Opinion
3:21-cv-221-SLH-KAP
04-26-2022
STEVEN JAMES KARPINSKI, Plaintiff v. PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, et al., Defendants
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
Keith A. Pesto, United States Magistrate Judge
Recommendation
The Department of Corrections defendants' motion to dismiss, ECF no. 18, should be granted.
Report
Plaintiff Karpinski, an inmate now at S.C.I. Laurel Highlands, filed a complaint dated December 20, 2021, complaining about the medical care he received between May 29, 2019 and December 29, 2019, when he was at S.C.I. Somerset. Karpinski named two types of defendants: 1) his medical care providers and 2) corrections personnel or administrators, including the Department of Corrections and the Bureau of Health Care Services. The liability of the latter group was based on allegations that they failed to provide adequate medical care providers or schedule him for a medical appointment every time he put in a sick call request, Complaint ¶¶ 1, 2, 7, and failed to intervene whenever Karpinski complained about the medical care providers, Complaint ¶¶ 4-6. At Complaint ¶21 there was a conclusory allegation that throughout this period three DOC defendants (Minor, Whitacre, and Shawley) denied Karpinski the basic needs of personal hygiene, and at Complaint ¶22 there was an allegation that a corrections defendant (Whitacre) on an unspecified occasion or occasions withheld commissary items that Karpinski had paid for.
Once served, the medical defendants filed an Answer and the corrections defendants filed the pending motion to dismiss. In September 2022, I recommended that the motion to dismiss be granted. ECF no. 22.
Karpinski claimed not to have received the motion to dismiss, and in November 2022 the Court ordered that the motion be served on him by hand delivery. ECF no. 24. The Court thereafter twice extended the time for Karpinski to reply to the motion to dismiss, making the ultimate due date April 20, 2023. ECF no. 26, ECF no. 33. Karpinski filed a nine-page response with a four-page Declaration, both dated April 19, 2023, ECF no. 36. The response dismisses the deprivation of property claim because Karpinski had received a post-deprivation remedy, ECF no. 36 at 7, and “absolves” defendants Shawley and Whitacre from any claim based on inadequate medical care, ECF no. 36 at 6.
I change nothing in my Report and Recommendation from last September. Whether considered on a motion to dismiss or as a result of the Court's independent duty under the Prison Litigation Reform Act to screen complaints and dismiss meritless claims, no claims are stated against the moving defendants.
Even if statements in a memorandum of law were properly considered as amending a complaint (and it is “axiomatic” that they do not, see Commonwealth ex rel. Zimmerman v. PepsiCo, Inc., 836 F.2d 173, 181 (3d Cir. 1988)) Karpinski's response adds no allegations concerning his hygiene claim, see ECF no. 36 at 7. As I previously noted, there is no allegation of injury. It is only possible to infer from allegations that on “numerous” occasions a defendant denied “requests for proper decency” or that defendant Shawley “often denied” a request for toilet paper that Karpinski is dissatisfied with the amount of personal hygiene items he was given, not that any defendant did anything that violated the Eighth Amendment. To state a claim against the defendants, Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a) requires Karpinski to set out in his complaint a short and plain statement containing sufficient factual matter that if accepted as true would state a legal claim that is plausible on its face. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). In the Supreme Court's words, plaintiff must allege enough facts in the complaint to “nudge” a claim “across the line from conceivable to plausible.” Id., 556 U.S. at 683, quoting Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). The lack of factual allegation suggests no greater inference than that Karpinski believes the Eighth Amendment is violated simply because his requests or demands were not met. Karpinski has therefore failed to state a claim.
As for the medical care allegations, once again Karpinski stands on the unamended allegations of his Complaint, which allege the liability of the corrections defendants for nothing more than their failure to intervene in the provision of medical care by the medical defendants. Accepting the Declaration attached to the response as an amendment to the Complaint, there are additional allegations about the number of times Karpinski complained to the health care administrator (Puskar) and the warden (Tice), but there is still nothing that alleges deliberate indifference. Karpinski equates a defendant's knowledge of a complaint by Karpinski with knowledge by that defendant of a need by Karpinski for medical care. Declaration ¶17 (Tice), ¶18 (Puskar). That proposition continues to be neither factually nor legally valid. 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). That Karpinski allegedly complained to a DOC defendant is not sufficient to allege anything other than that the DOC defendants had knowledge of Karpinski's complaints. Karpinski does not allege that any DOC defendant knew (and subjective awareness is necessary for liability) that the medical defendants' treatment decisions were inadequate.
Holding a non-medical prison official liable in a case where a prisoner is under a physician's care strains the division of labor that is part of the proper management of a prison and creates what the Court of Appeals has called a “perverse incentive” for corrections personnel not to delegate treatment responsibility to the very persons most likely to be able to help prisoners, for fear of vicarious liability. Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F.3d at 236. Of course, a non-medical defendant can be liable for deliberate indifference to serious medical needs: a corrections officer cannot simply tell an inmate spurting blood or suffering a compound fracture to the arm to go to sick call in the morning. But Karpinski's claim that he had problems with an “injured wrist” (in the Declaration the only elaboration of this two-word description in the Complaint is that at one point Karpinski alleged he was handcuffed improperly, and even in the Declaration Karpinski does not specify which wrist he claims was injured) does not present, even remotely, the sort of injury that a layman would conclude demands their immediate lay attention.
As for Karpinski's detached retina, he not only fails to state a claim against the nonmedical defendants, his Complaint and Declaration together dispel any doubt that he ever could state a deliberate indifference claim against the non-medical defendants. Karpinski acknowledges that he had been provided with surgery before he came to Somerset, his eye was evaluated upon intake at Somerset by a medical defendant, and (despite Karpinski's frivolous argument, ECF no. 36 at 5, that because the treatment was allegedly unsatisfactory he was not “under the care of medical professionals” and therefore the moving defendants were aware he was receiving no treatment) medical care providers provided him with treatment throughout the period described in the Complaint. Karpinski cannot allege the liability of the medical defendants by claiming they could have done an unspecified “more.” Karpinski therefore certainly cannot allege the liability of the non-medical defendants on no more than the assertion that they should have stepped into Karpinski's medical treatment to make sure all of Karpinski's unspecified requests, demands, and grievances were satisfied.
Allowing further amendment of the Complaint would be inequitable, and as to the moving defendants, futile. Since plaintiff has stated no claim it is almost superfluous to point out that as to the Department of Corrections and the BHCS there are additional barriers posed by the Eleventh Amendment and the doctrine that neither the Department of Corrections nor the BHCS is a “person” amenable to a civil rights suit under 42 U.S.C.§ 1983. See Will v. Michigan Dep't of State Police, 491 U.S. 58 (1989).
Pursuant to 28 U.S.C.§ 636(b)(1), the parties can within fourteen days file written objections to this Report and Recommendation. 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).