Plant v. CMS et al

Filing 90

MEMORANDUM DECISION AND ORDER Defendant Spaulding' Motion to Dismiss (Dkt. 76 ) is GRANTED. Plaintiff's claims against Defendant Spaulding are DISMISSED with prejudice.. Signed by Judge B. Lynn Winmill. (caused to be mailed to non Registered Participants at the addresses listed on the Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) by (jp)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO

RODNEY PLANT,
Case No. 1:11-cv-00316-BLW
Plaintiff,
MEMORANDUM DECISION AND
ORDER

v.
CMS, CCA, KIM SPAULDING, DR.
APRIL DAWSON, and DR. DAVID
AGLER,
Defendants.

Plaintiff, a prisoner in the custody of the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC),
is proceeding pro se in this civil rights action. On August 28, 2013, the Court
dismissed—pursuant to stipulation—all claims against Defendants Corrections of
America (CCA) and Dr. David Agler. (Dkt. 68.) On September 18, 2013, the Court
granted summary judgment in favor of Defendant Dr. April Dawson. (Dkt. 72.) Because
Plaintiff was authorized to proceed on his Second Amended Complaint only against
Defendants Spaulding, Dawson, and Agler (Dkt. 17), the only Defendant remaining in
this case is Defendant Spaulding.
Pending before the Court is Defendant Spaulding’s Motion to Dismiss (Dkt. 76).
Plaintiff has not responded to this motion, despite the Court’s express order on March 12,
2014 giving him thirty (30) days in which to file a response. (Dkt. 82, p. 6.) Having fully

Memorandum Decision and Order - 1

reviewed the record, the Court finds that the facts and legal arguments are adequately
presented in the briefs and record and that the decisional process would not be
significantly aided by oral argument. Accordingly, the Court will decide this matter on
the record without oral argument. D. Idaho L. R. 7.1.
FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
Plaintiff Rodney Plant (“Plaintiff”) is an inmate in the custody of the Idaho
Department of Corrections. He is currently housed at the Idaho Correctional Center
(“ICC”). Between April 2004 and September 2005 and between October 2007 and
November 2008, Plaintiff was housed at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution
(“ISMI”) (Dkt. 58-8, Affidavit of Dr. April Dawson in Support of Dr. April Dawson’s
Motion for Summary Judgment (“Dawson Aff.”), Ex. A.) At all times relevant to
Plaintiff Second Amended Complaint, Plaintiff was housed at ISMI.
On August 7, 2012, Plaintiff filed a Second Amended Complaint alleging
deliberate indifference against Corizon, CCA, Kim Spaulding, Dr. April Dawson and Dr.
David Agler for failing to timely replace his prosthetic leg, and for failing to provide him
with a cane, crutch or wheelchair while his prosthetic leg was being replaced. (Dkt. 16.)
Plaintiff claims he had to hobble on his broken prosthetic leg during this time period,
resulting in permanent damage to his other leg and foot. (Id. at ¶ 13.) On September 7,
2012, the Court reviewed the Second Amended Complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
§ 1915A, and entered an Order permitting Plaintiff to proceed on his Eighth Amendment
claim against Defendants Kim Spaulding, Dr. Dawson and Dr. Agler. (Dkt. 17.) Dr.
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Agler and Dr. Dawson have since been dismissed from the suit. (Dkt. 68, Dkt. 72.)
DEFENDANT SPAULDING’S MOTION TO DISMISS
Plaintiff alleges in his Second Amended Complaint that Defendant Spaulding is an
employee of IDOC who served as a grievance coordinator during times at issue in this
complaint. (Dkt. 16, ¶ 6.) Plaintiff alleges that Defendant Spaulding failed to timely
provide him with a cane, crutch or wheelchair while his prosthetic leg was being replaced.
(Id. at ¶ 24.) He contends that Defendant’s deliberate indifference to his serious medical
needs violated his Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. (Id. at
¶ 25.)
In her Motion to Dismiss, Defendant Spaulding contends that she was not
personally involved in any constitutional violation; Plaintiff does not allege that Spalding
is a physician or had any supervisory control over the treating physicians at IMSI or had
any involvement in his medical care. Defendant Spaulding also argues that a mere delay
is not sufficient to allege personal involvement. Lastly, Spaulding contends that she is
entitled to qualified immunity because there is no clearly established law requiring a
“prison grievance coordinator who is not alleged to have any medical training nor alleged
to have any supervisory authority over treating physicians to nonetheless contravene,
interfere with, or second guess the decisions of those physicians.” (Dkt. 76-1, p. 6.)
1.

Standard of Law Applicable to a Motion to Dismiss
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires “a short and plain statement of the

claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,” in order to “give the defendant fair
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notice of what the ... claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.” Bell Atlantic Corp. v.
Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted). A defendant may
move to dismiss a complaint if that complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief may
be granted. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6)
motion to dismiss “does not need detailed factual allegations,” it must set forth “more
than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of
action will not do.” Id.
To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter,
accepted as true, to “state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Id. at 570. A claim
has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to
draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. Id.
at 556. The plausibility standard is not akin to a “probability requirement,” but it asks for
more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully. Id. Where a complaint
pleads facts that are “merely consistent with” a defendant’s liability, it “stops short of the
line between possibility and plausibility of ‘entitlement to relief.’” Id. at 557 (alteration
omitted).
The Supreme Court has identified two “working principles” that underlie this
dismissal standard. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). “First, the tenet that a
court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to
legal conclusions.” Id. “Rule 8 marks a notable and generous departure from the
hyper-technical, code-pleading regime of a prior era, but it does not unlock the doors of
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discovery for a plaintiff armed with nothing more than conclusions.” Id. at 678–79.
Second, only a complaint that states a plausible claim for relief survives a motion to
dismiss. Id. at 679. “Determining whether a complaint states a plausible claim for relief
will . . . be a context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial
experience and common sense.” Id.
When a court is considering a motion to dismiss, it must “‘consider only
allegations contained in the pleadings, exhibits attached to the complaint, and matters
properly subject to judicial notice.’” Akhtar v. Mesa, 698 F.3d 1202, 1212 (9th Cir. 2012)
(quoting Swartz v. KPMG LLP, 476 F.3d 756, 763 (9th Cir.2007) (per curiam)).
2.

Standard of Law for Section 1983 Claims
Plaintiff brings his claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the civil rights statute. To state

a claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must allege a violation of rights protected by the
Constitution or created by federal statute proximately caused by conduct of a person
acting under color of state law. Crumpton v. Gates, 947 F.2d 1418, 1420 (9th Cir. 1991).
Section 1983 is “‘not itself a source of substantive rights,’ but merely provides ‘a method
for vindicating federal rights elsewhere conferred.’” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386,
393-94 (1989) (quoting Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 144 n.3 (1979)).
Prison officials are generally not liable for damages in their individual capacities
under § 1983 unless they personally participated in the alleged constitutional violations.
Taylor v. List, 880 F.2d 1040, 1045 (9th Cir. 1989); see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 677
(“[E]ach Government official, his or her title notwithstanding, is only liable for his or her
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own misconduct.”). “A defendant may be held liable as a supervisor under § 1983 ‘if
there exists either (1) his or her personal involvement in the constitutional deprivation, or
(2) a sufficient causal connection between the supervisor’s wrongful conduct and the
constitutional violation.’” Starr v. Baca, 652 F.3d 1202, 1207 (9th Cir. 2011) (quoting
Hansen v. Black, 885 F.2d 642, 646 (9th Cir. 1989)). This causal connection “can be
established by setting in motion a series of acts by others, or by knowingly refusing to
terminate a series of acts by others, which the supervisor knew or reasonably should have
known would cause others to inflict a constitutional injury.” Id. at 1207-08 (internal
quotation marks, citation, and alterations omitted).
Even if a plaintiff is able to show a violation of a constitutional right under § 1983,
a defendant may still be entitled to dismissal on the basis of qualified immunity. The
doctrine of qualified immunity protects state officials from personal liability for on-thejob conduct so long as the conduct is objectively reasonable and does not violate an
inmate’s clearly-established federal rights. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818
(1982). Contrarily, a state official may be held personally liable in a § 1983 action if he
knew or should have known that he was violating a plaintiff’s clearly-established federal
rights. Id. True to its dual purposes of protecting state actors who act in good faith and
redressing clear wrongs caused by state actors, the qualified immunity standard “gives
ample room for mistaken judgments by protecting all but the plainly incompetent or those
who knowingly violate the law.” Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224, 229 (1991) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
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A qualified immunity analysis consists of two prongs: (1) whether, “[t]aken in the
light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, . . . the facts alleged show the
[defendant’s] conduct violated a constitutional right”; and (2) whether that right was
clearly established. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201 (2001), modified by Pearson v.
Callahan, 555 U.S. 223 (2009).
3.

Eighth Amendment Standard of Law
Plaintiff asserts that Defendant Spaulding’s actions violated the Eighth

Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The Eighth Amendment
requires that prisoners receive minimally adequate medical care, and prison officials or
prison medical providers can be held liable if their “acts or omissions [were] sufficiently
harmful to evidence deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.” Estelle v. Gamble,
429 U.S. 97, 106 (1976). “Because society does not expect that prisoners will have
unqualified access to health care, deliberate indifference to medical needs amounts to an
Eighth Amendment violation only if those needs are ‘serious.’” Hudson v. McMillian,
503 U.S. 1, 9 (1992).
The Ninth Circuit has defined a “serious medical need” in the following ways:
failure to treat a prisoner’s condition [that] could result in
further significant injury or the unnecessary and wanton
infliction of pain[;] . . . [t]he existence of an injury that a
reasonable doctor or patient would find important and worthy
of comment or treatment; the presence of a medical condition
that significantly affects an individual’s daily activities; or the
existence of chronic and substantial pain . . . .
McGuckin v. Smith, 974 F.2d 1050, 1059-60 (9th Cir. 1992) (internal citations omitted),
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overruled on other grounds, WMX Techs., Inc. v. Miller, 104 F.3d 1133 (9th Cir. 1997)
(en banc).
A conclusion that a defendant acted with deliberate indifference requires that the
plaintiff show both “a purposeful act or failure to respond to a prisoner’s pain or possible
medical need and . . . harm caused by the indifference.” Jett v. Penner, 439 F.3d 1091,
1096 (9th Cir. 2006). To exhibit deliberate indifference, a prison 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
(1994). In the medical context, deliberate indifference can be “manifested by prison
doctors in their response to the prisoner’s needs or by prison guards in intentionally
denying or delaying access to medical care or intentionally interfering with the treatment
once prescribed.” Estelle, 429 U.S. at 104-05 (footnotes omitted).
Non-medical prison personnel are generally entitled to rely on the opinions of
medical professionals with respect to appropriate medical treatment of an inmate.
However, if “a reasonable person would likely determine [the medical treatment] to be
inferior,” the fact that an official is not medically trained will not shield that official from
liability for deliberate indifference. Snow v. McDaniel, 681 F.3d 978, 986 (9th Cir. 2012)
(overruled on other grounds by Peralta v. Dillard, 744 F.3d 1076 (9th Cir. 2014)); see
also McGee v. Adams, 721 F.3d 474, 483 (7th Cir. 2013) (stating that non-medical
personnel may rely on medical opinions of health care professionals unless “they have a
reason to believe (or actual knowledge) that prison doctors or their assistants are
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mistreating (or not treating) a prisoner.”) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Differences in judgment between an inmate and prison medical personnel
regarding appropriate medical diagnosis and treatment are not enough to establish a
deliberate indifference claim. Sanchez v. Vild, 891 F.2d 240, 242 (9th Cir. 1989). “[T]o
prevail on a claim involving choices between alternative courses of treatment, a prisoner
must show that the chosen course of treatment ‘was medically unacceptable under the
circumstances,’ and was chosen ‘in conscious disregard of an excessive risk’ to the
prisoner’s health.” Toguchi v. Chung, 391 F.3d 1051, 1058 (9th Cir. 2004) (alteration
omitted) (quoting Jackson v. McIntosh, 90 F.3d 330, 332 (9th Cir. 1996)).
Mere indifference, medical malpractice, or negligence will not support a cause of
action under the Eighth Amendment. Broughton v. Cutter Labs., 622 F.2d 458, 460 (9th
Cir. 1980) (per curiam). A mere delay in treatment does not constitute a violation of the
Eighth Amendment unless the delay causes further harm. McGuckin, 974 F.2d at 1060. If
medical personnel have been “consistently responsive to [the inmate’s] medical needs,”
and there has been no showing that the medical personnel had “subjective knowledge and
conscious disregard of a substantial risk of serious injury,” there is no Eighth Amendment
violation. Toguchi, 391 F.3d at 1061.
The Eighth Amendment does not provide a right to a specific treatment. See
Forbes v. Edgar, 112 F.3d 262, 267 (7th Cir. 1997) (“[The plaintiff] is not entitled to
demand specific care. She is not entitled to the best care possible. She is entitled to
reasonable measures to meet a substantial risk of serious harm to her.”). And there is no
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constitutional right to an outside medical provider of one’s own choice. Roberts v.
Spalding, 783 F.2d 867, 870 (9th Cir. 1986) (“A prison inmate has no independent
constitutional right to outside medical care additional and supplemental to the medical
care provided by the prison staff within the institution.”).
4.

Analysis
Plaintiff has not sufficiently alleged that Defendant Spaulding personally

participated in his allegedly inadequate medical care or that Spaulding is subject to
supervisory liability. See Taylor v. List, 880 F.2d 1040, 1045 (9th Cir. 1989); Starr, 652
F.3d at 1207. Rather, Plaintiff “tenders naked assertions devoid of further enhancement.”
Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). Plaintiff alleges
that his broken prosthetic was brought to Defendant Spaulding’s attention. (Sec. Am.
Compl. at ¶ 24.) He does not detail what was inadequate about Spaulding’s response or
how she failed to respond, nor does he assert that Spaulding had any authority to
prescribe treatment for his broken prosthetic. Plaintiff has not alleged that Spaulding is
medically trained, and there is nothing in the Second Amended Complaint to plausibly
suggest that Spaulding was deliberately indifferent to Plaintiff’s medical needs and that a
reasonable person in Spaulding’s position would have determined that Plaintiff’s
treatment was inferior. See Snow, 533 U.S. at 202. There is no allegation that Spaulding
was personally involved in any delay in providing Plaintiff the cane, nor that any
wrongful conduct by Spaulding led to a delay in providing Plaintiff a cane.
Further, to the extent that Plaintiff’s allegations against Defendant Spaulding, as a
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grievance coordinator, are claims that she failed to respond to respond to his grievances,
such failures are not constitutional violations. There is no legitimate claim of entitlement
to a [prison] grievance procedure.” Mann v. Adams, 855 F.2d 639, 640 (9th Cir. 1988),
cert. denied, 488 U.S. 898 (1988); see Sandin v. Connor, 515 U.S. 472 (1995) (noting
that liberty interests are generally limited to freedom from restraint). Further, there is no
allegation that he was denied access to the grievance system itself or access to the courts.
The Second Amended Complaint contains no allegations of what Spaulding’s role
was, other than grievance coordinator, in Plaintiff’s alleged constitutional violation.
Plaintiff has not shown that clearly established law would have put a reasonable prison
grievance coordinator on notice that her actions on the information Plaintiff provided
would be unlawful. See Saucier, 533 U.S. at 202. There are no allegations of when the
broken prosthetic was brought to Spaulding’s attention or what Plaintiff specifically
requested or told Defendant Spaulding. The Second Amended Complaint contains no
answers. Plaintiff has filed to state a claim.
Further, qualified immunity is an alternative basis for dismissal because the facts
alleged by Plaintiff fail to establish a violation of a constitutional right. There is no clear
allegation that what Spaulding allegedly did amounts to a constitutional violation.
CONCLUSION
Plaintiff’s Second Amended Complaint fails to satisfy Rule 8 by demonstrating
that Plaintiff has a plausible Eighth Amendment claim against Defendant Spaulding.
Defendant Spaulding was not personally involved with Plaintiff’s medical treatment, or
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lack thereof as alleged by Plaintiff. Plaintiff has not sufficiently alleged that Spaulding’s
conduct violated his constitutional rights. Accordingly, Plaintiff’s claims against
Spaulding will be dismissed.
ORDER
IT IS ORDERED:
1)

Defendant Spaulding’s Motion to Dismiss (Dkt. 76) is GRANTED.

2)

Plaintiff’s claims against Defendant Spaulding are DISMISSED with

prejudice.

DATED: July 31, 2014

Honorable B. Lynn Winmill
Chief U. S. District Judge

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