Moore v. Dunlap

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: January 23, 2026
• Docket: 24-2704
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS JAN 23 2026 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

KEVIN MOE MOORE, No. 24-2704 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellant, 5:21-cv-01019-EJD v. MEMORANDUM* JONNA DUNLAP; ALICIA NIX; Lt. GOMEZ,

Defendants - Appellees,

and

SALINAS VALLEY STATE PRISON,

Defendant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Edward J. Davila, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted January 8, 2026 San Francisco, California

Before: NGUYEN and BENNETT, Circuit Judges, and MATSUMOTO, District Judge.**

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Kiyo A. Matsumoto, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation. Kevin Moore (“Moore”) appeals the district court’s order granting summary

judgment in favor of three Salinas Valley State Prison (“SVSP”) officials for his 42

U.S.C. § 1983 claim of Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference arising from his

July 2020 suicide attempt.1

We review a grant of summary judgment by the district court de novo. See

Pinard v. Clatskanie School Dist. 6J, 467 F.3d 755, 763 (9th Cir. 2006). We must

determine “whether, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the

nonmoving party, there are any genuine issues of material fact and whether the

district court correctly applied the relevant substantive law.” Lopez v. Smith, 203

F.3d 1122, 1131 (9th Cir. 2000) (en banc) overruled, in part on other

grounds by, Peralta v. Dillard, 744 F.3d 1076 (9th Cir. 2014). “An issue of material

fact is genuine ‘if there is sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to return a verdict

for the non-moving party.’” Thomas v. Ponder, 611 F.3d 1144, 1150 (9th Cir. 2010)

(quoting Long v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 442 F.3d 1178, 1185 (9th Cir. 2006)).

The district court found that Moore had not established a triable issue of

material fact as to his deliberate indifference claim. We agree. Moore’s treatment

by prison officials may have been, at worst, negligent but did not rise to the Eighth

Amendment’s demanding standard for deliberate indifference. To establish an

1 The Clerk of Court is respectfully directed to correct the spelling of Defendant- Appellant Dunlap’s last name in the case caption from “Donlap” to Dunlap.

2 24-2704 Eighth Amendment violation based on prison medical treatment, an inmate “must

satisfy both the objective and subjective components of a two-part test.” Hallett v.

Morgan, 296 F.3d 732, 744 (9th Cir. 2002).

First, an inmate must show an objective “serious medical need” by

demonstrating that “failure to treat a prisoner’s condition could result in further

significant injury or the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain.” McGuckin v.

Smith, 974 F.2d 1050, 1059 (9th Cir. 1992) (internal quotations omitted)

(quoting Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976)), overruled in part on other

grounds by WMX Techs., Inc. v. Miller, 104 F.3d 1133 (9th Cir. 1997) (en banc). “A

heightened suicide risk or an attempted suicide is a serious medical need” and

satisfies this first prong. Conn v. City of Reno, 572 F.3d 1047, 1056 (9th Cir. 2009),

as amended, 591 F.3d 1081 (9th Cir. 2010), cert. granted, judgment vacated sub

nom. City of Reno, Nev. v. Conn, 563 U.S. 915 (2011), opinion reinstated in part,

658 F.3d 897 (9th Cir. 2011).

Second, an inmate must show prison officials’ response to the serious medical

need was subjectively deliberately indifferent. Id. at 1060. The second prong can

be “manifested by prison doctors in their response to the prisoner’s needs or by

prison guards in intentionally denying or delaying access to medical care or

intentionally interfering with the treatment once prescribed.” Estelle, 429 U.S. at

104–05 (footnotes omitted). Yet, an “inadvertent [or negligent] failure to provide

3 24-2704 adequate medical care” alone does not state a claim under the Eighth Amendment.

Id. at 105–06. “Even gross negligence is insufficient to establish deliberate

indifference.” Lemire v. Cal. Dep’t of Corr. & Rehab., 726 F.3d 1062, 1082 (9th

Cir. 2013). Moore points to his two prior suicide attempts as a teenager, purported

errors and contradictions in a suicide risk evaluation report, and statements Moore

made to prison officials to argue that a genuine issue of material fact exists as to

whether prison officials were deliberately indifferent to Moore’s suicidality.

However, even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Moore, he has

not established that prison officials had advance knowledge of suicide plans, rather

than suicidal ideation. Moreover, to the extent that prison officials interviewed

Moore and conducted a risk assessment, but failed to ascertain Moore’s suicide

plans, Moore has not presented evidence suggesting that such failure was a product

of deliberate indifference rather than perhaps negligence.

In sum, the district court properly granted SVSP prison officials summary

judgment because Moore failed to establish a triable issue of material fact for his

Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference claim.

AFFIRMED.

4 24-2704