Hood, Sr. v. Lamb et al
Filing
73
ORDER GRANTING 60 Motion for Summary Judgment. Plaintiff's Eighth Amendment claim against Defendant Shaner is DISMISSED with prejudice and judgment will be entered in Shaner's favor. There being no claims or Defendants remaining in this action, the Clerk of Court is DIRECTED to enter judgment and close this case on the Courts docket. Signed by Magistrate Judge Mark A. Beatty on 10/6/20. (klh2)
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
CURTIS R. HOOD, SR.,
Plaintiff,
vs.
BRAD SHANER,
Defendant.
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Case No. 3:17-CV-955-MAB
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
BEATTY, Magistrate Judge:
This matter is before the Court on the motion for summary judgment filed by
Defendant Brad Shaner (Doc. 60). For the reasons outlined below, the motion is granted.
BACKGROUND
Plaintiff Curtis Hood, Sr. is an inmate in the Illinois Department of Corrections,
currently incarcerated at Western Correctional Center. He filed this pro se lawsuit
pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on September 7, 2017, alleging violations of his constitutional
rights when he was incarcerated at Lawrence Correctional Center. Following a threshold
review of the complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, Plaintiff was permitted to proceed
on an Eighth Amendment claim against Defendants John Bach, Shawn Ochs, and Brad
Shaner for failing to protect him from an attack by his cellmate in April 2017 (Doc. 6).
Defendants Bach and Ochs were dismissed on March 18, 2019 after their Motion for
Summary Judgment for Failure to Exhaust was granted (Doc. 52). This matter proceeded
to discovery on the merits of Plaintiff’s claim only as to Defendant Shaner. Defendant
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Shaner filed a motion for summary judgment on August 30, 2019 (Doc. 60). Plaintiff filed
a response on October 3, 2019 (Doc. 68). Defendant Shaner did not file a reply.
FACTS
Plaintiff was housed at Lawrence Correctional Center from 2016 to March 2019
(Doc. 61-1, p. 7). Defendant Shaner was a correctional officer at Lawrence Correctional
Center, who worked during the 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. shift (Id. at p. 17).
As of April 2017, Plaintiff lived in 7B cell number 15 with a cellmate (Doc. 61-1, pp.
15, 16). According to Plaintiff he and his cellmate were not getting along because his
cellmate “wasn’t a clean person. He didn’t want to clean up. He didn’t want to get
showers.” (Id. at p. 16). On April 9th at approximately 9:00 a.m., Plaintiff approached
Officer Shaner in the dayroom and told Shaner that he and his cellmate were not getting
along and “things was possibly about to get violent” (Id. at pp. 16–17, 18). Plaintiff asked
Shaner if he or his cellmate could get moved to a different cell (Id. at p. 17). Officer Shaner
told Plaintiff he would call placement to see if he could get one of them moved (Id. at p.
18). Shaner came back and told Plaintiff that no one answered the phone, but he would
keep trying (Id. at pp. 19, 21).
When the shift changed at 3 p.m., Shaner had not accomplished getting Plaintiff
or his cellmate moved (Doc. 61-1, p. 22). The following day, Plaintiff told two other
officers that he and his cellmate were not getting along, and things might turn violent,
but they took no action (Id. at pp. 21–22, 25–26, 28). Plaintiff wrote a grievance about
getting moved out of his cell and put it in the grievance box on the afternoon of April
10th on his way to the insulin line (Id. at pp. 21, 22, 23, 25). When he returned to his cell
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from the insulin line, his cellmate attacked him and hit him in the head with a hot pot (Id.
at pp. 26, 32). Plaintiff testified that he was taken to the hospital and received six staples
in his head (Id. at p. 36).
Both Plaintiff and his cellmate were ticketed for fighting (Docs. 61-2, 61-3). Plaintiff
was found guilty and given three months in segregation, a demotion to C grade for three
months, and lost one month of good time credit (Docs. 61-2, 61-3).
Plaintiff testified that prior to the April 10th altercation, his cellmate was having
mood swings and “getting angry—angry and angry by the day” (Doc. 61-1, pp. 45, 48).
Plaintiff asked his cellmate if he was on any type of “psych meds,” and his cellmate said
he was supposed to be, but he did not take them (Id. at pp. 23, 45). Plaintiff further
testified that he and his cellmate had had a previous physical altercation a few days prior
(Id. at p. 23–24, 46).
However, Plaintiff admitted that he did not tell Defendant Shaner or the other
officers about the prior altercation with his cellmate because he was concerned he would
be sent to segregation (Doc. 61-1, pp. 23–24, 27, 45–46). In fact, Plaintiff had never talked
to Defendant Shaner about tension between him and his cellmate prior to April 9th (Doc.
61-1, p. 18). Plaintiff did not tell Officer Shaner why he and his cellmate were not getting
along as of April 9th or why he thought things might turn violent with his cellmate (Id.
at p. 18). Plaintiff admitted that his cellmate had never threatened him (Id. at p. 45). And
there is no indication that Plaintiff told Officer Shaner about his concerns that his cellmate
was having mood swings and might not be taking his “psych meds” (see id.).
Plaintiff knew how to request protective custody however he did not feel he
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should request protective custody because he thought he could just talk to an officer and
get him or his cellmate moved (Doc. 61-1, pp. 19, 20).
DISCUSSION
Summary judgment is proper when the moving party “shows that there is no
genuine issue as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter
of law.” FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a). “Factual disputes are genuine only if there is sufficient
evidence for a reasonable jury to return a verdict in favor of the non-moving party on the
evidence presented, and they are material only if their resolution might change the suit’s
outcome under the governing law.” Maniscalco v. Simon, 712 F.3d 1139, 1143 (7th Cir.
2013) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In deciding a motion for summary
judgment, the court’s role is not to determine the truth of the matter, and the court may
not “choose between competing inferences or balance the relative weight of conflicting
evidence.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986); Hansen v. Fincantieri
Marine Grp., LLC, 763 F.3d 832, 836 (7th Cir. 2014) (citations omitted); Doe v. R.R. Donnelley
& Sons Co., 42 F.3d 439, 443 (7th Cir. 1994). Instead, “it must view all the evidence in the
record in the light most favorable to the non-moving party and resolve all factual disputes
in favor of the non-moving party.” Hansen, 763 F.3d at 836.
The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments”
imposes a duty on prison officers to “take reasonable measures to guarantee the safety of
. . . inmates.” Sinn v. Lemmon, 911 F.3d 412, 419 (7th Cir. 2018) (quoting Farmer v. Brennan,
511 U.S. 825, 832 (1994)). In particular, prison officials are required “to protect prisoners
from violence at the hands of other prisoners.” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 833.
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In order to succeed on an Eighth Amendment claim based on a failure to protect,
a prisoner must show that the prison official was deliberately indifferent to “an excessive
risk” to their health or safety. Gevas v. McLaughlin, 798 F.3d 475, 480 (7th Cir. 2015). Like
all deliberate indifference claims, there is both an objective and subjective component. Id.
First, the prisoner must show that the harm to which they were exposed was objectively
serious. Id. Second, the prisoner must show that the prison official had “actual, and not
merely constructive, knowledge” of the risk, “yet failed to take appropriate steps to
protect him from the specific danger.” Id.; Klebanowski v. Sheahan, 540 F.3d 633, 639 (7th
Cir. 2008). In deciding whether the prison official was aware of the substantial risk, “the
circumstances as a whole must be considered.” LaBrec v. Walker, 948 F.3d 836, 843 (7th
Cir. 2020).
“Complaints that convey only a generalized, vague . . . concern about one’s safety
typically will not support an inference that a prison official had actual knowledge that
the prisoner was in danger.” Gevas, 798 F.3d at 480–81. See, e.g., Dale v. Poston, 548 F.3d
563, 569 (7th Cir. 2008) (“[The prisoner’s] vague statement that inmates were ‘pressuring’
him and ‘asking questions' were simply inadequate to alert the officers to the fact that
there was a true threat at play.”); Klebanowski, 540 F.3d at 639–40 (officers had no notice
of specific threat where they knew the plaintiff had been involved in an altercation with
three other inmates and he told them that he was afraid for his life and wanted to be
transferred off the tier, but he did not tell them he was threatened with future violence or
that the initial attack was gang-related); Butera v. Cottey, 285 F.3d 601, 606 (7th Cir. 2002)
(officers had no notice of specific risk of serious harm where prisoner only told them he
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was “having problems in the block” and “needed to be removed” but did not say he was
afraid of being assaulted and did not disclose who had threatened him or what the threats
were).
On the other hand, “a complaint that identifies a specific, credible, and imminent
risk of serious harm and identifies the prospective assailant typically will support an
inference that the official to whom the complaint was communicated had actual
knowledge of the risk.” Gevas, 798 F.3d at 481 (officers had notice that plaintiff was in
danger of being attacked where plaintiff told them about an individual who repeatedly
threatened to stab him had remarked that he had snitched on a prior cellmate); Haley v.
Gross, 86 F.3d 630, 643 (7th Cir. 1996) (prisoner advised sergeant, inter alia, that cellmate
was intimidating him, acting strangely, had threatened that “something crucial was
going to happen” if one of them was not moved, and was now “deadlocked” in cell,
which restricted ingress to and egress from cell).
Here, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, the undersigned
finds that Plaintiff failed to raise a triable issue of fact as to whether Officer Shaner had
subjective knowledge that he faced a substantial risk of harm. Plaintiff only told Officer
Shaner that he and his cellmate were not getting along and “things was possibly about to
get violent,” and he asked if one of them could be moved. But Plaintiff did not provide
any explanation regarding the nature of the purported threat. In fact, it is not even clear
from Plaintiff’s statements that he was the one in danger of harm. Plaintiff simply said
things might turn violent, which could mean that he intended to perpetrate violence
against his cellmate, or it could mean that he thought he was going to be the victim of
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violence from his cellmate. Plaintiff also did not provide any context for the purported
threat to his safety. He did not, for example, tell Shaner what the source of discord was
between him and his cellmate. He did not tell Shaner the reasons he was concerned about
his safety or that his cellmate was acting unstable. Plaintiff also admitted that he had
never spoken to Officer Shaner about tension with his cellmate prior to April 9th nor did
he relay any information to Officer Shaner about the prior altercation with his cellmate.
There is no evidence from which it could be inferred that Officer Shaner had any
independent knowledge of the tension and prior altercation between Plaintiff and his
cellmate. There is also no indication that Shaner had any independent knowledge as to
whether Plaintiff’s cellmate had a history or propensity for violence. That means that the
only information Officer Shaner had about the purported threat to Plaintiff’s safety was
based on Plaintiff’s statements to him. Those statements were simply too vague and
generalized to give Shaner notice of a specific threat. Without some type of additional
information, no reasonable jury could conclude that Shaner had any reason to suspect
that Plaintiff actually faced an imminent and significant threat to his safety.
Accordingly, Officer Shaner is entitled to summary judgment.
CONCLUSION
The motion for summary judgment filed by Defendant Brad Shaner (Doc. 60) is
GRANTED. Plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment claim against Shaner is DISMISSED with
prejudice and judgment will be entered in Shaner’s favor. There being no claims or
Defendants remaining in this action, the Clerk of Court is DIRECTED to enter judgment
and close this case on the Court’s docket.
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IT IS SO ORDERED.
DATED: October 6, 2020
s/ Mark A. Beatty
MARK A. BEATTY
United States Magistrate Judge
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