STILE v. SOMERSET COUNTY et al

Filing 86

ORDER granting in part and denying in part 50 Motion to Amend Scheduling Order; granting in part and denying in part 50 Motion to Amend; granting in part and denying in part 59 Motion; granting in part and denying in part 68 Motion to Amend; granting in part and denying in part 71 Motion to Amend. Amended Complaint to be filed on or before 8/22/14. By MAGISTRATE JUDGE JOHN C. NIVISON. (CWP)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MAINE
JAMES STILE,
Plaintiff,
v.
SOMERSET COUNTY, et al.,
Defendants

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ORDER
Plaintiff James Stile seeks to join as party defendants seventeen individuals who served as
corrections officers during his detention at the Somerset County Jail. During an August 4, 2014,
telephonic conference, the Court consolidated four of the filings (ECF Nos. 50, 59, 68, and 71,
collectively referred to herein as Motion to Amend) by which filings Plaintiff requested the
amendment. (ECF No. 84) Defendants oppose the request.
After reviewing the parties’ filings and after consideration of the parties’ arguments, the
Court grants in part and denies in part Plaintiff’s Motion to Amend.
PROCEDURAL AND FACTUAL BACKGROUND
In October 2011, Plaintiff was arrested on charges of Robbery of Controlled Substances in
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2118(a), and other offenses. In November 2011, this Court ordered
Plaintiff detained pending trial. Committed to the custody of the Attorney General, Plaintiff was
placed in the Somerset County Jail pending trial on the federal charges. On January 30, 2012,
following Plaintiff’s motion requesting that he be detained at another facility, the United States
Marshall moved Plaintiff to the Cumberland County Jail. This civil action concerns events that
occurred during Plaintiff’s detention at the Somerset County Jail (SCJ).

In his proposed amended complaint,1 Plaintiff asserts the deprivation of his rights to due
process, equal protection, and access to counsel, and of his right to be free from excessive use of
force. Plaintiff complains of “repeated daily strip searches and visible body cavity searches” and
“four point restraints” every time he left his cell, discrimination based on disability, assault and
battery, and negligence. (PAC at 3.) The corrections officer defendants (both existing and
proposed defendants) were employed at the SCJ during the period of Plaintiff’s detention. (Id. ¶
4.)
On December 20, 2011, Plaintiff was involved in an altercation with an inmate, Ernest
Almeida. Inmate Almeida is a relative of Corrections Officer (CO) Almeida. According to
Plaintiff, following the altercation, CO Almeida and CO Meunier conspired to harass Plaintiff by
awakening him every 15 minutes; other correction officers participated in harassing behavior,
which included waking Plaintiff and stripping Plaintiff of his blanket so he would be too cold to
get restful sleep; and “the defendants” seized all of Plaintiff’s legal papers and stripped Plaintiff
of all bedding and clothing. (Id. ¶¶ 22-23.)
Plaintiff also contends that Defendants subjected him to multiple daily strip and visual
body cavity searches for purposes of intimidation. (Id. ¶ 24.) In addition, after two defendants
spit in and otherwise threatened to adulterate Plaintiff’s food, Defendants refused to provide
Plaintiff his meals in a secure manner, and, as a result, Plaintiff allegedly stopped eating for more
than 30 days. (Id. ¶¶ 25-26.) Plaintiff further maintains that on December 26, 2011, when Plaintiff
refused to relinquish his blanket, “many” of the defendants participated while Plaintiff was sprayed

The facts are derived from Plaintiff’s most recent Proposed Amended Complaint (“PAC,” ECF No. 71-1), which
facts are deemed true when evaluating Defendants’ assertion that Plaintiff’s Motion to Amend fails to state a claim
against the newly proposed individual defendants. Beddall v. State St. Bank & Trust Co., 137 F.3d 12, 16 (1st Cir.
1998). The reference to the facts as alleged should not be construed as a determination that the alleged facts are
accurate.
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with a chemical agent, shocked with an electrical shield, beaten, and dragged to a suicide cell
where he was left unclothed and uncontaminated for days without bedding, without protection
from the cold air, and without his glasses and legal papers. (Id. ¶ 27.)
Plaintiff asserts that as the result of the abuse, which aggravated preexisting spinal injuries,
Plaintiff became disabled and unable to walk. Nevertheless, Defendants required him to walk in
order to meet with counsel or use the phone. (Id. ¶¶ 28, 31.) Plaintiff alleges that daily, corrections
officers would enter Plaintiff’s cell dressed in helmets and protective clothing that obscured their
identities and instructed Plaintiff to stand and walk. If he did not do as instructed, the officers
allegedly would prod him with electrical shocks, and eventually drag Plaintiff from the cell. This
treatment continued for more than a month. (Id. ¶¶ 29, 31, 32.)
In his pleadings, Plaintiff maintains that Defendants gratuitously inflicted pain on Plaintiff
by placing him in a restraint chair and forcing his head down toward his knees, knowing from
Plaintiff’s complaints that this caused him severe back pain; placed Plaintiff in cold showers and
denied him a towel, bedding, or clothing so that he shivered in his cell; routinely stepped on
Plaintiff’s bare feet and yelled at him to walk; clothed Plaintiff only in a “turtle suit,” which
exposed his privates to female jail staff; refused Plaintiff’s requests for hydration and did not
inform the Court or counsel of the “ongoing dilemma” to avoid revealing the abuse; refused to
provide Plaintiff with his glasses or any newspapers throughout his confinement; and conducted
disciplinary hearings without Plaintiff present and assessed monetary fines of over $500, which
funds they took from Plaintiff’s account. (Id. ¶¶ 34, 35, 37, 45, 48, 50.)
In Plaintiff’s original complaint, filed July 1, 2013, Plaintiff named most, but not all, of the
corrections officers whom he believes were involved in the deprivation of his rights.

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Subsequently, Plaintiff filed the pleadings that the Court has consolidated as Plaintiff’s Motion to
Amend.
On July 8, 2014, Plaintiff filed a motion to stay proceedings, which motion the Court
granted, but scheduled a telephonic conference for August 4 to assess whether the stay would
continue in effect. (ECF No. 78.) During the August 4 telephonic conference, Plaintiff withdrew
his request for a further stay. Plaintiff also asserted that he did not wish to pursue in this action
claims against some of the named defendants. More specifically, Plaintiff represented that he
wished to dismiss from this case his claims against the medical defendants and that he also did not
wish to proceed against proposed defendant CO Simonds. At the conclusion of the conference,
the parties agreed that the Motion to Amend is now in order for disposition.
PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO AMEND
As orally modified by Plaintiff during the August 4 telephonic conference, the complete
list of proposed new defendants, identified by last name only, is as follows: Baldinelli, Richards,
Cunningham, Mayhew, Karwarski, Soares, Morrow, Milligan, Bussell, Gillian, Carson, Smith,
Lightbody, McLaughlin, Welch, Whitney, Hapworth. The defendants are in addition to the many
corrections officers, the jail administrator, the sheriff, and the County, named as defendants in
Plaintiff’s original complaint.
DISCUSSION
Defendants argue that Plaintiff’s Proposed Amended Complaint (PAC) fails to set forth the
minimum allegations necessary to notify the proposed defendants of what the bases of Plaintiff’s
claims are and, therefore, the PAC fails to state a claim for which relief may be granted. (May 15,
2014 Objection at 2; June 4, 2014 Objection at 2-3.)

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Rule 15(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure permits a litigant to amend a pleading
“as a matter of course” subject to certain time constraints. When a party seeks to amend a
complaint more than 21 days after the filing of a responsive pleading, the other party’s consent or
leave of court is required in order to amend the complaint. Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2). In such a
case, the court is to grant leave to amend “freely” when “justice so requires.” Id. 2 Justice does
not require that leave to amend be granted when a proposed amended complaint fails to state a
claim for which relief may be granted, making the proposed amendment “futile.” Foman v. Davis,
371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962).
To determine whether Plaintiff’s PAC states a claim or is futile, the Court must “assume
the truth of all well-plead facts and give the plaintiff[] the benefit of all reasonable inferences
therefrom.” Blanco v. Bath Iron Works Corp., 802 F. Supp. 2d 215, 221 (D. Me. 2011) (quoting
Genzyme Corp. v. Fed. Ins. Co., 622 F.3d 62, 68 (1st Cir. 2010)). To demonstrate the existence
of a non-futile claim, the plaintiff must establish that his allegations raise a plausible basis for a
fact finder to conclude that the newly proposed defendants are legally responsible for the claim(s)
at issue. Id.
Civil rights claims are not subject to a heightened pleading requirement. Plaintiff need
only include in his PAC “enough detail to provide a defendant with ‘fair notice of what the ... claim
is and the grounds upon which it rests.’” Ocasio–Hernández v. Fortuño–Burset, 640 F.3d 1, 12
(1st Cir.2011) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)). Additionally,
Plaintiff’s PAC must “show” through some factual allegations that he has “a right to relief above

The standard is elevated when the motion to amend is filed after the court’s scheduling order deadline for amendment
of pleadings. See Johnson v. Spencer Press of Maine, Inc., 211 F.R.D. 27, 30 (D. Me. 2002); El–Hajj v. Fortis Benefits
Ins. Co., 156 F. Supp. 2d 27, 34 (D. Me. 2001); Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(b)(4). However, the last court-established deadline
for amendment of the pleadings was February 20, 2014 (ECF No. 48). Although that deadline has passed, Plaintiff
initially sought to amend the scheduling order on February 18, 2014, and the matter has been pending since that time.
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the speculative level on the assumption that all the allegations in the complaint are true.” Id.
Accepting as true all of Plaintiff’s factual allegations, both the existing CO defendants and the
proposed CO defendants jointly participated in a course of conduct that included, among other
things, routine infliction of a significant degree of force without provocation coupled with the
denial of humane conditions of confinement. These allegations suffice to provide fair notice to
the individual defendants of at least two claims,3 and the “grounds upon which [they] rest.” Id.
Plaintiff has also asserted facts that support “a right to relief above the speculative level on the
assumption that all the allegations in the complaint are true.” Id.
CONCLUSION
Based on the foregoing analysis, the Court grants in part and denies in part Plaintiff’s
Motion to Amend (ECF Nos. 50, 59, 68 and 71). The Court authorizes Plaintiff to proceed against
the individuals identified in the Motion to Amend except the “medical defendants” and CO
Simonds. On or before August 22, 2014, Plaintiff will file his Amended Complaint in the form of
the Proposed Amended Complaint that he filed on May 19, 2014 (ECF No. 71-1), but shall omit
from his Amended Complaint the medical defendants and CO Simonds.
So Ordered.
/s/ John C. Nivison
U.S. Magistrate Judge
Dated this 8th the day of August, 2014

Because Defendants’ opposition is premised on the notion that Plaintiff failed to state any claim whatsoever against
the proposed defendants, the Court does not address at this time the issue of whether any other claim in Plaintiff’s
PAC is stated adequately.
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