Opinion
No. X03 CV 02-4022076S
March 1, 2007
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION ON MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT
The plaintiff, Elaine Wiseman, administrator of the estate of Bryant Wiseman, filed an action against the defendants, State of Connecticut, commissioner of correction John Armstrong, deputy commissioner of correction Jack Tokarz, and various corrections officers and medical personnel at Garner Correctional Institute, claiming that the defendants failed to properly care for Bryant Wiseman, a mentally ill inmate who died while incarcerated at Garner in November 1999. The defendants have moved for summary judgment on all counts of the plaintiff's complaint, claiming (1) the undisputed facts show that there was no deliberate indifference to Wiseman's serious medical needs or any medical malpractice with respect to the medical and mental health care provided to Wiseman; (2) the plaintiff cannot produce evidence showing that the supervisory prison officials violated any of Wiseman's civil rights; (3) the force used to restrain Wiseman was reasonable under the circumstances and does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment; and (4) the individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity. In support of the motion for summary judgment, the defendants submitted a number of exhibits, including copies of incident reports, deposition excerpts, copies of affidavits and the medical examiner's report. The plaintiff objects to the motion on the ground that numerous material issues of fact remain in dispute. The plaintiff submitted copies of deposition transcripts as well as videotapes of Wiseman's restraint and the restraint of Timothy Perry, a paranoid schizophrenic inmate who died while being restrained by guards at the Hartford Correctional Center seven months prior to Wiseman's death.
"Practice Book § 17-49 provides that summary judgment shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, affidavits and any other proof submitted show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. In deciding a motion for summary judgment, the trial court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. . . . The party moving for summary judgment has the burden of showing the absence of any genuine issue of material fact and that the party is, therefore, entitled to judgment as a matter of law. . . . The test is whether the party moving for summary judgment would be entitled to a directed verdict on the same facts." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Leisure Resort Technology, Inc. v. Trading Cove Associates, 277 Conn. 21, 30-31, 889 A.2d 785 (2006).
The parties do not dispute that Wiseman was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and he routinely refused medication to treat his mental illness. On November 17, 1999, Wiseman was involved in a physical altercation with another inmate. Both inmates were restrained without incident and led, separately, from the cell block to the inpatient medical unit. Wiseman was escorted into a cell to be strip searched. According to the defendants, after his handcuffs were removed, Wiseman struck two of the three officers who were present, and all three grabbed him and fell to the floor. The defendant corrections officers took action to subdue and restrain Wiseman. Shortly after handcuffs and leg irons were applied, Wiseman vomited and he was lifted from the floor onto the bed in the cell and medical personnel were called. Emergency care was administered, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Wiseman was transported by ambulance to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The incident was videotaped beginning at a time when Wiseman was already on the floor of the cell. Much of the view on the videotape is obscured because it was filmed from behind several members of the corrections staff who surrounded Wiseman and those corrections officers who were actively involved in restraining Wiseman. The medical examiner's report lists the final cause of Wiseman's death to be "sudden death during restraint," and the final manner of death was "undetermined."
The plaintiff claims that Wiseman's death was the result of traumatic asphyxiation by compression during the restraint by correctional personnel. The plaintiff's complaint consists of claims brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for deliberate indifference for failure to provide constitutionally adequate medical care against the correctional medical personnel and corrections officers, deliberate indifference to safety for failure to protect against the corrections officers, deliberate indifference to safety for failure to train against Armstrong and Tokarz, and the use of excessive force against the corrections officers, all in violation of Wiseman's rights under the Fourth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In addition, the plaintiff alleges claims for supervisory liability against Armstrong and Tokarz for failure to provide constitutionally adequate medical care, deliberate indifference to safety for failure to protect and use of excessive force. The plaintiff also alleges a negligence/medical malpractice claim against the State of Connecticut.
While the defendants in their memorandum recite what they have termed "undisputed facts," many of these "undisputed facts" are not completely supported by documentary evidence submitted in support of their motion and are disputed by the plaintiff. The plaintiff provides her version of the facts in her memorandum, which are also not completely supported by documentary evidence submitted in opposition to the defendants' motion. Neither party has submitted any affidavits from any of the defendants detailing their roles in Wiseman's mental health care or in the events leading up to Wiseman's death. The parties have left it up to the court to glean which version of the facts is true based upon the parties' description of events in their memoranda and the documentary evidence submitted, but this evidence does not provide the court with a clear picture of what actually happened.
In support of their motion for summary judgment on all counts as to all the medical personnel, the defendants' documentary evidence includes photocopies (some illegible) of clinical notes by medical personnel, a copy of Wiseman's treatment plan and record of his medication refusals, a copy of physician's orders and excerpts from deposition transcripts of the plaintiff's experts and defendant Hoffler, Wiseman's treating psychiatrist. As to all counts involving all of the corrections officers, Armstrong and Tokarz, the defendants have provided photocopies of documents, including the incident reports or statements of the corrections officers, excerpts from deposition transcripts of the plaintiffs experts, a copy of an affidavit by Sandra Sawicki, the director of training and staff development for the department of correction, with copies of training records of the defendant corrections officers attached, the department of correction directive regarding use of force, and investigatory reports on the death of Timothy Perry. The defendants have also submitted a photocopy of an affidavit of Kathryn Burns, M.D., a former corrections official from Ohio, in which she states that she is not aware of any policies anywhere requiring custody staff to seek a mental health consultation prior to strip searching an inmate. In opposition to the defendants' motion, the plaintiff submitted copies of the entire deposition transcripts of various defendants and experts, and copies of the videotapes of the Wiseman and Perry restraints.
The plaintiff takes issue with many of the facts the defendants have deemed "undisputed." For instance, the defendants assert that once Wiseman ceased resisting, the correctional staff ceased using force upon him. The plaintiff disputes this statement, and a review of the videotape submitted by the plaintiff, in which the main view is of Wiseman's feet and the backs of corrections officers surrounding him on the floor, supports the plaintiff's claim that genuine issues of material fact remain in dispute regarding the nature of the restraint and when he stopped resisting. The defendants also assert as an undisputed fact that Wiseman attacked the corrections officers who were conducting the strip search of him, and that Wiseman had pinned one or more of the corrections officers on the floor underneath him, creating a "critically serious situation that required immediate and significant applications of force to subdue" Wiseman, and "[u]nder these circumstances, it is readily apparent that the officers . . . used an objectively reasonable degree of force to quell the disturbance." (Defendants' memorandum, p. 25.) The videotape does not show what conduct precipitated his restraint. While the incident reports are generally consistent, they vary as to the descriptions of the roles of the individual corrections officers involved. For example, in his report, Brian Cowser states that Michael Pace was pinned underneath Wiseman, but Pace's report does not mention this and James Reilly's report does not mention Pace at all. (See Defendants' exhibits 27, 28, 31.) After reviewing the videotape and reading all of these incident reports, the court cannot conclude that no genuine issue of material fact remains as to the roles of the corrections officers, their responses to the alleged attack on them by Wiseman, and the reasonableness of those responses.
With respect to the claims against the medical personnel, the defendants state that these claims are "patently frivolous" and the plaintiff will be unable to prove that the defendants deviated from the standard of care. As noted above, the court cannot conclude that no genuine issue of material fact remains in dispute when the defendants have not submitted any affidavits from any of the medical personnel or other sufficient documentary evidence that supports their version of events contained in their memorandum. The defendants claim that Hoffler discontinued Wiseman's medication because he had consistently refused it and Hoffler did not account for Wiseman's rapid decompensation. The plaintiff claims rest on issues such as whether Hoffler and the mental health staff should have forcibly medicated Wiseman, whether Hoffler should have recognized the signs of rapid decompensation and whether Hoffler or the mental health staff should have admitted Wiseman to the inpatient unit the night before or earlier on the day of his death based upon his behavior on the preceding day. Among the plaintiff's constitutional claims against the medical personnel are that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to Wiseman's serious medical needs. Such a claim requires proof that "the charged official 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, 114 S. Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). "Whether a prison official had the requisite knowledge of a substantial risk [of serious harm to an inmate] is a question of fact subject to demonstration in the usual ways, including inference from circumstantial evidence." Id., 842. As noted above, underlying details regarding the provision of mental health care prior to the date of Wiseman's death and the events in the hours leading up to his death are still disputed. The court cannot find, based upon the evidence submitted, that the defendants have met their burden of showing the absence of any genuine issue of material fact as to the claims against the personnel responsible for Wiseman's mental health care.
With respect to the claims against Armstrong and Tokarz, the plaintiff claims that the death of Perry at the Hartford Correctional Center seven months prior to Wiseman's death put them on notice that policies and procedures were inadequate to address the needs of staff and mentally ill inmates, and of the need to assess and change the way that staff were trained and supervised, particularly with respect to restraint and physical force. The plaintiff claims that both Perry and Wiseman died of traumatic asphyxiation. The defendants claim that the final investigative report regarding Perry's death was not presented to Armstrong and Tokarz until after Wiseman's death, and, even assuming they were aware of the Perry incident, the two incidents are entirely dissimilar. The plaintiff cites to statements made by Armstrong in his deposition that show that Armstrong conducted a review of the Perry incident very soon after its occurrence and made only one change to the use of force protocols regarding the use of spit masks and made no other changes regarding training to properly deal with mentally ill inmates or how to effectuate a proper and safe inmate restraint to avoid compression asphyxia. While the defendants claim that the two incidents are entirely dissimilar, this claim is at least partially based upon the defendants' assertion that as soon as Wiseman ceased resisting, the corrections officers ceased using force upon him, and they summoned medical help as soon as he vomited, whereas in the Perry incident, Perry was restrained while unresponsive and was left alone for two hours without any medical attention. As discussed above, the plaintiff disputes the defendants' version of the "undisputed facts," and the issues of whether the corrections officers ceased using force as soon as Wiseman ceased resisting and whether the Perry incident is "entirely dissimilar" should be left to the jury.
The above issues are just a few of the many genuine issues of material fact remaining in this case that will have to be decided by the jury or the court after a trial. While the defendants claim that the plaintiff cannot prove certain issues through the use of expert testimony or that the plaintiff's experts are not qualified, the defendants have not submitted sufficient evidence from which the court could find that certain facts are undisputed or that the plaintiff will be unable to prove its case through the testimony of witnesses who were present and can testify as to the chronology of events leading up to Wiseman's death.
The defendants claim that they are entitled to qualified immunity. The defendants enjoy qualified immunity from suit "if their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would know, . . . and are entitled to summary judgment if when looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to, and drawing all inferences most favorable to, the plaintiff, it was objectively reasonable for the defendants to believe that their conduct or actions did not violate an established federally protected right." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Harrison v. Barkley, 219 F.3d 132, 138 (2d Cir. 2000). "[A] defense of qualified immunity should ordinarily be decided at the earliest possible stage in litigation, . . . and it is a defense that often can and should be decided on a motion for summary judgment." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Castro v. United States, 34 F. 3d 106, 112 (2d Cir. 1994). "[O]n a motion for summary judgment on the ground of qualified immunity, the defendants bear the burden of showing that as to that defense there is no genuine issue of material fact to be tried." Id. In Castro, the court found that the defendants' affidavits "did not proffer details from which either the doctrinal or the factual reasonableness of their actions would have been established." Id. In this case, as noted previously, the defendants have submitted no affidavits by any of the defendants detailing their roles in the events leading up to Wiseman's death, and the defendants' version of the underlying facts are disputed. Viewing the allegations and evidence submitted in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the court cannot find that the defendants have met their burden of showing that no genuine issue of material fact remains to be tried such that they are entitled to summary judgment on their qualified immunity defense at this stage in the proceedings.
Accordingly, for all the foregoing reasons, the defendants' motion for summary judgment is denied.
So ordered,