CARL J. BARBIER, District Judge.
Before the Court is Plaintiff Steven Oliver's Motion for Review of Magistrate Judge's Decision
On August 17, 2017, Plaintiff, a pretrial detainee in the custody of the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office ("OPSO"), was being transported in a van along with a group of other inmates, including Corey Simmons and Defendant Jamie Massey. Defendants Michael Lee and Thomas Sutherland, deputies with OPSO, were riding in the front of the van and transporting the inmates from the Orleans Justice Center ("OJC") to Elayn Hunt Correctional Facility. During the trip, Massey removed his belly chain restraint and hit Simmons with the padlock on the chain and choked him with the restraint. Massey then struck Plaintiff multiple times "and used his thumb to poke him in the rectum through his pants."
Plaintiff filed suit on August 16, 2018, against Sheriff Marlin Gusman, Major Chaz Ruiz, warden for OPSO,
The Magistrate Judge ("MJ"), in her Report and Recommendation, found that the motions should be granted and that Plaintiff's claims against the Moving Defendants should be dismissed with prejudice. The MJ found that the deliberate indifference claims should be dismissed because (1) Plaintiff failed to show that the Moving Defendants "knew of a substantial risk [of harm] to [Plaintiff] in the transport van and failed to abate it";
Plaintiff now seeks review of the MJ's decision. He contends that the MJ erred by relying on "the fundamentally false premise" that there was no longer a custom of "neglecting to track inmate complaints and failing to properly train on intervention and investigation," which allowed for inmate-on-inmate violence to continue.
Regarding the deliberate indifference claims, Plaintiff contends that the MJ committed legal error by concluding that he had "to prove `that the defendants had knowledge of the specific or potential danger posed by Massey or failed to take corrective action based on that knowledge.'"
Because Plaintiff timely objected, this Court reviews the MJ's Report and Recommendation de novo. See FED. R. CIV. P. 72(b)(3); Moore v. Ford Motor Co., 755 F.3d 802, 808 (5th Cir. 2014). "A motion for judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c) is subject to the same standard as a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6)." Doe v. MySpace, Inc., 528 F.3d 413, 418 (5th Cir. 2008). In deciding a motion under Rule 12(c), the Court must determine whether the complaint, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, states a valid claim for relief. Id. While the Court must accept the factual allegations in the pleadings as true, the "plaintiff must plead `enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" Id. (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). In deciding the motion, the Court may look only to the pleadings, Brittan Commc'ns Int'l Corp. v. Sw. Bell Tel. Co., 313 F.3d 899, 904 (5th Cir. 2002), and exhibits attached to the pleadings, see Voest-Alpine Trading USA Corp. v. Bank of China, 142 F.3d 887, 891 n.4 (5th Cir. 1998). The Court may consider materials outside the pleadings if those materials are matters of public record. Fin. Acquisition Partners LP v. Blackwell, 440 F.3d 278, 286 (5th Cir. 2006).
Plaintiff asserts that the Moving Defendants violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. Under the Eighth Amendment, prison officials have a duty "to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners." Williams v. Hampton, 797 F.3d 276, 280 (5th Cir. 2015) (en banc) (quoting Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 833 (1994)). This right extends to pretrial detainees through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Hare v. City of Corinth, 74 F.3d 633, 639 (5th Cir. 1996). To establish a violation of this right, a detainee must show (1) "that he is incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm," and (2) that the prison official acted with "deliberate indifference to inmate health and safety." Williams, 797 F.3d at 280 (quoting Farmer, 511 U.S. at 834). In this context, deliberate indifference contains a subjective requirement;
Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a plaintiff cannot hold supervisory officials liable under a theory of vicarious liability; instead, the plaintiff must show that the conduct of the supervisors denied the plaintiff his constitutional rights. Estate of Davis ex rel. McCully v. City of North Richland Hills, 406 F.3d 375, 381 (5th Cir. 2005). Where the plaintiff alleges a failure to train or supervise, "the plaintiff must show that: (1) the supervisor either failed to supervise or train the subordinate official; (2) a causal link exists between the failure to train or supervise and the violation of the plaintiff's rights; and (3) the failure to train or supervise amounts to deliberate indifference." Id. (citations omitted). "To satisfy the deliberate indifference prong, a plaintiff usually must demonstrate a pattern of violations and that the inadequacy of the training is obvious and obviously likely to result in a constitutional violation." Id. at 381-82 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also Porter v. Epps, 659 F.3d 440, 447 (5th Cir. 2011) ("To establish that a state actor disregarded a known or obvious consequence of his actions, there must be actual or constructive notice that a particular omission in their training program causes employees to violate citizens' constitutional rights and the actor nevertheless chooses to retain that program." (cleaned up) (quoting Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 61 (2011)). A supervisory official may also be liable "for implementing unconstitutional policies that causally result in injury to the plaintiff." Alderson v. Concordia Par. Corr. Facility, 848 F.3d 415, 420 (5th Cir. 2017); see also Rhyne v. Henderson County, 973 F.2d 386, 392 (5th Cir. 1992) ("A failure to adopt a policy can be deliberately indifferent when it is obvious that the likely consequences of not adopting a policy will be a deprivation of constitutional rights.").
Here, the Moving Defendants do not contend that Plaintiff was not exposed to conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm. The issue, then, is whether Plaintiff has adequately alleged that any of the Moving Defendants acted with deliberate indifference. See Williams, 797 F.3d at 280.
On this point, the MJ erred by requiring that Plaintiff allege "that the defendants had knowledge of the specific or potential danger posed by Massey" to Plaintiff in the transport van.
511 U.S. at 842-44 (footnote and citations omitted). Plaintiff contends that the DOJ's findings letters
It is also not reasonable to assume that the informal policies or customs in place at OPSO were eradicated merely by the appointment of the Compliance Director. Indeed, Plaintiff's allegations (which the Court must accept as true, see MySpace, 528 F.3d at 418) are that these customs—failure to respond to or report inmate-on-inmate assaults and to investigate staff misconduct—continued beyond the appointment of the Compliance Director and that the Moving Defendants have not done anything to remedy the issues repeatedly highlighted by the DOJ and the Jail Monitor.
Finally, Plaintiff has sufficiently alleged that each of the Moving Defendants were responsible for these failures. He alleges that Sheriff Gusman "fail[ed] to adequately staff the OJC" and "fail[ed] to adequately train the staff at the OJC" to properly supervise inmates and "to report and investigate inmate-on-inmate violence" and staff misconduct.
The Moving Defendants' arguments that they cannot be liable because they had no idea who Plaintiff was and were not direct supervisors of Defendants Lee and Sutherland fundamentally misconstrues the nature of Plaintiff's claims. See Hinojosa v. Livingston, 807 F.3d 657, 668 (5th Cir. 2015) ("The complaint does not seek to hold Defendants vicariously liable for the actions of their subordinates. Rather, it seeks to hold them liable for their own actions in promulgating[,] and failing to correct[,] . . . polices that exposed [Plaintiff] and other inmates to [a substantial risk of serious harm]."). In Hinojosa, the Fifth Circuit found that the plaintiff adequately alleged a constitutional violation where the defendants, the top three officials of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, subjected him to dangerous heat conditions, resulting in his death, and thirteen other men had recently died under similar circumstances. Id. at 663, 666. The court rejected the defendants' argument that they could not be liable because the plaintiff had not alleged that they were aware of his specific medical history and needs, holding that the defendants' "lack of knowledge of [the plaintiff's] individual susceptibility to heat-related dangers cannot defeat an Eighth Amendment claim" under Farmer. Id. at 667. Thus, the court held that the plaintiff's allegations about the similar deaths, the prison's inadequate policies that failed to prevent those deaths, and the defendants' lack of action to change those policies in light of those deaths stated a claim for deliberate indifference. Id. at 668.
Plaintiff here challenges systemic deficiencies within OJC and OPSO that he alleges not only violated his constitutional rights but also resulted in numerous other instances of officers failing to protect inmates, which readily distinguishes many of the cases the Moving Defendants rely on. See, e.g., Brown v. Strain, No. 09-2813, 2010 WL 5141215, at *10 (E.D. La. Dec. 13, 2010) (dismissing failure to train claim where plaintiffs "provided no evidence of a pattern of inadequate training that would support" a finding of deliberate indifference).
When considering a qualified immunity defense in the context of a Rule 12 motion, the Court must determine whether "the plaintiff's pleadings assert facts which, if true, would overcome the defense of qualified immunity." Backe v. LeBlanc, 691 F.3d 645, 648 (5th Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). "Thus, a plaintiff seeking to overcome qualified immunity must plead specific facts which both allow the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the harm he has alleged and that defeat a qualified immunity defense with equal specificity." Id.
To overcome qualified immunity, the plaintiff must establish that (1) the allegations in the complaint show the defendant's conduct violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights, and (2) the defendant's conduct was objectively unreasonable in light of clearly established law at the time of the incident. See Alexander v. Eeds, 392 F.3d 138, 144 (5th Cir. 2004). "The second prong of the qualified immunity test is better understood as two separate inquiries: whether the allegedly violated constitutional rights were clearly established at the time of the incident; and, if so, whether the conduct of the defendants was objectively unreasonable in the light of that then clearly established law." Hare v. City of Corinth, 135 F.3d 320, 326 (5th Cir. 1998). Showing that the right was clearly established requires a plaintiff to point out "a legislative directive or case precedent that is sufficiently clear such that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates the law." Keller v. Fleming, ___ F.3d ____, 2020 WL 831757, at *6 (5th Cir. Feb. 20, 2020).
"It is well established that prison officials have a constitutional duty to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of their fellow inmates." Longoria v. Texas, 473 F.3d 586, 592 (5th Cir. 2006) (citing Farmer, 511 U.S. at 832-33). Therefore, the question before the Court is whether the Moving Defendants' conduct was objectively reasonable in light of this clearly established law.
As alleged by Plaintiff, the Moving Defendants' conduct was objectively unreasonable in light of Farmer and the repeated warnings from the DOJ and the Jail Monitor. In Longoria, an appeal from an order denying summary judgment, the Fifth Circuit held that two of the defendants were not entitled to qualified immunity because genuine issues of material fact existed regarding whether these defendants had received information that would have made them aware of a substantial risk to the plaintiff's safety. Id. at 595. There was no dispute that the plaintiff was exposed to a substantial risk of serious harm or that the two defendants' failure to act on the information, if they had received it, would have been objectively unreasonable and constituted deliberate indifference. See id. at 590-92, 595.
Here, Plaintiff has alleged that the Moving Defendants knew of a substantial risk of serious harm to inmates in their custody from assaults by other inmates that officers would be unlikely to prevent because a pattern of similar incidents had been ongoing for several years before Plaintiff was attacked. Thus, their failure to correct policies known to cause constitutional violations or to implement new policies is objectively unreasonable, regardless of whether the Moving Defendants knew that Plaintiff specifically was at risk. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 843-44. The Moving Defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity at this stage of the proceedings.
Plaintiff's claim against Sheriff Gusman in his official capacity is a claim for municipal liability. See Burge v. Parish of St. Tammany, 187 F.3d 452, 466 (5th Cir. 1999). To state a claim of municipal liability, a plaintiff must allege "(1) an official policy (or custom), of which (2) a policymaker can be charged with actual or constructive knowledge, and (3) a constitutional violation whose `moving force' is that policy or custom." Valle v. City of Houston, 613 F.3d 536, 541 (5th Cir. 2010) (citation omitted). The policy may consist of "a persistent, widespread practice of city officials or employees, which, although not authorized by officially adopted and promulgated policy, is so common and well settled as to constitute a custom that fairly represents municipal policy." Brown v. Bryan County, 219 F.3d 450, 457 (5th Cir. 2000) (citation omitted). Under the second prong, the policymaker must have "final authority to establish municipal policy with respect to the action ordered," which is a question of state and local law. Valle, 613 F.3d at 542 (citation omitted).
The failure to train municipal employees may also constitute a policy, but only when it "reflects a `deliberate' or `conscious' choice by a municipality." City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 389 (1989). Thus, although municipalities are not normally liable for inadequate training of employees, failure to properly train constitutes an actionable policy if, "in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or employees the need for more or different training is so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the policymakers of the city can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need." Id. at 390. To state a claim for municipal liability for failure to train or supervise, a plaintiff must allege (1) "a decision by a decisionmaker that amounts to a policy" (2) that was "so deliberately indifferent to the rights of the citizens that the [municipality] fairly can be said to be culpable for the injury," and (3) "sufficient causation between the specific policy decision and the resulting constitutional injury." Brown, 219 F.3d at 457.
Defendant Gusman argues that, despite his title, he was not the final policymaker at the time Plaintiff was attacked pursuant to a "Stipulated Order for Appointment of Independent Jail Compliance Director" in Jones v. Gusman, No. 12-859, ECF No. 1082 (E.D. La. June 21, 2016).
Plaintiff argues that Gusman is the final policymaker because he retains authority over the Compliance Director in several respects. The Stipulated Order first provides that "[t]he Compliance Director shall seek advice and/or approval from the Sheriff regarding all decisions that materially impact compliance with the Consent Judgment, unless doing so would cause unreasonable delay." Id. at 3. The Stipulated Order also gives Sheriff Gusman limited authority to appoint the Compliance Director and approval authority over the initial remedial plan the Compliance Director would submit to the court. See id. at 3, 5-6.
"[T]he identification of policymaking officials is a question of state law." City of St. Louis v. Praprotnik, 485 U.S. 112, 124 (1988) (plurality opinion). Louisiana law provides that the sheriff is the final policymaker for a parish jail. See La. R.S. § 13:5539. The Stipulated Order is not state law; it is an order issued by a federal district court at the request of the parties in an action where plaintiffs alleged violations of their federal constitutional rights. See Jones, No. 12-859, ECF No. 1082, at 2 ("The parties enter into this agreement [in] order to avoid continued litigation and appeals.").
A close reading of the Stipulated Order reveals that the Compliance Director's authority is limited to implementing the Consent Judgment. For instance, it provides that "[t]he Compliance Director's authority will continue until the Court determines that . . . substantial compliance with the Consent Judgment is achieved." Id. at 3. The Consent Judgment, in turn, was an agreement between the Jones plaintiffs and Sheriff Gusman on how OPSO would address the constitutional violations alleged by the plaintiffs. See Jones, No. 12-859, ECF No. 466, at 5.
"When an official's discretionary decisions are constrained by policies not of that official's making, those policies, rather than the subordinate's departures from them, are the act of the municipality." Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 127. Here, the Compliance Director's decisions are constrained by the Consent Judgment,
In Crawford v. Gusman, No. 17-13397, 2018 WL 3773407, at *3-4 (E.D. La. Aug. 9, 2018), a case the Moving Defendants rely on, the district court granted the Compliance Director's motion to dismiss the plaintiff's § 1983 claims on grounds of judicial immunity but found that the plaintiff had stated a claim against Sheriff Gusman in his official capacity, which necessarily required finding he was the final policymaker. Further, the Moving Defendants have not cited to any case where a court found that Sheriff Gusman was not the final policymaker for OPSO due to the appointment of the Compliance Director. "If . . . a city's lawful policymakers could insulate the government from liability simply by delegating their policymaking authority to others, § 1983 could not serve its intended purpose." Praprotnik, 485 U.S. at 126. This is particularly true here, where Sheriff Gusman has delegated his authority to control OPSO because of his failure to maintain constitutional conditions of confinement at OJC and to avoid a contempt order. Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiff has adequately alleged that Sheriff Gusman was the final policymaker for OPSO at the time he was attacked.
Plaintiff has adequately alleged the remaining elements of a municipal liability claim as well.
Plaintiff further alleges that the inmate-on-inmate violence is "tied to" and "exacerbated by" the lack of reporting and inadequate training and supervision because the investigative process is "[a]n essential element to ensure inmate safety" yet the current process "fails to address, and is itself part of, the many operational breakdowns in [OPSO's] accountability systems," allowing officers to "ignore[] fights or requests for help" from inmates without consequence.
The MJ found that "any de facto policies and practices that may undergird the statistics in the DOJ and Monitor's reports relied on by [Plaintiff] were not in place when [Plaintiff] was injured" due to the appointment of the Compliance Director.
In light of the foregoing, the Court finds that Sheriff Gusman's motion should be denied as to this claim.
Because the Moving Defendants did not specifically address Plaintiff's state law claims, the MJ did not discuss them.
Accordingly,
