Estate of Miller, Ex Rel. Bertram v. Tobiasz

680 F.3d 984, 2012 WL 1871649, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 10465
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedMay 24, 2012
Docket11-3233
StatusPublished
Cited by71 cases

This text of 680 F.3d 984 (Estate of Miller, Ex Rel. Bertram v. Tobiasz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Estate of Miller, Ex Rel. Bertram v. Tobiasz, 680 F.3d 984, 2012 WL 1871649, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 10465 (7th Cir. 2012).

Opinions

COLEMAN, District Judge.

Jessie Miller committed suicide while incarcerated at the Columbia Correctional Institute (“CCI”). Miller’s minor siblings brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that Miller committed suicide after several staff members at CCI acted with deliberate indifference to Miller’s serious medical condition involving a long history of suicide attempts, self-harm, and mental illness. The district court granted qualified immunity to the management level defendants, the Wisconsin Resource Center (‘WRC”) defendants, and the nurse who was called after Miller had committed suicide. The remaining defendants1, including CCI staff members, Jennifer/Janel Nickel2, Ryan Tobiasz, Lieutenant Boodry, Captain M. [988]*988Johnson, Sergeant Severson, Officer Millard, Officer Herbrand, Officer Bath, and Officer Quade, seek interlocutory appeal from the district court’s denial of qualified immunity. We affirm.

I. Background

The CCI defendants are allowed to bring this interlocutory appeal now because they are raising the question of whether they should have been dismissed based on the defense of qualified immunity. See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 525-26, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985). The issue of qualified immunity is “immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to liability,” and thus we must determine its application as early in the proceedings as possible. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 200, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001) (emphasis in original). The facts below are presented in the light most favorable to Miller.

Jessie Miller had suffered from mental health issues since the age of five. Over the years, Miller engaged in various types of self-harm and attempted suicide on several occasions. His mental health issues, self-harm and suicidal ideation were well documented. During his incarceration, Miller attempted suicide at Dane County Jail on November 10, 2007, and then again at Dodge Correctional Institute on June 4, 2008. Miller was transferred to WRC due to his suicide attempts. While at WRC, Miller continued to harm himself by swallowing razor blades and other sharp objects and banging his head against the walls. At some point, he stated that he would commit suicide if returned to a Wisconsin Department of Corrections facility. Three days after being transferred to CCI on June 19, 2009, Miller committed suicide by hanging himself with a bedsheet. He was twenty-two years old.

Miller’s minor siblings filed the instant lawsuit on Miller’s behalf alleging violation of Miller’s Eighth Amendment rights based on defendants’ deliberate indifference to Miller’s serious medical condition (his mental illness and suicide risk). After obviously careful consideration in a lengthy memorandum opinion and order, the District Court granted qualified immunity dismissal to seventeen of the approximately twenty-six defendants, including the management level defendants, WRC defendants and the nurse who was called after Miller had committed suicide. The appellants are CCI staff including the intake nurse (Nickel), the psychology associate (Tobiasz), and several prison guards that were on duty the night Miller committed suicide (Bath, Boodry, Herbrand, Johnson, Millard, Quade and Severson).

II. Discussion

A complaint must be dismissed if the allegations do not state a plausible claim. See Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007); Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009). “The Court explained in Iqbal that ‘the plausibility standard is not akin to a “probability requirement,” but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.’ ” Atkins v. City of Chicago, 631 F.3d 823, 831 (7th Cir.2011) (quoting Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1949). As this Court recently explained in Atkins, “the fact that the allegations undergirding a plaintiffs claim could be true is no longer enough to save it.” Atkins, 631 F.3d at 831. Thus, after Twombly and Iqbal, a plaintiff must plead facts that suggest a right to relief beyond the speculative level. Id. at 832.

Qualified immunity protects government officials from individual liability for actions taken while performing discretionary functions, unless their conduct violates clearly established statutory or con[989]*989stitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. See Brokaw v. Mercer County, 235 F.3d 1000, 1022 (7th Cir.2000). Thus, in order to determine whether a prison official is entitled to qualified immunity the Court has two tasks. First, taking the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, we must determine whether a constitutional right was violated. Second, if the factual allegations demonstrate a constitutional violation, we then decide whether the right in question was clearly established at the time of the occurrence. Cavalieri v. Shepard, 321 F.3d 616, 620 (7th Cir.2003) (citing Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 200, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001)). We review these issues de novo. Jacobs v. City of Chicago, 215 F.3d 758, 765 (7th Cir.2000).

We therefore begin by examining whether the plaintiffs have alleged facts sufficient to plausibly support the claim that the CCI defendants’ conduct violated Miller’s constitutional rights. The same standard applies for pretrial detainees and incarcerated individuals, though pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment rather than the Eighth Amendment. See Payne v. Churchich, 161 F.3d 1030, 1039-41 (7th Cir.1998). The seminal case describing constitutional violations under the Eighth Amendment is Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 832, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). In Farmer, the Supreme Court held that prison officials have a duty to “ensure that inmates receive adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.” Id. To determine whether an inmate’s Eighth Amendment rights were violated by a deprivation, we examine the alleged violation both objectively and subjectively. “First, the deprivation alleged must be objectively, sufficiently serious.” Sanville v. McCaughtry, 266 F.3d 724, 733 (7th Cir.2001) (quoting Farmer, 511 U.S. at 832, 114 S.Ct. 1970). “Second, the mental state of the prison official must have been ‘one of deliberate indifference to inmate health or safety.’ ” Id.

In order to satisfy the first element, when a claim is based upon the failure to prevent harm, the plaintiff must show that the inmate was “incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm.” Id.

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Bluebook (online)
680 F.3d 984, 2012 WL 1871649, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 10465, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/estate-of-miller-ex-rel-bertram-v-tobiasz-ca7-2012.