Sernas v. Cantrell

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
• Decided: November 26, 2024
• Docket: 23-1379
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS NOV 26 2024 MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ADAM BERNARD SERNAS, No. 23-1379 D.C. No. Plaintiff - Appellant, 2:19-cv-00730-DJH-ESW v. MEMORANDUM* UNKNOWN CANTRELL, Deputy Warden; UNKNOWN COLLARS, CO 4 at ASPC Lewis/Barchey Unit,

Defendants - Appellees,

and

UNKNOWN GALVAN, Assistant Deputy Warden, UNKNOWN PALMER, SSU, UNKNOWN BAKER, Captain, UNKNOWN GONZALEZ, Shift Sgt. at ASPC Lewis/Barchey Unit, UNKNOWN JIMENEZ, Sgt., UNKNOWN WILLIS, CO 3,

Defendants.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Diane J. Humetewa, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 5, 2024

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. Phoenix, Arizona

Before: HAWKINS, TASHIMA, and OWENS, Circuit Judges.

Adam Sernas appeals from the district court’s grant of summary judgment to

Defendants, Arizona State Prison Complex officials, in his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action

alleging that Defendants violated his Eighth Amendment rights by failing to

protect him from violence by other inmates. We review the district court’s order

granting summary judgment de novo. Desire, LLC v. Manna Textiles, Inc., 986

F.3d 1253, 1259 (9th Cir. 2021). “Summary judgment is only appropriate if there

is no genuine dispute of material fact, after viewing the evidence in the light most

favorable to the nonmoving party.” Weber v. Allergan, Inc., 940 F.3d 1106, 1110

(9th Cir. 2019). As the parties are familiar with the facts, we do not recount them

here. We reverse and remand.

The district court erred in granting summary judgment to Defendants based

on Sernas’s purported failure to show a genuine dispute of material fact concerning

whether Defendants’ alleged deliberate indifference proximately caused Sernas’s

injuries. See Clem v. Lomeli, 566 F.3d 1177, 1181 (9th Cir. 2009) (listing the

elements of a Section 1983 claim for failure to protect under the Eighth

Amendment). The district court reasoned that the evidence was insufficient to

identify “which prisoners threatened [Sernas]” and “which prisoner or prisoners

assaulted [Sernas]” or “why they did so,” which precluded “show[ing] a causal

2 23-1379 relationship between the two.” The court thus held that Sernas’s claim “fail[ed] as

a matter of law.”

However, while in the “Refuse to House” unit (“RTH”), Sernas repeatedly

placed Defendants on notice of the type of harm he feared (death or grievous

injury), the underlying context (that he was asked to hold drugs, and his life was

threatened), the anticipated source and site of the harm (other inmates in the

Barchey general population), and the specific action that would precipitate the

harm (return to Barchey). When Defendants forced Sernas to leave RTH, he was

attacked by other inmates at Barchey almost immediately, “suffer[ing] precisely

the type of harm” he gave Defendants reason to foresee. Lemire v. Cal. Dep’t of

Corrs. & Rehab., 726 F.3d 1062, 1080 (9th Cir. 2013).

That Sernas was unable to identify the inmates who attacked him or the

inmates who threatened him does not defeat proximate cause. A prison official

may not “escape liability” merely “by showing that, while he was aware of an

obvious, substantial risk to inmate safety, he did not know that the complainant

was especially likely to be assaulted by the specific prisoner who eventually

committed the assault.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 843 (1994); see also

Berg v. Kincheloe, 794 F.2d 457, 458, 460-62 (9th Cir. 1986) (reversing in part a

district court’s grant of summary judgment to a prison official, where the official

ignored an inmate’s claim that his “life w[as] in danger” and the inmate was later

3 23-1379 assaulted, even though the inmate “refused to identify” his assailant). And in any

case, considering the timing and location of the assault and the testimony of

Sernas’s expert that inmate hierarchies make such assaults “not usually random,” a

reasonable jury could find it more likely than not that the threat and attack bore

some relation such that Defendants should have foreseen that Sernas would be

injured based on his reports of the threat.

Moreover, where, as here, Defendants’ failure to investigate the threat

against Sernas arguably contributed to the lack of information about the identities

of the inmates involved, Sernas’s injuries are not “so attenuated” from Defendants’

alleged deliberate indifference that they are “more aptly described as a mere

fortuity.” Hernandez v. Skinner, 969 F.3d 930, 942 (9th Cir. 2020) (quoting

Paroline v. United States, 572 U.S. 434, 445 (2014)).

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

4 23-1379