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Employment Issues

     Does a doctor who treats prisoners have a legal duty to warn corrections officers that an inmate has a communicable disease? One female correctional officer assigned to strip search female prisoners before and after they received visitors claimed that she contracted a methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection because approximately twelve of the prisoners were infected. She sued the private company that provided medical services to the prisoners, claiming that its staff members knew which prisoners were infected and should have informed her so that she could take precautions. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that the defendant was not liable to the officer, finding that the trial court had properly declined to impose new affirmative duties to a third party on medical personnel in their professional relationship to prisoners. Seebold v. Prison Health Services, #9-MAP-2011,.2012 Pa. Lexis 3011.

     Editor's Note: See, Avoiding Liability for Antibiotic Resistant Infections in Prisoners, 2011 (3) AELE Mo. L. J. 301.

 Defenses: Statute of Limitations

     A trial court dismissed a prisoner's lawsuit for deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs as untimely because there was evidence that he had been aware of the misdiagnosis of his condition more than two years before suing. A federal appeals court ruled the prisoner's claim that he wwas physically incapacitated for a time period that prevented him from filing suit within the two year statute of limitations was at a minimum plausible, so that the trial court should not have rejected it at any early stage in the lawsuit. Richards v. Mitcheff, #11-3227, 696 F.3d 635 (7th Cir. 2012).

Inmate Funds

     A prisoner failed to establish that charging him a $2 co-payment for needed dental work violated his Eighth Amendment rights. At the time of the treatment, he had more than $2 in his prisoner fund account. It does not violate a prisoner's rights to charge them even a modest co-payment for needed dental or other medical services when they have the resources to pay it. Poole v. Isaacs, #11-2903, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 26544 (7th Cir.).

Medical Care: Dental

     A prisoner complained that he had cavities and bleeding gums, and sought treatment from a prison dentist. Because of understaffing and other resource shortages at the facility, the waiting time for dental treatment, except for the most severe emergencies was often up to twelve months. The prisoner claimed that a dentist acted with deliberate indifference to his dental needs. Upholding a jury verdict for the defendant dentist, a federal appeals court held that the jury had properly been instructed that the dentist could not be held personally liable for failing to provide services which he could not provide because the necessary personnel, financial, and other resources needed were not available and could not be reasonably obtained. Peralta v. Dillard, #09-55907, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 389 (9th Cir.).

Prison Litigation Reform Act: Three Strikes Rule

     A prisoner's federal civil rights lawsuit against correctional officials was dismissed on a motion for summary judgment. He sought to proceed as a pauper on appeal, and argued that he was not barred from doing so under the "three strikes" rule of the Prison Litigation Reform Act because the dismissals occurred at the summary judgment stage. The appeals court rejected this, stating that the issue, for the "three strikes" rule was whether there were three or more prior dismissals of a case as frivolous, malicious, or failing to state a claim, not what the procedural stage of the case was when the case was dismissed. As he had more than three prior dismissals that expressly stated they were because his lawsuits were frivolous, malicious, or failed to state a claim, the "three strikes" rule applied. Blakely v. Wards, #11-6945, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 25564 (4th Cir.).

Prisoner Death/Injury

     A doctor had no liability for the death of a pretrial detainee at the county jail from a massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage when he had no knowledge of the detainee's medical problems before he died. A nurse had moved the detainee to medical solitary after he vomited blood, but believed that his condition could be handled by the use of the standing medication orders without hospitalizing him. Since there was nothing in the record to indicate past incidents in which detainees were harmed by improper nursing assessments or treatment based on the jail's standing orders, there was no proof of deliberate indifference by the county. Brown v. Bolin, #11-10511, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 25433 (5th Cir.).

Prisoner Discipline

     A prisoner transported to a county detention center for a court hearing raped another prisoner there. When correctional officials learned of the pending criminal rape charges stemming from the incident, they also initiated disciplinary charges. A disciplinary officer concluded that the prisoner was guilty of disciplinary infractions involving rape and threats to other prisoners and imposed a loss of 69 days earned good time, as well as sending him to disciplinary segregation for 455 days. The prisoner was subsequently convicted of criminal charges. He challenged the disciplinary determination, arguing that his due process rights had been violated by denying him the right to call witnesses or elicit written testimony at the hearing. The New Mexico Supreme Court reversed a trial court ruling overturning the discipline. "In focusing on Petitioner's procedural due process rights, the district court appears to have lost sight of the reason for such a hearing. The court failed to appreciate the significance of the intervening criminal convictions - not to whether due process was violated - but, pivotally, to what remedy was appropriate under the circumstances." Perry v. Moya, #32,938, 2012-NMSC-040, 289 P.3d 1247, 2012 N.M. Lexis 415.

Private Prisons and Entities

     An Alaska prisoner was sent to a private prison in Arizona run by the defendant corporation. He sued the company, claiming that it violated various terms of its contract with the state of Alaska as well as various Alaska state correctional policies. He sought damages as a third party beneficiary to the contract between the state of Alaska and the company, and also argued that he should be able to collect damages against the company because he was a member of a class of prisoners who had previously won a settlement against the state of Alaska concerning various inmate grievances. He contended that some of the conditions he faced at the defendant's out of state private prison violated the terms of that settlement. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the prior class action settlement agreement had not intended that prisoners be able to receive money damages awards to enforce its provisions. The defendant was entitled to summary judgment. Perotti v. Corrections Corporation of America, #S-13936, 2012 Alas. Lexis 167.

Religion

     It was against a Rastafarian prisoner's religious beliefs to comb or cut his hair, which he wore in dreadlocks. When he learned that his mother had cancer, he asked for a transfer to another facility closer to her, which was granted. When he was to be transported to his new facility, an officer allegedly refused to permit him to board the transport vehicle when he declined to comply with a state correctional policy requiring him to comb out his dreadlocks. The officer's supervisor then presented the plaintiff with a choice of either cutting his hair or not going through with the approved transfer. The prisoner offered instead to let the officers pat down his hair and use a metal detector to make sure that no contraband was hidden there. The transfer was canceled and the prisoner placed in administrative segregation. He was later transferred, after he cut his hair. A federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of his lawsuit, finding no violation of his right to religious freedom, despite his argument that he was improperly forced to choose between violating his religious beliefs and going to a prison closer to his ill mother. The officers were entitled to qualified immunity, as it was not clearly established that enforcement of the policy that hair be cut or combed out violated the prisoner's rights. Stewart v. Beach, #12-3013, 2012 U.S. App. Lexis 25846 (10th Cir.).

Youthful Prisoners

****Editor's Case Alert****

     A federal court has approved an almost $18 million settlement to approximately 1,600 teenagers and their parents who claimed that the young people were wrongfully incarcerated at two for-profit youth detention centers by two county judges who were accused of taking over $2 million in payments from the real estate developer who built the facilities. Over 4,000 juvenile convictions issued by one of the judgers were thrown out based on evidence that he frequently tried juveniles without lawyers and routinely sent many to the juvenile facilities for months for the most petty of offenses. The two judges are accused of receiving money from the developer and extorting funds from the facilities' co-owner. Around $4.3 million in attorneys' fees is to be paid, with most of the juveniles receiving between $500 and $5,000. Dawn v. Ciavarella, #3:10-cv-00797, U.S. Dist. Court (M.D. Pa.), reported in The Times Herald, Norristown, Pa. (January 10, 2013).

•Return to the Contents menu.

     Federal Prisons: "The Growth & Increasing Cost of the Federal Prison System: Drivers and Potential Solutions," by Nancy La Vigne and Julie Samuels (Public Welfare Foundation, Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center, December 2012).

     Immigration Detainees: "Civil Immigration Enforcement: Guidance on the Use of Detainers in the Federal, State, Local, and Tribal Criminal Justice Systems," U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Memorandum (December 31, 2012).

     Media Access to Prisons: "The Battle to Open Prisons to Journalists," by Jessica Pupovac (The Crime Report, January 3, 2013).

     State Jails: "Putting 'Corrections' Back in State Jails: How to Reform Texas' Expensive, Ineffective State Jail System," by Jeanette Moll (Texas Public Policy Foundation December 3, 2012).

     Statistics: "Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000-2010 - Statistical Tables," by Margaret E. Noonan (December 13, 2012 NCJ 239911).

Reference:

     • Abbreviations of Law Reports, laws and agencies used in our publications.

     • AELE's list of recently-noted jail and prisoner law resources.