claim and for Rule 20 violations, with leave to amend. ECF no. 35. The Court granted plaintiff leave to file an amended complaint, ECF no. 43. That amended complaint is at ECF no. 44. The motion to dismiss is at ECF no. 45, the brief is at ECF no. 46; the plaintiff's response is at ECF no. 54; defendants' reply is at ECF no. 56, and plaintiff's sur-reply to that is at ECF no. 57.
I will not give the amended complaint the line-by-line analysis I gave to the original because the amended complaint differs in no important respect from the original: it is a collection of episodes from plaintiff's incarceration stitched together by a conclusory assertion that every aspect of plaintiff's environment that plaintiff found objectionable was retaliation against him for his filing of grievances. Plaintiff does not even try to remedy the Rule 20 violations identified in the original complaint.
When a plaintiff repeatedly violates Rule 20 by joining unrelated claims and defendants, the question arises which claims should the amended complaint be regarded as asserting. Here, issue has been joined by plaintiff and the moving defendants over plaintiff's assertions that the moving defendants denied him medical care. With respect to the moving defendants, there is no allegation or set of allegations that would amount to an Estelle v. Gamble claim against either of them, and the assertion that moving defendants altered plaintiff's medical care because they in some way were inflamed by plaintiff's filing of grievances and retaliated against plaintiff is an implausible conclusion. The “formulaic recitation” of the elements of a claim, which is all plaintiff offers, is not sufficient to comply with Rule 8's requirement of a short plain statement of a claim. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 680-81 (2009).
An Estelle v. Gamble claim is not stated by an inmate's complaints, no matter how repeated, of dissatisfaction with medical care, and that is all that plaintiff's complaint against the moving defendants amounts to. Plaintiff by his own account is a seriously mentally ill person who: 1) repeatedly mutilates himself and acts in other ways that make him a danger to himself or others; who: 2) has taken various medications at various times as part of the treatment prescribed for his mental illness; and who: 3) files numerous grievances and lawsuits alleging that corrections personnel and medical staff are liable to him either because they: a) took actions that plaintiff objects to; or: b) did not take actions that plaintiff demands.
At the high level of generality that plaintiff describes the moving defendants' actions (e.g. Amended Complaint ¶¶60-63: Pillai refused to “put [plaintiff] back on his medications” because of his filing of grievances; Amended Complaint ¶98: moving defendants “failed to provide mental health treatment to [plaintiff]” while he was in a psychiatric observation cell; Amended Complaint ¶¶139-40, 152, 155: Berger refused to “place [plaintiff] back on his psychotropic medications” without any apparent motive) it is impossible to infer that either deliberate indifference or a desire to retaliate against plaintiff caused any alleged action by either defendant, any more than it would be possible to infer that their medication decisions were dictated by racial prejudice, as plaintiff alleges in Amended Complaint ¶166. A conclusion cannot substitute for an allegation of fact.
A prison medical care provider violates the Eighth Amendment when an inmate is injured by that provider's “acts or omissions sufficiently harmful to evidence deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.” Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106 (1976). That includes cases of injury that result because: (1) prison authorities deny reasonable requests for medical treatment; or (2) know of the need for medical care and intentionally refuse to provide it; or (3) delay necessary medical treatment for non-medical reasons; or (4) prevent an inmate from receiving recommended treatment for serious medical needs. Pearson v. Prison Health Service, 850 F.3d 526, 538 (3d Cir.2017). Plaintiff does not allege any one of these scenarios. He comes closest to (3) by alleging that defendant Pillai once conveniently admitted to plaintiff that he was denying plaintiff unspecified medications due to plaintiff's filing of grievances, but a defendant is “deliberately indifferent” only when he “knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or 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.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994). Plaintiff does not allege facts that would allow the inference that either Pillai or Berger believed that any medication decision they made posed an excessive risk of injury to plaintiff. Plaintiff is even rather vague about whether any injury was caused by these moving defendants. Plaintiff attempts to hold the moving defendants liable by using the conclusory assertion of a conspiracy that would link them to the actions of the other defendants who allegedly slipped him razor blades, denied him meals, and sprayed him with gas. But plaintiff frankly admits he was mentally ill before, during and after his interactions with the moving defendants.
An Estelle v. Gamble claim is not a federal version of state malpractice law, much less a bargain-basement substitute for it. See Rouse v. Plantier, 182 F.3d 192, 197 (3d Cir.1999). In the course of rejecting a claim that the refusal of an x-ray to an inmate who complained of back pain after a 600-pound bale fell on him was deliberate indifference, Estelle v. Gamble itself held that “the question whether an X-ray or additional diagnostic techniques or forms of treatment is indicated is a classic example of a matter for medical judgment.” 429 U.S. at 107. The Estelle v. Gamble Court gave illustrative examples of how bad care has to be to constitute deliberate indifference: 1) a doctor's choice of the “easier and less efficacious treatment” of throwing away the ear of prisoner injured in an altercation and stitching the stump rather than trying to save the ear; 2) a doctor injecting a prisoner with penicillin knowing that the prisoner was allergic to penicillin; and 3) a doctor ordering an inmate to stand and walk the day after leg surgery without first checking with the outside surgeons who had operated on the inmate's leg to determine whether the inmate could stand without injury. 429 U.S. at 104 n.10. Any non-inmate plaintiff who filed a complaint alleging malpractice in the same terms that plaintiff does (“I am seriously mentally ill. I asked my doctor to administer medicine x. My doctor refused to do what I said.”) would be quickly thrown out of court. That is a good indication that no Estelle v. Gamble claim exists.
Moving defendants also assert that plaintiff has failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, but plaintiff correctly points out that would have to be examined in a motion for summary judgment.
The Court of Appeals, in Grayson v. Mayview State Hospital, 293 F.3d 103 (3d Cir.2002) and similar cases, directs district courts to allow plaintiffs in civil rights cases leave to amend unless that amendment is “futile” or “inequitable.” It is inequitable to have plaintiff impose costs on the moving defendants by allowing repeated amendments after ample time to do so has already passed and after the filing of a motion to dismiss.
Pursuant to 28 U.S.C.§ 636(b)(1), plaintiff can within fourteen days file written objections to this Report and Recommendation. Plaintiff is advised that in the absence of timely and specific objections, any appeal would be severely hampered or entirely defaulted. See EEOC v. City of Long Branch, 866 F.3d 93, 100 (3d Cir.2017) (describing standard of appellate review when no timely and specific objections are filed as limited to review for plain error). ~,