Martineau v. Favaro et al

Filing 38

DECISION AND ORDER: ORDERED, that the Report-Recommendation (Dkt. No. 36 ) is APPROVED and ADOPTED except for the description of the medical indifference standard under the Fourteenth Amendment. ORDERED, that Defendants' Motion for Summa ry Judgment (Dkt. No. 28 ) is GRANTED as to Plaintiff's Fourteenth Amendment medical indifference claim against Kinter and DENIED as to Plaintiff's Fourteenth Amendment excessive force claim against Newell and Baker. ORDERED, that the Clerk terminate Defendant Kinter from this action. Signed by Senior Judge Lawrence E. Kahn on 11/12/19. {order served via regular mail on plaintiff}(nas)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
SHANE MARTINEAU,
Plaintiff,
-against-

9:17-CV-0983 (LEK/ML)

DARREL NEWELL, et al.,
Defendants.

DECISION AND ORDER
I.

INTRODUCTION
Pro se plaintiff Shane Martineau brings this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that

defendants Correction Officer Darrel Newell, Correction Officer Doug Baker, and Nurse
Administrator Sue Kinter violated Plaintiff’s civil rights while he was incarcerated at Clinton
County Jail. Dkt. No. 1 (“Complaint”). After this Court reviewed the Complaint’s sufficiency
under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e)(2)(B) and 1915A, Dkt. No. 5 (“October 2017 Order”), and the
parties exchanged discovery, Defendants moved for summary judgment under Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 56. Dkt. No. 28 (“SJ Motion”). Plaintiff filed a response in opposition. Dkt. No.
32 (“Response”).
The Honorable Miroslav Lovric, United States Magistrate Judge, has reviewed these
filings and recommends that the Court: (1) deny Defendants’ SJ Motion as to Plaintiff’s
Fourteenth Amendment excessive force claim against Newell and Baker; and (2) grant
Defendants’ SJ Motion as to Plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment medical indifference claim
against Kinter. Dkt. No. 36 (“Report-Recommendation”). Neither party has filed objections to
Judge Lovric’s Report-Recommendation. See generally Docket. The Court now adopts the
Report-Recommendation with a minor emendation.

II.

STANDARD OF REVIEW
Within fourteen days after a party has been served with a copy of a magistrate judge’s

report-recommendation, the party “may serve and file specific, written objections to the proposed
findings and recommendations.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b); L.R. 72.1(c). If objections are timely
filed, a court “shall make a de novo determination of those portions of the report or specified
proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made.” 28 U.S.C. § 636(b).
However, if no objections are made, or if an objection is general, conclusory, perfunctory, or a
mere reiteration of an argument made to the magistrate judge, a district court need review that
aspect of a report-recommendation only for clear error. Barnes v. Prack, No. 11-CV-857, 2013
WL 1121353, at *1 (N.D.N.Y. Mar. 18, 2013); Farid v. Bouey, 554 F. Supp. 2d 301, 306–07
(N.D.N.Y. 2008), abrogated on other grounds by Widomski v. State Univ. of N.Y. at Orange,
748 F.3d 471 (2d Cir. 2014); see also Machicote v. Ercole, No. 06-CV-13320, 2011 WL
3809920, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 25, 2011) (“[E]ven a pro se party’s objections to a Report and
Recommendation must be specific and clearly aimed at particular findings in the magistrate’s
proposal . . . .”). “A [district] judge . . . may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the
findings or recommendations made by the magistrate judge.” § 636(b).
III.

DISCUSSION
Neither party filed objections to the Report-Recommendation. See generally Docket.

Accordingly, the Court has reviewed the Report-Recommendation for clear error, and it finds
none. Therefore, the Court adopts the Report-Recommendation with the following alteration.
In laying out the two-prong test governing medical indifference claims, Judge Lovric
correctly stated that “[p]retrial detainees ‘receive protection against mistreatment at the hands of
prison officials under . . . the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment’ rather than
under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment.” R. & R. at 16
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(quoting Darnell v. Pineiro, 849 F.3d 17, 29 (2d Cir. 2017)). Despite this, when Judge Lovric
addressed what mental state a plaintiff must show to successfully state a medical indifference
claim, he described the Eighth Amendment standard rather than the Fourteenth Amendment
standard. R. & R. at 17 (quoting the old requirement in Salahuddin v. Goord, 467 F.3d 263 (2d
Cir. 2006) that “the charged official act or fail to act while actually aware of a substantial risk
that serious inmate harm will result,” rather than the new requirement from Darnell that
“‘deliberate indifference’ . . . can be defined subjectively (what a person actually knew, and
disregarded), or objectively (what a reasonable person knew, or should have known)”).
However, because Judge Lovric found that Plaintiff had failed to establish a genuinely
disputed issue of material fact on both prongs of the medical indifference analysis, R. & R. at 17,
and the Court finds no clear error in this conclusion, the minor misstatement of the applicable
law does not change the result of this case. See Valdiviezo v. Boyer, 752 F. App’x 29, 32 (2d
Cir. 2018) (summary order) (“Although the district court analyzed the delay claim under the
wrong amendment, its dismissal of the claim was nonetheless correct. For Fourteenth
Amendment claims, this Court applies the same standard as the Eighth Amendment to determine
whether an alleged action is objectively serious enough to be a constitutional violation.”);
Howard v. Brown, No. 15-CV-9930, 2018 WL 3611986, at *4 (S.D.N.Y. July 26, 2018)
(“Howard’s claims fail under the objective prong under either [the Eighth or Fourteenth]
amendment, so there is no need to analyze the deliberate-indifference prong.”). Therefore, the
Court adopts the Report-Recommendation’s conclusion that Plaintiff’s medical indifference
claim cannot survive summary judgment.
IV.

CONCLUSION
Accordingly, it is hereby:

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ORDERED, that the Report-Recommendation (Dkt. No. 36) is APPROVED and
ADOPTED except for the description of the medical indifference standard under the Fourteenth
Amendment; and it is further
ORDERED, that Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. No. 28) is
GRANTED as to Plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment medical indifference claim against Kinter
and DENIED as to Plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment excessive force claim against Newell and
Baker; and it is further
ORDERED, that the Clerk terminate Defendant Kinter from this action; and it is further
ORDERED, that the Clerk serve a copy of this Decision and Order on all parties in
accordance with the Local Rules.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

DATED:

November 12, 2019
Albany, New York
LAWRENCE E. KAHN
United States District Judge

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