Harbin v. St Joseph County Jail

Filing 4

OPINION & ORDER DISMISSING CASE pursuant to 28 USC 1915A. Signed by Judge Joseph S Van Bokkelen on 7/30/2015. (cc: Pla Harbin-order & judgment)(rmn)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA
ERIK HARBIN,
Plaintiff,
v.
ST. JOSEPH COUNTY JAIL,
Defendant.

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Case No. 3:15-CV-319-JVB

OPINION AND ORDER
Erik Harbin, a pro se prisoner, filed a complaint suing the St. Joseph County Jail because
he slipped and fell on June 7, 2015, in a puddle of water that had accumulated on the floor due to
improper maintenance. “A document filed pro se is to be liberally construed, and a pro se
complaint, however inartfully pleaded, must be held to less stringent standards than formal
pleadings drafted by lawyers.” Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (quotation marks and
citations omitted). Nevertheless, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the court must review the
merits of a prisoner complaint and dismiss it if the action is frivolous or malicious, fails to state a
claim upon which relief may be granted, or seeks monetary relief against a defendant who is
immune from such relief. “In order to state a claim under § 1983 a plaintiff must allege: (1) that
defendants deprived him of a federal constitutional right; and (2) that the defendants acted under
color of state law.” Savory v. Lyons, 469 F.3d 667, 670 (7th Cir. 2006).
At the time of these events, Harbin was a pre-trail detainee at the jail. “Although the
Eighth Amendment applies only to convicted persons, pretrial detainees . . . are entitled to the
same basic protections under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. Accordingly,
[courts] apply the same legal standards to deliberate indifference claims brought under either the
Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment.” Minix v. Canarecci, 597 F.3d 824, 831 (7th Cir. 2010). A

violation of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishments clause consists of two
elements: (1) objectively, whether the injury is sufficiently serious to deprive the prisoner of the
minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities, and (2) subjectively, whether the prison official’s
actual state of mind was one of “deliberate indifference” to the deprivation. Farmer v. Brennan,
511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). However, “not every deviation from ideally safe conditions
constitutes a violation of the constitution.” French v. Owens, 777 F.2d 1250, 1257 (7th Cir.
1985) (quotation marks and citations omitted.)
Conditions of confinement must be severe to support an Eighth Amendment
claim; “the prison officials’ act or omission must result in the denial of ‘the
minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities.’” Farmer [v. Brennan, 511 U.S.
825, 834 (1994)] (quoting Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981)). See
also, Lunsford v. Bennett, 17 F.3d 1574, 1579 (7th Cir. 1994) (the Eighth
Amendment only protects prisoners from conditions that “exceed contemporary
bounds of decency of a mature, civilized society.”); Jackson [v. Duckworth,] 955
F.2d [21,] 22 [(7th Cir. 1992)].
Morissette v. Peters, 45 F.3d 1119, 1123 (7th Cir. 1995) (parallel citations omitted). “An
objectively sufficiently serious risk, is one that society considers so grave that to expose any
unwilling individual to it would offend contemporary standards of decency.” Christopher v.
Buss, 384 F.3d 879, 882 (7th Cir. 2004) (quotation marks and citations omitted). However, a
slippery floor does not constitute such a risk. “[W]hile the standing-water problem was a
potentially hazardous condition, slippery floors constitute a daily risk faced by members of the
public at large. Federal courts from other circuits have therefore consistently held that slippery
prison floors do not violate the Eighth Amendment.” Reynolds v. Powell, 370 F.3d 1028, 1031
(10th Cir. 2004) (collecting cases). Therefore this complaint does not state a claim.
Though it is usually necessary to permit a plaintiff the opportunity to file an amended
complaint when a case is dismissed sua sponte, see Luevano v. Wal-Mart, 722 F.3d 1014 (7th
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Cir. 2013), that is unnecessary where the amendment would be futile. Hukic v. Aurora Loan
Servs., 588 F.3d 420, 432 (7th Cir. 2009) (“[C]ourts have broad discretion to deny leave to
amend where . . . the amendment would be futile.”) Such is the case here. Though the St. Joseph
County Jail is not a suable entity, see Smith v. Knox County Jail, 666 F.3d 1037, 1040 (7th Cir.
2012) (The jail is a building. It is not a suable entity.), that is irrelevant because even if Harbin
had named a person or a suable entity, his slip and fall allegations would not state a claim
because exposing him to the risk of slipping in a puddle at the jail did not violate his
constitutional rights. Therefore it would be futile to amend this complaint to name a suable
entity.
For the foregoing reasons, this case is DISMISSED pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A.
SO ORDERED on July 30, 2015.
s/ Joseph S. Van Bokkelen
JOSEPH S. VAN BOKKELEN
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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