Henderson v. Dart et al

Filing 6

MEMORANDUM Order, Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 8/14/2012. (ea, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
TYWON HENDERSON #20111107091,
Plaintiff,
v.
TOM DART, et al.,
Defendants.

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No.

12 C 6189

MEMORANDUM ORDER
Tywon Henderson (“Henderson”) has employed the form of 42
U.S.C. §1983 (“Section 1983”) Complaint made available for use by
persons in custody by this District Court’s Clerk’s Office to sue
Sheriff Tom Dart and three members of his staff at the Cook
County Department of Corrections (“County Jail”), including an
Officer McGee.

Henderson has accompanied the Complaint with two

other Clerk’s-Office-supplied forms:

an In Forma Pauperis

Application (“Application”) and a Motion for Appointment of
Counsel (“Motion”).
To begin with the Application, it lacks the printout of
transactions in Henderson’s trust fund account at the County
Jail, required by 28 U.S.C. §1915 to enable this Court to make
the calculation called for in that section as to Henderson’s
payment of the $350 filing fee on an installment basis.

But

because Henderson has not advanced a viable Section 1983 claim in
any event, this Court is inclined to spare him that financial
burden.

There is no question from Henderson’s Complaint (which this
Court will credit for purposes of this memorandum order) that he
has suffered extremely serious injuries as the result of a brutal
attack by another County Jail detainee who struck him on the head
with a shower scrub brush, to the extent that his skull was
fractured and he has suffered what he refers to as “brain
leakage.”

But the problem in that respect for Section 1983

purposes is that what Officer McGee and Superintendent Thomas of
the same County Jail division are charged with is having
“wrongfully allowed the mop, broom and shower scrub brush on an
open tier, which is a ‘No-No.’”

That might perhaps sustain a

claim of negligence, but not one of deprivation of a
constitutional right.1
Under the circumstances the Complaint plainly does not state
a Section 1983 claim, so that both the Complaint and this action
are dismissed.

That moots both the Application and the Motion,

both of which are denied on that basis.
________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:

August 14, 2012

1

Indeed, to put the matter in conventional tort terms, the
conduct ascribed to those two defendants was not--again accepting
Henderson’s allegations as true--a proximate cause of Henderson’s
injuries (as contrasted with a but-for relationship in the sense
that the fellow detainee would not have been able to engage in
his own wilful wrongdoing without the opportunity provided by the
availability of what he used as a weapon).
2