Opinion
2:21-cv-399-KRG-KAP
02-03-2022
WILLIAM P. JACKSON, Plaintiff, v. WARDEN ORLANDO HARPER, et al. Defendants.
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
Keith A. Pesto, United States Magistrate Judge
Recommendation
The amended complaint should be served in part and dismissed in part without leave to amend.
Report
Plaintiff alleges that he has been a pretrial detainee at the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) since August 2019, except for a period from August 2020 until March 2021 when he was in custody in Youngstown, Ohio. Plaintiff filed an original complaint in March 2021, and before I screened it as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act he moved to amend it. The amended complaint was filed in December 2021 and is at ECF no. 15.
Since plaintiff is proceeding in forma pauperis, 28 U.S.C.§ 1915(e)(2) commands:
(2) Notwithstanding any filing fee, or any portion thereof, that may have been paid, the court shall dismiss the case at any time if the court determines that -
(A) the allegation of poverty is untrue; or
(B) the action or appeal -
(i) is frivolous or malicious;
(ii) fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted; or
(iii) seeks monetary relief against a defendant who is immune from such relief.
Also applicable to this case is 28 U.S.C.§ 1915A, which commands that:
(a) Screening.--The court shall review, before docketing, if feasible or, in any event, as soon as practicable after docketing, a complaint in a civil action in which a prisoner seeks redress from a governmental entity or officer or employee of a governmental entity.
(b) Grounds for dismissal.--On review, the court shall identify cognizable
claims or dismiss the complaint, or any portion of the complaint, if the complaint-
(1) is frivolous, malicious, or fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted; or
(2) seeks monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such relief.
Plaintiff named seven defendants in his original complaint: Warden Orlando Harper, Chief Deputy David Zetwo, Deputy Laura Williams, Major Adam Smith, Dental Mr. Wilson, Sergeant Gerber, and Captain Frank. His amended complaint is 64 numbered paragraphs that launch directly into factual allegations without expressly identifying the defendants, but where the allegations permit identification of the defendants they are understood to be the same seven defendants .
Plaintiff alleges that he was originally placed into protective custody in the RHU at ACJ, but Major Smith changed his status to administrative custody, not due to misconduct, but because he is a prisoner with “separations.” Amended Complaint ¶ 29. According to plaintiff prisoners housed in this status should be moved every 30 days, but he was in administrative custody from May 2020 through August 2020, when he was transferred to another facility. Id. ¶ 35. Upon his return to ACJ he was once again placed in RHU from March 2021 through November 2021. Id. ¶¶ 36, 43. Plaintiff alleges that Captain Frank initially put him in administrative custody because she suspected him of “facilitating an assault, ” but she never interviewed plaintiff or formally charged him. Id. ¶ ¶ 39, 52.
Plaintiff alleges his prolonged stay in administrative custody is retaliation for his prior complaints against Deputy Laura Williams, the medical director, about plaintiff's inadequate dental treatment (discussed below). Id. ¶ 29. Plaintiff alleges that he has asked Smith several times why he remains in administrative custody and Smith has told him that he will think about letting plaintiff out when there is room, even though according to plaintiff there has been room available. His various inquiries up the chain of command have been deflected with hollow assurances that supervisory personnel “would look into it.” Id. ¶¶ 30-31, 34, 41-42, 50, 54. Plaintiff alleges that while in administrative custody he has been denied his ability to view religious services on television because religious services are not televised in the RHU. Id. ¶ 47. Plaintiff asserts that his grievances regarding this matter were all ignored. Id. ¶¶ 37, 61.
The gravamen of plaintiff's amended complaint is that he has received dental care that is so deficient that it amounts to an Eight Amendment violation. Id. ¶¶ 1-27. Plaintiff alleges that almost as soon as he arrived at the ACJ he made the medical department aware that he was need of fillings and/or crowns on three teeth and that these teeth caused him severe pain. He allegedly experienced repeated significant delays in treatment that left him in agonizing pain and at times unable to eat. Plaintiff alleges that throughout his stay at the ACJ his medical needs have been known to “Dental Mr. Wilson, ” presumably the ACJ's dentist. In part plaintiff's denial of care has been simple but repeated delay; his alleged specific need for having several teeth crowned was acknowledged from the outset but not addressed because the ACJ policy, allegedly according to Dr. Wilson, is that “they don't do them” there. Plaintiff also alleges that on several occasions he notified Deputy Williams, apparently the supervisor of the medical department, about plaintiff's dental issues and pain and that she did not attempt to resolve matters either. Matters reached their peak on June 7, 2021 when Wilson's attempt to extract a broken tooth (that had broken in March 2021) was unsuccessful. This resulted in Wilson attempting to get plaintiff seen by an oral surgeon, something that finally took place at Allegheny General Hospital on June 8, 2021, after a day and night of excruciating pain.
Plaintiff's amended complaint plausibly supports a claim against Wilson and Williams. An inmate health care provider violates the Eighth Amendment (or equivalent Fourteenth Amendment protection for pretrial detainees) by “acts or omissions sufficiently harmful to evidence deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.” Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106 (1976); Natale v. Camden County Corr. Facility, 318 F.3d 575, 581-82 (3d Cir. 2003). To constitute deliberate indifference, “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). The taxonomy of deliberate indifference claims recognized in this circuit includes cases where (1) prison authorities deny reasonable requests for medical treatment, (2) knowledge of the need for medical care is accompanied by the intentional refusal to provide it, (3) necessary medical treatment is delayed for non-medical reasons, and (4) prison authorities prevent an inmate from receiving recommended treatment for serious medical needs. Pearson v. Prison Health Service, 850 F.3d 526, 538 (3d Cir.2017). It is not clear that there were any outright denial or refusals of care, but the alleged prolonged failure to provide attention to a serious medical need known to Wilson and Williams that culminated in a hospitalization deserves to go forward.
Plaintiff fails to allege any facts that would indicate deliberate indifference on the part of any of the other defendants under the standard for the sufficiency of the complaint prescribed by Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 680-81 (2009). Warden Harper and the other correction personnel are not alleged to have been responsible for providing health care, and a warden and administrative personnel do not ordinarily provide medical care to inmates. Civil rights claims do not carry respondeat superior liability. See Monell v. New York City Dep't of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658, 69091 (1978) (municipal employers are liable for deprivation of civil rights caused by their own illegal customs and policies but are not vicariously liable for their employees' actions). Absent actual knowledge or a reason to believe that prison medical personnel are mistreating a prisoner, a non-medical prison official is not chargeable with the scienter required for deliberate indifference. Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F.3d 218, 236 (3d Cir. 2004). There is nothing in plaintiff's allegations that would indicate that Harper or anyone else, knew that Wilson's attempts to treat plaintiff were inadequate and were being inadequately overseen by Williams.
The issue that commonly arises at this stage is the legal effect of plaintiff's complaints about his dental care on the attempt to state a claim against personnel who do not provide medical care. Knowledge of the existence of inmate complaints about medical care, or about prison conditions generally, does not permit an inference that a defendant without personal knowledge of the situation (i.e., any defendants other than Wilson and Williams) knows that the complaints are valid. In this case, neither Harper's role as the warden nor any specific duties that other defendants may have had to review inmate grievances impose a legal duty on them to know the truth of complaints or even a duty to investigate them. The Court of Appeals discussed this point in Thomas v. Dragovich, 142 Fed.Appx. 33, 39 (3d Cir. 2005), in the course of explaining why the court's exclusion at trial of inmate complaints (some of which contained admissible evidence) was harmless error:
[The inmate's] contested exhibits do not tend to show that [the warden and health care administrator, ] who are undisputably administrators, not doctors, possessed knowledge of the need for medical care accompanied by the ... intentional refusal to provide that care. [The inmate's] exhibits only confirm that [the health care administrator] had a belief that [the inmate] was under the care of the prison doctor and medical staff, placing her within the scope of our decision in Spruill v. Gillis. [The inmate's] contested exhibits provide no new support that either [the health care administrator] or [the warden] possessed actual knowledge or a reason to believe that prison doctors or their assistants were mistreating (or not treating) [the inmate]. Finally, as to [the health care administrator's] responses to [the inmate] that were memorialized in the contested exhibits, the jury could not have found that she did anything more than fail to respond directly to the medical complaints of a prisoner who was already being treated by the prison doctor. As counsel contended at oral argument, it appears true that [the health care administrator] could have been more helpful to [the inmate] by undertaking such actions as forwarding some of [the inmate's] grievance forms to the medical staff or doctors, or even speaking with them directly, to make sure [the inmate] was heard. That said, a failure to undertake such actions or others like them does not constitute deliberate indifference, and may not be legally recognized as such.142 Fed.Appx. at 39 (cleaned up)(my emphasis).
Plaintiff's other two claims are First Amendment claims: that his prolonged stay in administrative custody in the RHU is “retaliation” for complaining about his dental care, and that being in the RHU deprives him of his right to practice his religion because religious services are not televised in the RHU. These are meritless complaints.
The three elements of a retaliation claim are: (1) that the plaintiff took some action itself protected by the constitution; (2) that the defendant took adverse action against the plaintiff sufficient to deter a person of ordinary firmness from persisting in his conduct; and (3) that there was a causal connection between the plaintiff's protected conduct and the adverse action. Mitchell v. Horn, 318 F.3d 523, 530 (3d Cir. 2003). Plaintiff acknowledges that he was placed in administrative custody on protective custody from the outset and that his placement in the RHU in May 2020 was “per policy.” Amended Complaint, ¶¶ 28-29. Plaintiff was complaining about his dental care from his first arrival at the ACJ in August 2019, and as noted above matters came to a head in June 2021. But plaintiff's retaliation claim is based on the invalid post hoc ergo propter hoc argument that since he filed grievances about his medical care before May 2020, his remaining in the RHU after May 2020 must have been caused by caused by those grievances. He adds the specific allegation that his grievances inflamed Smith, who allegedly was in a relationship with Williams, but he also acknowledges that every other decisionmaker took the same position about his AC status as did Smith. There is no allegation of fact that would indicate the original reason for plaintiff's placement in the RHU (although plaintiff alleges that nothing ever came of it, he acknowledges that he was investigated for an alleged assault) ceased to exist, or that as an inmate awaiting transfer out of the ACJ in August 2020 plaintiff would not have been in AC status anyway. An inmate cannot write his ticket out of the RHU by filing a grievance, either directly or by means of an action for damages. There is no plausible allegation of a reason, given plaintiff's continuous stream of complaints concerning his dental care, why those complaints would suddenly affect his housing status a year later in May 2020, and only for the two or three months until his transfer out of the ACJ in August 2020. Allegations that are merely not inconsistent with a claim are not sufficient to state a claim.
As for the other First Amendment claim, the alleged failure by the ACJ to have universal access to televised religious services fails to state a free exercise claim. Not every impediment to free exercise that is incidental to an inmate's status as an inmate in the RHU deprives him of the ability to exercise his religion. This too is a frivolous claim that cannot be saved by amendment.
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.” For the reasons above any further amendment of the complaint is denied as futile.
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). Plaintiff can also send copies of the Amended Complaint and forms for service on defendants Wilson and Williams if he has not already done so.