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 Attorneys' Fees

     A prisoner was awarded $1,500 in compensatory and punitive damages against a prison employee in a lawsuit over alleged interference with his needed dental treatment. After the prisoner successfully defended the judgment on appeal, he moved for an award of $16,800 in attorneys' fees. The employee claimed that he only should have to pay, at most, attorneys' fees of up to 150% of the amount of damages awarded (or $2,250), because of a cap on attorneys' fees in the Prison Litigation Reform Act. A federal appeals court rejected this argument, holding that the cap only applies to fees awarded for obtaining the award in the trial court and did not limit the amount of fees that could be awarded after successfully defending such a judgment on appeal. Further proceedings will determine the exact amount of fees to be awarded, but the cap will not apply to the fees for work done on the appeal. Woods v. Carey, #09-16113, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 14430 (9th Cir.).

False Imprisonment

     Four former Iowa prisoners sued the state director of the Department of Corrections, seeking damages from him in his individual capacity for violating their federal civil rights by failing to take action to prevent them from being detained beyond their release dates. He was entitled to qualified immunity on that claim. While a state Supreme Court decision concerning prisoner release dates imposed a duty on him to investigate and recalculate affected inmate release dates, that decision did not impose a clear deadline for the amount of time he had to recalculate thousands of release dates, including those of the plaintiffs. Accordingly, he was not fairly warned that the failure to complete those calculations within a specific period of time could violate the plaintiffs' Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment rights. Scott v. Baldwin, #12-3350, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 16194 (9th Cir.).

Medical Care

     A former detainee sued a county after its jail allegedly failed to provide him with his prescribed and necessary anti-seizure medication when he was incarcerated there. A federal appeals court upheld summary judgment for the county since the plaintiff presented absolutely no evidence that county policymaking officials would have been informed of the denial of his medication on the morning in question and made a deliberate choice to either ignore it or tacitly authorize the denial in the next few hours. There also was no evidence of a widespread persistent continuing pattern of unconstitutional misconduct by the county's employees. Johnson, Jr. v. County of Douglas, #13-1134, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 15938 (8th Cir.).

Medical Care: Mental Health

     The Federal Bureau of Prisons was properly authorized to medicate a mentally ill prisoner without his consent. The evidence showed that he was mentally ill, that he posed a danger to himself or others, and that the treatment was in his medical interest. The determination was supported by the record of his past disciplinary conduct record. He threatened harm, attempted to bite or hit officers, repeatedly threw liquids in officers' faces, and engage in both actual and attempted stabbings. Testifying psychiatrists and psychologists showed a consensus that the prescribed antipsychotic medication was the proper treatment for his condition. U.S. v. Hardy, #12-2951, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 15942 (2nd Cir.).

Prison and Jail Conditions: General

    A $4.1 million settlement has been reached in a claim by a 25-year-old college student who was apparently abandoned in a windowless Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) cell for almost five days with no food or water. During those days, the plaintiff claimed, he drank his own urine, attempted to carve a farewell message to his mother in his arm with a shard of broken glass, and had hallucinations that made him believe that DEA agents were sending gases through vents to try to poison him. When finally discovered, he was suffering from severe dehydration, kidney failure, 15 pounds of weight loss, a lung punctured by swallowed glass, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Following the incident, the DEA adopted new national detention standards mandating daily inspections of cells and in cell cameras. Chong v. United States, demand notice sent to DEA, claim settled July 30, 2013.

     Editor's Note: A discussion of the case appears online in a Wikipedia article.

Prisoner Assault: By Inmate

     A trial court improperly granted summary judgment to a prison guard in a pretrial detainee's lawsuit for failing to protect him from being stabbed by another inmate. The plaintiff stated that the guard let inmates who were supposed to be in their cells locked up out and let them congregate in a darkened corridor after which she left her post, so that over 20 maximum security prisoners were milling around without supervision. If true, this could give rise to an inference of a conscious disregard of a significant risk of violence. Counsel should have been appointed for the prisoner because the case, while not complex, required evidence that the plaintiff had no access to, such as the need to depose the guard, after the prisoner was transferred 300 miles away. The prisoner should have also been allowed to testify as to having overheard other pisoners in the dayroom ask the guard to let others out of their cells to join them in the dayroom. Junior v. Anderson, #11-2999, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 15573 (7th Cir.).

     A correctional officer was not entitled to summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity for failing to protect a detainee at a county jail against being attacked by three prisoners. There was evidence that the detainee's cellmate had told the officer that the detainee was in danger and that the officer had promised to "talk to the lieutenant and see what can be done." From this evidence, a reasonable jury could find that the officer perceived that there was a serious risk to the detainee's safety. If that was true and the officer then failed to discuss the matter with the lieutenant, that could be found to constitute deliberate indifference. The lieutenant, however, was entitled to qualified immunity, as there was no evidence that he knew anything about a risk of harm to the detainee. Glaze v. Andrews, #12-2022, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 14625 (8th Cir.).

Prisoner Restraint

     Both medical professionals and other defendants were entitled to summeay judgment on a sexually violent civil detainee's claim that they acted with deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs by requiring that he wear leg irons every time he was transported out of the facility, when his legs were swollen and possibly cancerous. There was no medical evidence, other than the detainee's own personal opinion, that there was a medical need to exempt him from the routine use of metal leg shackles. The non-medical defendants were reasonable in relying on the medical professionals' opinion that there was no reason not to use the shackles on the detainee. The detainee showed that his legs became swollen when he walked four blocks, but failed to show evidence of any other resulting injury. McGee v. Adams, #11-2666, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 16039 (7th Cir.).

Prisoner Suicide

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

     The claim that all floor officers were absent in the building near the prisoner's cell prior to his suicide due to a staff meeting that resulted in the absence of supervision for three hours presented a triable issue of fact as to whether certain defendant acted with deliberate indifference to inmate safety and created a substantial risk of serious harm. Two officers were improperly granted summary judgment because there were disputed issues of fact as to whether they failed to adequately respond to his suicide by administering CPR. Lemire v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, #11-15475, 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 16317 (9th Cir.).

Religion

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

     Prohibiting male Native American inmates from wearing their hair unshorn, as mandated by their religion, did not violate their rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq. Correctional officials met their burden of showing that the hair-length policy amounted to the least restrictive means available of furthering compelling governmental interest such as facilitating inmate identification, preventing the introduction of contraband, encouraging prison discipline through uniformity, promoting good health and hygiene, and safeguarding public safety in the event of escapes during which inmates with long hair could quickly alter their appearances to prevent recapture. Knight v. Thompson, #12-11926, , 2013 U.S. App. Lexis 15247 (11th Cir.).

•Return to the Contents menu.

     Elderly Prisoners: "Aging prisoners' costs put systems nationwide in a bind," by Kevin Johnson and H. Darr Beiser, U.S.A. Today, July 11, 2013.

     Military Detainees: "Another Glance at Vance: Examining the Seventh Circuit's About-Face on Bivens Immunity and the Military," by Eric Michel, 8 Seventh Circuit Rev. 299 (2013).

Reference:

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

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