The opinion
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
KIMBERLY YOUNG, et al.,
laintiff: i .
Plaunnitts, Civil Action No. 24-4975 (MAS) (TJB)
‘ OPINION
MONMOUTH COUNTY, et al.,
Defendants.
SHIPP, District Judge
This matter comes before the Court on the Monmouth County Defendants’! Motion to
dismiss (ECF No. 7) Plaintiffs’? complaint (ECF No. 1) in this prisoner civil rights matter.
Plaintiffs filed a response to Defendants’ Motion (ECF No. 16), to which Defendants replied (ECF
No. 19). For the following reasons, the County Defendants’ motion shall be granted in part and
denied in part.
I. BACKGROUND
This matter arises out of the overdose death of Egner while housed in the Monmouth
County Correctional Institution (“MCCT”) in April 2022, (ECF No. | at 6.) In February 2020,
Egner was sentenced to six years incarceration for the distribution of controlled dangerous
' These Defendants include Monmouth County, the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office, the
Monmouth County Board of County Commissioners, Sheriff Shaun Golden, Undersheriff
Theoadore Freeman, Warden Victor Ianello, and the John Doe Correction Officer Defendants.
? Plaintiffs in this matter are Kimberly Young, as administratrix of the Estate of David Egner
(“Egner’), and as guardian of their minor child, A.E., and A.E. individually.
substances, but was eventually deferred into an intensive supervision program. (/d. at 10.)
Following several instances of violating that program through drug use, Egner was taken back into
custody and placed into the MCCI in April 2022. Ud.) On April 17, 2022, Egner sought out and
obtained drugs, specifically “fentanyl-laced heroin” from a fellow inmate, Alvino Hinton
(“Hinton”). Ud.) At 9:05 a.m. that morning, Egner was found unresponsive in his cell. It is not
entirely clear what occurred in the immediate aftermath of this discovery, but Plaintiffs allege that
jail medical staff, employed by Defendant CFG, were alerted to the situation but did not
appropriately respond either because they did not use Narcan upon Egner or did not use sufficient
doses of Narcan to revive Egner. (Ud. at 10-11.) Plaintiffs do not detail what steps were taken
during those early moments or the timeline for CFG’s response, but do allege that Egner was
transferred to CentraState Medical Center in Freehold, where he died three days later, on April 20,
2022. (Ud. at 11.) Egner’s death was determined to be the result of “mixed drug toxicity” arising
out of ingesting fentanyl, acetylmorphine, and other opioids. Cd.) A search of Hinton later
produced “36 wax folds of heroin” which had been concealed in Hinton’s underwear. (/d. at 10.)
Hinton later admitted to smuggling the drugs into the jail himself. (Ud. at 15.) Hinton was
thereafter charged with, and convicted of, causing Egner’s death. (/d.)
The remainder of Plaintiffs’ complaint attempts to lay the blame for Egner’s overdose on
various supervisory Defendants and the entity responsible for overseeing the jail and its medical
staff. Specifically, Plaintiffs allege that Defendants were, or should have been, aware that drug
abuse was widespread at MCCI, and that “CDS was widely available to the MCCI inmate
population” but provide very few specific factual allegations to support these conclusions. (/d. at
12.) In support of these contentions, Plaintiffs allege that Sheriff Golden of Monmouth County
was quoted in a 2018 Asbury Park Press article as stating that “76 percent of inmates in county
jails face addiction” and that the same article expressed the opinion that addiction problems were
particularly high in those charged with drug offenses. (/d.) Plaintiffs also point to a January 2024
article in the New Jersey Monitor in which they allege that Undersheriff Freeman wrote about an
“entrenched drug trade” in the jail which resulted in overdoses and lawsuits. (/d.)
In their reply, Defendants provided the Court with copies of the two articles upon which
Plaintiffs relied. The 2018 Asbury Park Press article was not specifically concerned with the drug
trade in jail, but rather with a voluntary addiction recovery program put into place in the jail, which
Sheriff Golden praised as a means to help inmates with addiction issues. (See ECF No. 19-] at 2.)
It was the article’s author, however, and not Golden, who stated that “76 percent of inmates in
county jails face addiction,” and nothing in the article indicates that Golden in any way endorsed
or agreed with this statistic, nor was the statistic specifically aimed at MCC] itself. (/d.)
The 2024 New Jersey Monitor article is largely a summary of another federal lawsuit
regarding the overdose death of a female inmate, Jennifer Ross, in MCCI in September 2022. (id.
at 7.) Other than summarizing the allegations of that lawsuit, which Plaintiffs also recapitulate in
their complaint, the article briefly notes that Undersheriff Freeman authored an article in 2017
regarding drug trade in the jail, and notes that since 2017, several jail officers who attempted to
smuggle drugs into the jail in potato chip bags were arrested and prosecuted. (/d. at 9.) Defendants
also provided a copy of Freeman’s 2017 article, which was referenced by the Monitor and
indirectly by Plaintiffs through the Monitor article, which does not concern itself with a rampant
drug trade, but instead merely details new X-ray screening devices at the jail aimed at increasing
the discovery rate of contraband of all types entering the jail in inmates’ body cavities. (Ud. at
13-14.) The only actual incidents of drug abuse mentioned in either article occurred in either 2013,
nearly a decade before Egner’s incident, or 2022, in the case of Ross’s death which took place
several months after Egner’s passing.
Aside from these articles and the allegations made in the Ross lawsuit, in describing MCCI
as a haven of drug smuggling and abuse, Plaintiffs rely upon the arrest and prosecution of
corrections officer Bryant Mack (“Mack”), Mack was indicted on drug distribution charges in
March 2022 arising out of alleged drug smuggling in which he engaged with another staff member
in 2020 and 2021. (/d. at 14.) Mack, however, had been smuggling suboxone, marijuana, and
“K2,” not heroin or fentanyl. (Ud. at 15.) Plaintiffs do not allege that Mack was involved in any
way with Egner or Hinton.
While Plaintiffs plead that the supervisory Defendants failed to adopt sufficient policies to
address the drug issues—such as increased cell checks, searches, better detection equipment, the
greater use of drug dogs, and the like—Plaintiffs plead facts indicating that the jail did, in fact,
have policies aimed at dealing with the issue of drug dependency by inmates. Specifically,
Plaintiffs acknowledge in pleading claims against the John Doe Officers that the jail had standard
procedures requiring the frequent and repeated monitoring of inmates with known drug histories,
frequent cell checks, restrictions on free movement for those admitted with addiction issues,
policies requiring staff to be prepared to summon medical aid as needed as soon as an overdose
was discovered, rules requiring the reporting of drug abuse and overdoses, and various rules and
equipment aimed at detecting and eliminating contraband, including drugs, from the facility. (Id.
at 29-30.) Plaintiffs also allege, at least indirectly, that the jail did have policies in place for the
discovery, firing, and prosecution of staff members, including Mack, who were found to be
smuggling and otherwise facilitating drug use in the jail. (/d. at 14-15.)
Il. LEGAL STANDARD
In deciding a motion to dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a
district court is required to accept as true all factual allegations in the complaint and draw all
reasonable inferences from those allegations in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, see Phillips
v. County of Allegheny, 515 F.3d 224, 228 (3d Cir. 2008), but need not accept as true legal
conclusions couched as factual allegations. Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, 286 (1986). A
complaint need not contain “detailed factual allegations” to survive a motion to dismiss, but must
contain “more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Ashcroft v.
Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). A complaint “that offers ‘labels and conclusions’ or ‘a formulaic
recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do,’” and a complaint will not “suffice” if it
provides only “‘naked assertion[s]’ devoid of ‘further factual enhancement.’” Jd. (quoting Bell
Ail. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 557 (2007)). “To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint
must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible
on its face.” Jd. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570). “A claim has facial plausibility when the
plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the
defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Jd. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). A
complaint that provides facts “merely consistent with” the defendant’s liability “stops short of the
line between possibility and plausibility” and will not survive review under Rule 12(b)(6). Jd.
(quoting 7wombly, 555 U.S. at 557).
Il. DISCUSSION
A. Failure to Protect
Defendants first argue that Plaintiffs fail to state a claim for failure to protect against the
County Defendants as Plaintiffs have not pled a plausible claim for supervisory or municipal
liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.3. A defendant in a civil rights action must have personal
involvement in the alleged wrongs in order to be held liable as federal civil rights law does not
permit a defendant to be held liable solely on a respondeat superior basis. Chavarriaga v. N.J.
Dep't of Corr., 806 F.3d 210, 222 (3d Cir. 2015); Rode v. Dellarciprete, 845 F.2d 1195, 1207-08
(3d Cir. 1988). Claims against supervisory or municipal defendants thus generally require a
plaintiff to plead facts showing that either a supervisor had actual knowledge of and acquiesced in
an underling’s wrongdoing, or the supervisor or municipal entity was responsible for a policy,
practice, or custom which was the moving force behind the violation of the plaintiff's rights.
Chavarriaga, 806 F.3d at 222-23; see also Los Angeles County v. Humphries, 562 U.S. 29, 35-36
(2010); City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 389 (1989); Natale v. Camden Cnty. Corr. Facility,
318 F.3d 575, 583-84 (3d Cir. 2003). To plead such a claim, a plaintiff must allege facts indicating
that the supervisory or municipal defendant either adopted or put in place a policy, custom or
practice which gave rise to the alleged violation; or that there was an obvious and clear need for
the affirmative promulgation of a new policy to address deficiencies which, if left uncorrected,
were so likely to cause a violation such as the one the plaintiff suffered that the defendant in
question can be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the deficiency. Chavarriaga, 806 F.3d
at 222-23; Natale, 318 F.3d at 584.
One subspecies of this latter sort of claim is a claim based on a municipality or supervisor’s
failure to train his subordinates. A “municipality’s culpability is at its most tenuous where a claim
3 Plaintiffs raise their civil rights claims under both § 1983 and the New Jersey Civil Rights Act
(“NJCRA”). The NJCRA is New Jersey’s analogue to a federal civil rights claim under § 1983.
With rare exceptions not applicable here, a claim under the NJCRA is construed identically to an
equivalent federal claim and is subject to the same defenses. See, e.g., Trafton v. City of Woodbury,
799 F. Supp. 2d 417, 443-44 (D.N.J. 2011). As such, although this Court explicitly discusses
Plaintiffs’ civil rights claims in relation to § 1983, the Court’s conclusions apply equally to
Plaintiffs’ equivalent NJCRA claims. Thus, where this Court dismisses one of Plaintiffs’ civil
rights claims, this Court dismisses that claim under both § 1983 and the NJCRA.
turns on a failure to train,” and will only be tenable where it is clear from the facts alleged that the
failure to train amounts to “deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the
[untrained employees] come into contact.” Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 61-62 (2011)
(internal quotations omitted). This requires allegations sufficient to support an inference that the
municipality or supervisor “disregarded a known or obvious consequence of [its] action,” which
requires actual or constructive notice of an obvious deficiency in its training programs and a
“policy of inaction” in the face of that known deficiency. Jd. “A pattern of similar constitutional
violations by untrained employees is ordinarily necessary to demonstrate deliberate indifference
for purposes of failure to train,” as it is policymakers’ “continued adherence to an approach that
they know or should know has failed to prevent tortious conduct by employees” which is indicative
of deliberate indifference. Jd. at 62 (internal quotations omitted). A mere pattern of a handful of
vaguely similar constitutional violations is generally insufficient to meet this requirement. Jd.
(holding that having four convictions overturned for Brady violations over ten years was
insufficient to support a failure to train claim where those violations were dissimilar to the specific
Brady violation at issue). While the Supreme Court has suggested that it is possible that a single
incident may support a failure to train claim in an extreme case—such as where police officers are
armed with deadly weapons but given no training in regard to the limitations on the use of
excessive force—such a claim is not viable in the absence of an extremely obvious deficiency. /d.
at 63-64.
Here Plaintiffs’ claims arise out of allegations that the County Defendants failed to protect
Egner from access to illicit drugs while incarcerated in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment
rights. A plaintiff seeking to raise a failure to protect claim must allege facts showing that he “was
incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm, [that the defendant] was
deliberately indifferent to that substantial risk to his health and safety, and . . . the [defendant’s]
deliberate indifference caused him harm.” See 696 F.3d 352, 367 (3d Cir. 2012), abrogated in
part on other grounds as recognized in Mack v. Yost, 968 F.3d 311, 319 n.7 (3d Cir. 2020); see
also Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 832 (1994); Corbin v. County of Bucks, 703 F. Supp. 3d
527, 534 (E.D. Pa. 2023). While the threat of unfettered access to drugs in a controlled
environment of incarceration may give rise to a failure to protect claim under certain
circumstances, simple exposure to drugs while incarcerated or a “run-of-the-mill drug-overdose
case” will not be sufficient to support a failure to protect claim in the absence of detailed facts
showing that the defendants knew of serious and widespread access to illegal drugs and knew that
those drugs were actively being abused, such as in a case where numerous inmates suffer overdoses
in a relatively short time frame. See Caraway v. CoreCivic of Tenn., 98 F Ath 679, 684 (6th Cir.
2024).
In their complaint, Plaintiffs rely not on an affirmative policy, but rather on the alleged
failure of the County Defendants to create further policies or train their staff in light of an alleged
need to combat drug exposure in the county jail. The facts that Plaintiffs plead, and the actual text
of the articles on which Plaintiffs rely, however, do not make out such a claim. As discussed
above, Plaintiffs’ allegations and the articles in question do not show widespread overdoses, nor
do they support Plaintiffs’ conclusory allegations that drug abuse and distribution was rampant in
the county jail. A careful review of the complaint and underlying articles indicates that there were
two overdoses nearly ten years before Egner’s death, another overdose which occurred months
after Egner’s overdose, and that at least two staff members had been arrested and prosecuted for
smuggling illicit substances completely different from those involved in Egner’s case well over a
year before Egner’s overdose. These incidents are spread out over the course of a decade and the
case of the one truly similar incident Plaintiffs cite occurred only after Egner’s death. These
incidents, therefore, are not sufficient to show an obvious need for further policies or training, and
thus do not support the inference that the County Defendants were deliberately indifferent to a risk
to Egner’s health or safety.
This is especially so because the articles on which Plaintiffs rely and their own complaint
indicate that the jail had adopted numerous policies and taken actions specifically aimed at
combating the threat of drugs. The articles Plaintiffs cite indicate that the county jail adopted
treatment programs and put in place high tech detection equipment to inhibit the smuggling of
illicit substances. Plaintiffs’ own complaint indicates that standard jail policies in place at the time
of Egner’s overdose required monitoring of inmates suspected of undergoing detoxification from
drugs, frequent cell checks on such inmates, controlled movement of detoxifying inmates, the
reporting and recording of incidents of drug exposure, the searching of incoming inmates and
others entering the jail to deter the smuggling of illicit drugs, and immediate contact with medical
staff in the event of an incident. (See ECF No. | at 30.) Taking these facts and policies in question,
it was not sufficiently obvious from the course of past incidents that further training or policy
adoption was so necessary that the supervisory and municipal County Defendants can be said to
have been deliberately indifferent to Egner’s needs. Plaintiffs’ failure to protect claims against the
County supervisory and municipal Defendants (Monmouth County, Monmouth County Sheriff's
Office, Sheriff Golden, Undersheriff Freeman, and Warden Iannello) are therefore dismissed
without prejudice.
Defendants also move to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims against the individual John Doe
Corrections Officers‘ for failure to protect. Even assuming Plaintiffs have sufficiently pled facts
* In their argument, Defendants at least suggest that this claim should also be dismissed as to the
non-moving medical Defendants. The medical Defendants did not move to dismiss and instead
filed an answer. Defendants have provided no basis for moving on behalf of those otherwise
represented Defendants. The Court, therefore, does not address the County Defendants’ arguments
as to the medical Defendants, and addresses only the claims against the moving County
Defendants.
indicating that the individual officers knew or should have known that Egner had a history of drug
use and was detoxing at the time he entered the jail, Plaintiffs fail to adequately plead facts, as
opposed to conclusory allegations, to suggest the John Doe officers were aware of Egner’s possible
exposure to drugs. While Plaintiffs frequently conclude that drug abuse and smuggling was
rampant in the jail, the actual facts pled in the complaint, as discussed above, do not support that
conclusion, and Plaintiffs have pled no facts indicating that any officer knew or should have known
that Hinton possessed any drugs, or that Egner had access to Hinton’s drugs. In the absence of
factual allegations that Hinton’s possession of drugs was known to officers, or facts, as opposed
to conclusory allegations, to support the idea of rampant drug use and abuse in the jail, Plaintiffs
fail to state a plausible claim for relief against the individual officer defendants. Here, Plaintiffs
have not pled facts sufficient to show that the officers were deliberately indifferent to the threat
Hinton’s drugs posed to Egner.° Plaintiffs’ failure to protect claim against the individual John Doe
Officers must therefore also be dismissed without prejudice at this time.
B. Failure to Provide Adequate Medical Care
Defendants next move to dismiss any civil rights claim against the individual officers
Plaintiffs have raised based on a failure to provide adequate medical care. The complaint did not
explicitly raise a separate civil rights claim for denial of medical care against these officers and
instead did so only as to the medical defendants who filed an answer. In response to the motion
to dismiss, however, Plaintiffs appear to agree that certain factual allegations were intended to set
out such a claim. (See ECF No. 16 at 46-47.) To make out a Fourteenth Amendment medical
claim, a plaintiff must plead facts which, if proven, would demonstrate how the defendants were
> That the officers did not timely check on Egner or properly keep an eye on him during the
morning of the event may support an inference of negligence depending on the time frame
involved. The complaint is not very specific as to the times at which the events occurred on the
morning in question, but those facts are not sufficient to show deliberate indifference.
10
deliberately indifferent to his medical needs. See Natale, 318 F.3d at 582. This requires facts
showing both that the plaintiff had a sufficiently serious medical need and that the defendants
engaged in acts or omissions which would permit the inference that they knew of and disregarded
“an excessive risk to inmate health or safety.” /d. (quoting Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837
(1994)). A medical need is sufficiently serious where it “has been diagnosed as requiring treatment
or [is a need that] is so obvious that a lay person would easily recognize the necessity of a doctor’s
attention.” Monmouth Cnty. Corr. Inst. Inmates v. Lanzaro, 834 F.2d 326, 347 (3d Cir. 1987), cert
denied, 486 U.S. 1006 (1988). As deliberate indifference “requires more than inadequate medical
attention or incomplete medical treatment,” see King v. County of Gloucester, 302 F. App’x 92,
96 (3d Cir. 2008), a plaintiff who pleads facts amounting to only negligence or medical malpractice
will fail to make out a claim for relief under § 1983. Rouse v. Plantier, 182 F.3d 192, 197 Gd Cir.
1999).
Plaintiffs admit that, to the extent they have a medical claim against the correction officer
John Does, that claim is based on the delay of the officers in discovering Egner unconscious in his
cell. (ECF No. 16 at 47.) Plaintiffs’ medical claim against the officers is thus based on the time
before they discovered Egner. Plaintiffs’ claim, therefore, is not based on their knowledge of and
indifference to Egner’s medical state, but rather their failure to follow watch rules and thereby
delayed discovery of Egner’s condition. Although the complaint is not entirely clear, it appears
from Plaintiffs’ allegations that the officers called for help from medical staff upon Egner’s
discovery, and it was the medical staff, rather than the officers, who were responsible for the delay
following the officers finding him unconscious. The failure to timely discover the unconscious
Egner may support an assertion of negligence on the part of the corrections officers, but it does
not suggest that they knew of and ignored a serious medical risk to Egner’s health, and thus is
insufficient to support deliberate indifference to medical needs claims. Plaintiffs’ deliberate
11
indifference to medical needs claims against the John Doe Officer Defendants are therefore
dismissed without prejudice.
C. State-created Danger
Defendants next argue that the Court should dismiss Plaintiffs’ state created danger civil
rights claim. Under a state created danger theory, a plaintiff can show a due process violation
where: (1) there is a relationship between the state and the plaintiff that existed indicating that the
plaintiff was a foreseeable victim of the defendants’ actions; (2) a state actor affirmatively used
his authority in a way that created a danger to the plaintiff that rendered the plaintiff more
vulnerable to danger than he would have been had the state not acted; (3) a state actor acted with
a degree of culpability which shocks the conscience; and (4) this caused harm to the plaintiff which
was foreseeable and a fairly direct result of state action. See Bright v. Westmoreland County, 443
F.3d 276, 281 (3d Cir. 2006); see also DeShaney v. Winnebago Cnty. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 489
189, 195-201 (1989). “Tt is important to stress . . . that under the [affirmative action element]
of a state-created danger claim, [liability ... is predicated upon the states’ affirmative acts[,]...
[and i]t is a misuse of state authority, rather than a failure to use it, that can violate the Due Process
Clause.” Bright, 443 F.3d at 282.
Plaintiffs’ claim is essentially based on the idea that the state created a facility “riddled and
infested” with illicit drugs, Defendants were aware that they had created such a facility, and then
placed Egner, a known drug addict, into that facility. (See ECF No. 16 at 56.) As explained above,
Plaintiffs have failed to allege facts, as opposed to conclusory allegations, to support that
characterization. Absent factual allegations which would permit the inference that the jail was
actually overrun with illicit drugs—such as numerous specific instances of drugs being discovered,
numerous close in time drug reactions or overdoses, or the like—this Court cannot infer that
Defendants actually created the dangerous situation Plaintiffs suggest. Likewise, Plaintiffs’ claims
12
largely depend on inaction—the failure of Defendants to adopt further policies or pursue greater
training, or the failure to increase drug interdiction efforts—trather than actual state misuse of
power. Such inaction is insufficient to support a state created danger claim under the Due Process
clause. Bright, 443 F.3d at 282. As Plaintiffs have not alleged sufficient facts to support the
inference that Defendants created a situation which directly led to Egner’s overdose, and have also
failed to allege that the misuse, rather than failure to use, state power created the harm, Plaintiffs
have failed to plead a plausible state created danger claim and that claim is dismissed without
prejudice as to the County Defendants.
D. Access to Courts/Conspiracy
Defendants also move to dismiss Plaintiffs’ civil rights claim for conspiracy to impair
Plaintiffs’ access to the Courts. Plaintiffs’ claim in that respect essentially relies on the allegation
that they filed OPRA requests seeking the names of all staff involved in the Egner overdose,
Defendants objected to providing this information, Defendants thereafter did not respond to further
pre-suit inquiries requesting the information, and that this amounts to a conspiracy to deny access
to the courts. (See ECF No. 1 at 38-39; 50-51.) There are two types of denial of access to the
courts claims. The first asserts that systemic official action is frustrating a group of plaintiffs from
timely preparing and filing suit. The second addresses claims arising out of “specific cases that
cannot now be tried . . . no matter what official action may be in the future.” Christopher v.
Harbury, 536 U.S. 403, 413-14 (2002). Plaintiffs’ claims fall into the second category. To make
out such a claim, a plaintiff must show that state action impeded his ability to litigate an at least
arguably meritorious claim, and that he suffered actual injury — either the loss or inadequate
settlement of that meritorious case, or the loss of an opportunity to seek some specific form of
relief in a meritorious case. Jd.; see also Thompson v. Ferguson, 849 F, App’x 33, 35 (3d Cir.
2021) (actual injury in the form of loss of an arguable claim for relief).
13
Here, Plaintiffs have neither lost nor inadequately settled, nor lost the opportunity to pursue
a viable form of relief. Their alleged injury is essentially the current, pre-discovery inability to
identify the John Doe officers to determine their identities and bring suit against them. That
Plaintiffs have filed suit in this matter, and raised their claims against the John Doe Defendants
indicates that they have not lost this claim, in principle or in part. Plaintiffs can pursue the records
they seek in discovery in this matter as the medical Defendants have not moved to dismiss. In
addition, Plaintiffs may seek to amend their complaint to address the deficiencies as to the
unidentified officer Defendants either in the immediate future or during discovery. Plaintiffs’
alleged injury—the inability to identify specific Defendants by name—is adequately protected
through fictitious party pleading. As Plaintiffs have failed to plead facts showing actual injury—
that they lost their claims in total or in part because of the failure of jail officials to identify their
employees pre-suit—they fail to state a claim for denial of access to the courts, and those claims,
including Plaintiffs’ conspiracy claims, are dismissed without prejudice at this time.° See Edwards
v. New Jersey, No. 22-2396, 2022 WL 3704634, at *4 (D.N.J. Aug. 26, 2022) (under federal civil
rights law and New Jersey law, a civil conspiracy claim cannot stand without a viable, plausible
underlying tort claim).
E. State Law Claims
Finally, Defendants argue that Plaintiffs’ state claims against the County Defendants
should be dismissed as they believe they are entitled to immunity under the New Jersey Tort
Claims Act. The New Jersey Tort Claims Act serves as a limited waiver of sovereign immunity
by the State of New Jersey and controls the liability of New Jersey’s public entities and their
° As the Court shall dismiss all of Plaintiffs’ civil rights claims against Defendants without
prejudice, the Court does not reach the issue of qualified immunity raised in the County
Defendants’ motion to dismiss.
14
employees under state law. See, e.g., Gaston v. New Jersey, 298 F. App’x 165, 167-68 (3d Cir.
2008); N.S. Stat. Ann. § 59:8-1, et seq. The purpose of the NJTCA was to “re-establish[] sovereign
immunity” and provide “broad immunity protection for public entities” and employees. Ogborne
v. Mercer Cemetery Corp., 197 N.J. 448, 457-59 (2009). Thus, under the Act “immunity is the
rule, and liability the exception.” Gonzalez by Gonzalez v. City of Jersey City, 247 N.J. 551, 570
(2021).
The County Defendants argue that they are immune from suit under state law for Plaintiffs’
negligence claims because their actions are discretionary rather than ministerial in nature. As the
Supreme Court has explained, under the Act, when a “public entity’s or employee’s actions are
discretionary, liability is imposed only for palpably unreasonable conduct,” while liability “for
ministerial actions .. . is evaluated based on an ordinary negligence standard.” Jd. at 571 (internal
quotations omitted). Under the Act, an action is considered discretionary where the defendant is
engaged in “actual, high level policymaking decisions involving the balancing of competing
considerations.” Jd. Ministerial actions are instead those “which a person performs in a given
state of facts in a prescribed manner in obedience to the mandate of legal authority, without regard
to or the exercise of his own judgment upon the propriety of the act being done.” Jd. at 571-72.
That such an action requires a level of operational judgment of when, where, or how to carry out
an employee’s responsibilities does not render that action discretionary. /d. at 572. Actions taken
by low level employees can still be discretionary and subject to the Act’s protections, however,
where the individual employee’s actions require “a significant thoughtful analysis and exercise of
personal deliberations regarding a variety of factors.” /d. Law enforcement officers thus engage
in ministerial activity when they are negligent in offering aid to injured motorists or decide when
and where to end a car chase, but act with discretion when engaged in such acts as determining the
proper response to a domestic violence call. Jd. at 572-73. The distinction between ministerial
15
and discretionary action is thus fact specific and turns on whether “the circumstances [are] thought
to be such that reasonable [officers] in the position of the defendants could have differed about
whether or how to act.” Jd. at 573.
In this matter, the direct actions of the supervisory and municipal County Defendants are
discretionary in nature. Plaintiffs’ claims against them based on their own direct actions arise
entirely out of these Defendants’ decisions as to what policies to adopt, what further training was
required for their subordinate officers, and how best to combat the threat posed by the potential
smuggling of illicit drugs into a county jail. That said, Plaintiffs’ state law claims against the
County Defendants—either alleged directly against the John Doe Corrections Officers or against
their supervisors on a respondeat superior basis’—arise instead out of the alleged negligence of
the officers in failing to properly watch, oversee, and secure Egner prior to his death in accordance
with the rules in place inside the jail. These actions largely lack discretionary decision making
and instead appear based on the current state of the complaint to be ministerial in nature. Thus,
this Court will dismiss Plaintiffs’ direct negligence claims against the supervisory and municipal
Defendants at this time without prejudice because their actions were discretionary in nature and
Plaintiffs have not pled facts sufficient to show that their actions were palpably unreasonable
sufficient to surmount immunity.® The Court will deny Defendants’ motion as to Plaintiffs’ state
law claims against the John Doe Defendants and as to Plaintiffs’ supervisory claims for relief
arising out of the failures of the John Doe Corrections Officers.
7 It does not appear that Defendants have argued that the supervisory claims based on respondeat
superior are in any way subject to immunity aside from their argument as to discretionary vs.
ministerial action.
* Because the Court will dismiss these claims based on their discretionary nature, the Court need
not address the argument that the policy decisions of Defendants amounted to the adoption of laws
entitled to semi-legislative immunity under the NJTCA.
16
Defendants also contend that they are entitled to immunity because the NJTCA immunizes
state entities and employees for the misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose substance abuse disorders
and for determinations as to when to confine a person for drug dependence. See N.J. Stat. Ann.
§§ 59:6-5; 59:6-6. This assertion, however, misses Plaintiffs’ contention that it was not the
decision of the John Doe Officers to determine whether or how to confine Egner, but that the
standard jail rules in place required them to watch, confine, and secure him during his entry period
into the jail, and the negligent failure to do so resulted in his overdose death. These statutes thus
do not appear to apply to Plaintiffs’ claims arising out of the actions of the John Doe Officers, and
Defendants’ motion is denied as to that argument.
Defendants also contend that they should be immune under the NJTCA because Egner’s
death was the result of another prisoner’s actions. Under N.J. Stat. Ann. § 59:5-2(b)(4), neither “a
public entity nor a public employee is liable for .. . any injury caused by . . . a prisoner to any
other prisoner.” It is true that the provision of drugs to Egner was the result of another prisoner’s
actions. Plaintiffs’ negligence claims arising out of the corrections officers’ activities, however,
do not depend entirely on stopping or preventing Egner from interacting with and obtaining drugs
from Hinton. Instead, those claims also assert that the officers failed to live up to their duty to
watch over Egner, to keep him isolated in his cell during detoxification, and to regularly check up
on him, which Plaintiffs assert led to his obtaining drugs, using them, and then overdosing and not
being timely discovered. At the very least, the portion of the claim related to the failure to timely
discover Egner after he overdosed is causally separate from the provision of the drugs by Hinton.
The alleged negligence of the guards in that respect, at least, does not appear to be subject to
immunity under the statute because the continued harm there arises from the failure to discover
Egner rather than the initial overdose. Thus, the Court denies Defendants’ motion to the extent
they seek to have the negligence claim based on the officers’ actions dismissed on this basis.
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Finally, Defendants argue that Plaintiffs’ wrongful death and survival actions should be
dismissed as they are derivative of Plaintiffs’ other claims. As Plaintiffs have a surviving
negligence claim against the correction officer defendants and against their superiors based on
respondeat superior, these derivative claims remain viable and live in relation to that negligence
claim only. The Court will therefore not dismiss them at this time.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the reasons expressed above, Defendants’ motion (ECF No. 7) is GRANTED IN
PART and DENIED IN PART. All of Plaintiffs’ claims against the County Defendants are
dismissed without prejudice except for the negligence claims arising out of the actions of the John
Doe Corrections Officer Defendants and the derivative survival and wrongful death claims related
to those negligence claims. An order consistent with this Opinion will be entered.
MICHAEL A. SHIPP j ;
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
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