Juan Guitron, Jr. v. Michael Paul, et al

Filing

Filed opinion of the court by Judge Easterbrook. AFFIRMED. Frank H. Easterbrook, Chief Judge; Richard A. Posner, Circuit Judge and Diane S. Sykes, Circuit Judge. [6388577-3] [6388577] [11-2718]

Case: 11-2718

Document: 19

Filed: 04/10/2012

Pages: 4

In the

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 11-2718
JUAN J. G UITRON, JR.,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
M ICHAEL P AUL and B RADLEY M LODZIK,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
No. 11-C-447—William C. Griesbach, Judge.

S UBMITTED M ARCH 28, 2012—D ECIDED A PRIL 10, 2012

Before E ASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and P OSNER and
S YKES, Circuit Judges.
E ASTERBROOK, Chief Judge. Juan Guitron maintains
that a guard at the prison where Guitron was confined
bent and injured his wrist. The district court dismissed
the complaint after the preliminary screening required
by 28 U.S.C. §1915A.
Guitron’s complaint is skeletal. It alleges that, while
Michael Paul and Bradley Mlodzik were escorting him

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down a hallway, Paul twisted his wrist and caused pain
that lasted for two months. Guitron’s appellate brief
elaborates. He asserts that, while the guards were
taking him to segregation, they saw other inmates in
the hallway and directed Guitron: “Get against the wall
now”. Guitron tells us that, instead of complying, he
replied: “That’s bogus man.” Paul then began to bend
Guitron’s wrist; he complained but did not move. Paul
next “applied full force” and slammed Guitron against
the wall. Only after Guitron reached his destination
cellblock did Paul release his wrist, which was “swollen,
red and skinned” from the pressure.
The allegations of the complaint, as elaborated in the
brief, show that the guards did not violate the eighth
amendment. “To be cruel and unusual punishment,
conduct that does not purport to be punishment at all
must involve more than ordinary lack of due care for
the prisoner’s interests or safety. . . . It is obduracy and
wantonness, not inadvertence or error in good faith,
that characterize the conduct prohibited by the Cruel
and Unusual Punishments Clause . . . . The infliction of
pain in the course of a prison security measure, therefore, does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment simply because it may appear in retrospect that
the degree of force authorized or applied for security
purposes was unreasonable, and hence unnecessary in
the strict sense.” Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 319
(1986). See also Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 7 (1992),
which poses the inquiry as “whether force was applied
in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline,
or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.” Paul did

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not use any force until Guitron disobeyed a command
that was designed to maintain order within the prison;
and, when Paul applied modest force, Guitron remained defiant. Paul did not violate the Constitution
by applying additional force. Even if “it may appear
in retrospect that the degree of force authorized or
applied for security purposes was unreasonable” (Whitley,
475 U.S. at 319), an error of judgment does not convert
a prison security measure into a constitutional violation.
The district court reached its conclusion by a different
route. It stated that Guitron’s injury is de minimis and
therefore not actionable under the eighth amendment.
2011 U.S. Dist. L EXIS 72795 (E.D. Wis. July 6, 2011). It
is hard to see how such a classification can be made
without evidence—at the complaint stage, a court
must accept a plaintiff’s description of the injury—or
why an injury that led to swelling and two months of
pain would be too trivial for judicial attention. Although
the Supreme Court remarked in Hudson that “[t]he
Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual’
punishments necessarily excludes from constitutional
recognition de minimis uses of physical force,” 503 U.S.
at 9–10, it added that a blow causing bruising, swelling,
and loosened teeth could not be disregarded by invoking the maxim de minimis non curat lex (the law
does not bother with trifles). Id. at 10. Hudson went on
to hold that a prisoner need not show a “significant
injury” in order to have a good claim under the eighth
amendment, if a guard inflicted pain maliciously or
sadistically. See also Williams v. Boles, 841 F.2d 181 (7th
Cir. 1988) (anticipating this conclusion). Hudson said
that minimal force is not actionable; it did not say that a

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real injury from significant force should be ignored. A
court should not recreate the disapproved “significant
injury” requirement by classifying all consequences it
deems “insignificant” as de minimis harms.
The reason the Court referred to de minimis force in
Hudson—and the reason several opinions of this court
have done so since, see O’Malley v. Litscher, 465 F.3d
799, 805 (7th Cir. 2006); Outlaw v. Newkirk, 259 F.3d 833,
839 (7th Cir. 2001); DeWalt v. Carter, 224 F.3d 607, 620
(7th Cir. 2000)—is not to revive a significant-injury requirement by other means, but to emphasize an important difference between constitutional law and
private law. In tort law, any unconsented and offensive
touching is a battery. See W. Page Keeton, Prosser &
Keeton on Torts §9 (5th ed. 1984). An unwelcome tickle
with a feather can lead to an award of damages. A judgment of imprisonment strips a prisoner of that right to
be let alone, and many other interests as well. See Hudson
v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984). Custodians must be able
to handle, sometimes manhandle, their charges, if a
building crammed with disgruntled people who disdain
authority (that’s how the prisoners came to be there,
after all) is to be manageable. When a physical injury
occurs as the result of force applied in the course of
prison operations, as happened to Guitron, the courts
should approach the matter as Whitley and Hudson v.
McMillian direct, rather than trying to classify injuries as
de minimis.
A FFIRMED
4-10-12