Stoudemire v. Michigan Department of Corrections

614 F. App'x 798
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedMay 22, 2015
Docket14-1742
StatusUnpublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 614 F. App'x 798 (Stoudemire v. Michigan Department of Corrections) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Stoudemire v. Michigan Department of Corrections, 614 F. App'x 798 (6th Cir. 2015).

Opinion

SUHRHEINRICH, Circuit Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

This is the second interlocutory appeal by Defendant Susan Davis (“Davis”), Warden of the Huron Valley Women’s Facility, of the district court’s denial of her request for qualified immunity from Eighth Amendment liability. Davis and other prison officials were sued by Plaintiff Martinique Stoudemire (“Stoudemire”), a former inmate at the Huron Valley Women’s Facility and a double amputee, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 42 U.S.C. § 12132, and Mich. Comp. Laws § 330.1722, for violating, inter alia, Stoudemire’s Eighth Amendment rights. As relevant here, Stoudemire claims that, after her final amputation in December 2005, she was *799 housed for approximately two weeks in a segregation cell that lacked accommodations for disabled persons, and that Davis was responsible for choosing the cell. Stoudemire alleges that Davis acted with deliberate indifference to her serious medical condition by placing her there.

On remand, the district court conducted that analysis and held that Davis was not entitled to qualified immunity. Davis appeals again.

II. BACKGROUND

This appeal turns on the following facts, summarized in our prior decision:

A. Stoudemire’s Medical History
When twenty-three-year-old Martinique Stoudemire entered the MDOC [Michigan Department of Corrections] system in July 2002, she came with a long and well-documented history of health problems. Stoudemire suffered from systemic lupus erythematosus, a chronic and painful autoimmune disease; hypereoagulapathy, a related disorder characterized by a tendency to develop blood clots; and depression. Without proper care, Stoudemire bore a significant risk of experiencing kidney and liver damage, heart attacks, amputations, and chronic pain.
Stoudemire’s health quickly deteriorated. During her five years at Huron, she experienced a heart attack, liver failure, and a number of life-threatening embolisms. She underwent three amputations, eventually losing both legs below the knee. By the time of her parole in August of 2007, she also suffered from chronic depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a number of conditions related to medications she had received during her incarceration. Stoudemire attributes her health complications to the alleged failure of MDOC staff members and associated doctors and nurses to provide her with adequate health care while she was incarcerated. For the purposes of this appeal, however, we focus on the events following Stoudemire’s final amputation in December 2006, when her stump and buttock became infected with Methicil-lin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureusaie (“MRSA”) and she was quarantined in Huron’s segregation unit.
B. Stoudemire’s Placement in Huron’s Segregation Unit
According to an April 14, 2005, Memorandum from Richard D. Russell, Administrator of the MDOC Health Care Bureau, “all prisoners with a documented culture positive for MRSA must be quarantined.” The policy provides that responsible staff members must notify the warden of the particular facility of a confirmed MRSA case in order to initiate the quarantine process. If health care staff determine that medical quarantine is necessary, the warden is responsible for isolating the infected inmates. The warden has the discretion to choose a quarantine location within the prison and may also opt to send infected inmates to another site. Davis designated Huron’s segregation unit, which prisoners and guards call “the hole,” as a quarantine location. The segregation unit is normally used for isolating prisoners who have violated prison rules.
Stoudemire spent roughly two weeks in quarantine as a consequence of her MRSA infection. At her deposition, Davis testified that she “was probably aware at the time” that Stoudemire had been placed in segregation for medical purposes but that she “[didn’t] recall specifically.”
*800 Stoudemire alleges that she received extremely poor medical care while in segregation. The segregation cells were not equipped to accommodate disabled patients. Stoudemire was never provided with any assistive devices that might have allowed her to safely move between her bed, wheelchair, toilet, and shower. There was no call button, so Stoudemire had to shout when she needed assistance. She alleges that the medical staff treated her with contempt. They accused her of malingering and responded with hostility whenever she sought assistance. As a result, Stoudemire was left to care for herself. She was forced to crawl from her bed to the toilet. On one occasion, she had to urinate into a bowl. On another occasion, she defecated on herself. The staff neglected Stoude-mire’s hygiene. She received only one shower during her two weeks in segregation and was required to dress her wounds herself, which put her at risk of infection.
According to one of Plaintiffs experts, Stoudemire received “very little medical rounding” while she was in the segregation unit, which was “a terrible place to put an amputee.” Davis testified that, in cases where a physically handicapped prisoner was placed in a segregation cell, she “would check the logbook to make sure that medical professionals had been through at least daily to see the prisoner for however often the prisoner’s particular need was.” Davis also testified that she would “check to make sure that my deputy warden or [an assistant deputy warden] had been through ... [and] personally observed that prisoner to make sure that, you know, they weren’t hanging themselves in the cell or what have you.”

Stoudemire v. Mich. Dep’t of Corrs., 705 F.3d 560, 565-66 (6th Cir.2013).

C. Prior Interlocutory Appeal

In the first appeal, we vacated the district court’s denial of qualified immunity because the district court had not conducted “a particularized analysis of whether Davis was deliberately indifferent to the conditions of Stoudemire’s confinement while in quarantine.” Id. at 570. In particular, “[t]he district court did not mention any facts in the record that specifically pertained to Davis, nor did the district court make any findings regarding Davis’s knowledge or mental state.” Id. In other words, “there was no discussion of the subjective element of the claim: whether Davis, the warden, had ‘a sufficiently culpable state of mind in denying [Stoude-mire] medical care.’ ” Id. at 571 (quoting Blackmore v. Kalamazoo Cnty., 390 F.3d 890, 895 (6th Cir.2004)).

D. On Remand

On remand, the district court found that the constitutional right at issue — to be free from cruel and unusual punishment while in confinement — was clearly established, citing Estelle v.

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Bluebook (online)
614 F. App'x 798, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stoudemire-v-michigan-department-of-corrections-ca6-2015.