Makdessi v. Fields (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-046-15, 44 pp.) (Wynn, J.) No. 13-7606, March 12, 2015; USDC at Roanoke, Va. 4th Cir.
Holding: In a split panel decision, the 4th Circuit vacates a Roanoke district court’s dismissal of deliberate indifference claims against three prison officials filed by a prison inmate who alleges his numerous complaints about repeated physical and sexual abuse by other inmates were ignored by defendant officials; the “actual knowledge” standard for a claim of deliberate indifference may be proven by circumstantial evidence.
Prison officials may not simply bury their heads in the sand and thereby skirt liability. Even a guard able to prove that he was in fact oblivious to an obvious injury of sufficient seriousness may not escape liability if it is shown, for example, that he merely refused to verify underlying facts that he strongly suspected to be true, or that he declined to confirm inferences of risk that he strongly suspected to exist.
A prison official remains free to rebut the deliberate indifference charge, even in the face of an obvious risk. But absent successful rebuttal, they may be held liable for obvious risks they must have known.
Plaintiff is a short, middle-aged prisoner with physical and mental problems that make him vulnerable to harassment and attacks by other inmates. For years, he complained to prison officials, including in the form of numerous written letters and grievances, about physical and sexual abuse he suffered in prison. Those complaints often garnered no response, and one response – to a December 2009 complaint expressly mentioning sexual assault – simply stated, “Hopefully you will be well soon.”
Despite plaintiff’s stature, vulnerability and repeated complaints, he was placed in a cell with an aggressive prison gang member in August 2010. By the end of October 2010, plaintiff filed a report stating he had been sexually assaulted by his cellmate. Yet the standard protocol of separating inmates alleging sexual assault was not followed when plaintiff filed the October 2010 report. He was left in the cell with that cellmate until his physical and mental injuries from the Dec. 21, 2010, attack sent him to the prison infirmary for a month and a half. Plaintiff was then transferred to another prison and placed in protective custody.
The magistrate judge and then the district court failed to appreciate that the subjective “actual knowledge” standard required to find deliberate indifference may be proven by circumstantial evidence that a risk was so obvious that it had to have been known. The court below focused on factors that, under Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994), may be irrelevant. The dismissal of plaintiff’s claims against defendants Fields, King and Gallihar is vacated and the case is remanded for reconsideration using the proper legal framework. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the proper legal framework must be applied to address plaintiff’s claims.
Vacated and remanded.
Concurrence
Motz, J.: I concur in Judge Wynn’s opinion for the court. On remand, the district court will be able to determine, in light of plaintiff’s undisputed vulnerability and his multiple written complaints of abuse at the hands of other prisoners, if the risk of serious harm to plaintiff in housing him with an aggressive gang member who had committed numerous assaults while imprisoned was so obvious that the defendants must have known of the risk, appreciated its seriousness and yet failed to take reasonable measures to abate it.
Concurrence & Dissent
Shedd, J.: I agree that plaintiff waived his appellate challenge to the judgment in favor of defendants Bellamy, Boyd and Hall. However, I disagree that the judges below improperly analyzed plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment claim against defendants Fields, King and Gallihar. In my view, the majority’s consideration of the judgment in favor of the latter three defendants is more akin to a summary judgment review than a bench trial review, and it fails to adequately account for the factual findings made by the magistrate judge and reviewed de novo by the district judge. I concur in part II of the majority opinion but I dissent from the remainder.
