Endres v. Horner

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA

SOUTH BEND DIVISION

CURT ENDRES,

Plaintiff,

v. CAUSE NO. 3:25-CV-142-PPS-AZ

HORNER, et al.,

Defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER

Curt Endres, a prisoner without a lawyer, filed a complaint. ECF 1. Under 28

U.S.C. § 1915A, I must screen the complaint and dismiss it if the action is frivolous or

malicious, fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, or seeks monetary

relief against a defendant who is immune from such relief. To proceed beyond the

pleading stage, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter to “state a claim to

relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007).

“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.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). I must give a pro se complaint liberal

construction. Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007).

Endres alleges his Pod at the LaPorte County Jail was on lockdown on January 7-

8, 2025. At around 6:00 PM, he “press[ed] the button to be moved” because he was not

getting along with his cellmate. ECF 1 at 2. As he was leaving the cell, he was punched

in the face and kicked in the foot by another inmate. Endres claims this inmate was able

to move freely around the pod because “some of the cells did not lock.” Id. It took the

correctional officers five minutes to open the Pod door to remove Endres after the

incident. He claims his foot was fractured during the scuffle, and all he was given was

Ibuprofen “when it should have [been] a cast.” He believes the cells with broken locks

should not have been used. He has sued “Pod CO in S-7 Horner?” and the “Inmate who

hit me in S-7 (name withheld)” for monetary damages and injunctive relief in the form

of “more training for officers.” Id. at 1, 3.

There are several problems with Endres’s complaint. First, he has sued the

inmate who hit him. “In order to state a claim under § 1983 a plaintiff must allege: (1)

that defendants deprived him of a federal constitutional right; and (2) that the

defendants acted under color of state law.” Savory v. Lyons, 469 F.3d 667, 670 (7th Cir.

2006). “The under-color-of-state-law element means that § 1983 does not permit suits

based on private conduct, no matter how discriminatory or wrongful.” Spiegel v.

McClintic, 916 F.3d 611, 616 (7th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks and citation

omitted). The “Inmate who hit me in S-7” is a private individual, and Endres has not

alleged any facts to suggest I should consider him a state actor.1 Accordingly, he will be

dismissed from this lawsuit.

As to the correctional officers, he has named “Pod CO in S-7 Horner?” in the

caption, but he doesn’t mention this defendant anywhere in the body of his complaint.

He notes there were five correctional officers on the Pod that day whose names have

1 Nor has he suggested that diversity jurisdiction applies. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332.

been withheld from him, but he doesn’t attempt to describe them in any way in order to

identify them. The problem with this approach is that Endres has not explained what

actions the officers took (or didn’t take) other than being present at the jail and opening

the door to the Pod five minutes after the altercation. Without more, I’m unable to

determine whether any of those officers are potentially liable to him under the

Constitution. Liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is personal, which means that the

individual wrongdoer must be identified and can be held accountable only for their

own actions. See Burks v. Raemisch, 555 F.3d 592, 596 (7th Cir. 2009) (“[P]ublic employees

are responsible for their own misdeeds but not for anyone else’s.”).

Moreover, even if he had identified the defendants, his allegations about them

are too vague to state any sort of claim. Endres is a pretrial detainee, so his claims must

be analyzed under the Fourteenth Amendment. See generally Miranda v. Cnty. of Lake,

900 F.3d 335 (7th Cir. 2018). “Incarcerated people have a clearly established right to be

free from physical harm inflicted by others in the institution.” Kemp v. Fulton Cnty., 27

F.4th 491, 494 (7th Cir. 2022) (citing Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 833 (1994) (“[P]rison

officials have a duty . . . to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other

prisoners.”)). The Seventh Circuit has extended the Fourteenth Amendment’s objective

unreasonableness test found in Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389 (2015) to failure to

protect claims. See id. at 495 (citing Hardeman v. Curran, 933 F.3d 816 (7th Cir. 2019)).

Specifically, a pretrial detainee states a failure to protect claim when he alleges:

(1) The defendant made an intentional decision with respect to the

conditions under which the plaintiff was confined;

(2) Those conditions put the plaintiff at substantial risk of suffering

serious harm;

(3) The defendant did not take reasonable available measures to abate that

risk, even though a reasonable officer in the circumstances would have

appreciated the high degree of risk involved—making the consequences of the

defendant’s conduct obvious; and

(4) By not taking such measures, the defendant caused the plaintiff’s

injuries.

Id. at 496 (emphasis added by 7th Cir.) (quoting Castro v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 833 F.3d

1060, 1071 (9th Cir. 2016) (en banc)). As to the second element, the Seventh Circuit has

equated “substantial risk” to “risks so great that they are almost certain to materialize if

nothing is done.” Brown v. Budz, 398 F.3d 904, 911 (7th Cir. 2005). The third element

“requires only that the defendant’s conduct be objectively unreasonable.” Kemp, 27

F.4th at 497. Negligence on the part of a defendant is not enough; instead, they “must

intend to carry out a certain course of actions.” Id. Overall, reasonableness “must be

determined in light of the totality of the circumstances.” Pulera v. Sarzant, 966 F.3d 540,

550 (7th Cir. 2020).

Here, Endres alleges some of the doors in his Pod are broken which allows

inmates to leave their cells. He was attacked by one such inmate after he asked and was

permitted to leave his own cell. He doesn’t plausibly suggest, however, that Officer

Horner or the unnamed officers made any sort of intentional decision related to the

condition of the doors (i.e., that they were in charge of assigning inmates to certain cells

or were responsible for their maintenance), nor does he allege there was any sort of

history of violence related to the broken doors generally or directed towards Endres

specifically. See e.g., Echols v. Johnson, 105 F.4th 973, 980 (7th Cir. 2024), reh'g denied, No.

22-3230, 2024 WL 3992502 (7th Cir. Aug. 29, 2024) (finding there was no evidence to

suggest the defendants “should have been on notice of an imminent violent altercation”

between two detainees); see also Kemp, 27 F.4th at 496 (“[A] pretrial detainee does not

need to show that an officer with all the information about a potential health or safety risk

actually did put the puzzle pieces together.”) (emphasis added). At most, based on

Endres’s vague allegations, I might conclude that there may have been some negligent

conduct related to the broken doors, but negligence isn’t enough to state a claim. Id. at

497.

To the extent Endres alleges he was harmed by the five-minute delay in opening

the Pod door to “get [him] out,” he doesn’t provide sufficient details about the sudden

altercation itself or what happened afterwards to demonstrate any of the officers were

objectively unreasonable in their actions or inaction. In other words, Endres has not

alleged sufficient factual information to plausibly suggest a reasonable officer presented

with the same circumstances would have appreciated the “high degree of risk

involved” in responding the way they did. Kemp, 27 F.4th at 496; see also Swanson v.

Citibank, N.A., 614 F.3d 400, 403 (7th Cir. 2010) (“[A] plaintiff must do better than

putting a few words on paper that, in the hands of an imaginative reader, might suggest

that something has happened to her that might be redressed by the law.”) (emphasis in

original)).

Finally, although Endres briefly mentions his broken foot, I can’t discern any

plausible claims related to it. A pretrial detainee is entitled to constitutionally adequate

medical care for his serious medical needs, which requires jail staff to take “reasonable

available measures” to address a “risk of serious harm” to an inmate’s health or safety.

Pittman v. Madison Cnty., 108 F.4th 561, 572 (7th Cir. 2024). Whether a defendant is

providing reasonable care is determined by a purely objective standard. Id.

Endres indicates he was given painkillers for his foot, but he complains that it

wasn’t placed in a cast. He doesn’t explain what the officers did following the incident,

when (or whether) he was taken to medical, what happened there, or who, specifically,

denied him medical care. It’s not reasonable to infer that the correctional officers—

rather than the jail’s medical staff—were responsible for setting and treating his broken

foot. In any event, based on the sparse facts presented, I can’t conclude that Officer

Horner or any of the other officers acted in an objectively unreasonable manner

regarding Endres’s injury. See Burks, 555 F.3d at 596 (“[P]ublic employees are

responsible for their own misdeeds but not for anyone else’s.”); see also Swanson, 614

F.3d at 403.

This complaint does not state a claim for which relief can be granted. If Endres

believes he can state a claim based on (and consistent with) the events described in this

complaint, he may file an amended complaint because “[t]he usual standard in civil

cases is to allow defective pleadings to be corrected, especially in early stages, at least

where amendment would not be futile.” Abu-Shawish v. United States, 898 F.3d 726, 738

(7th Cir. 2018). To file an amended complaint, he needs to write this cause number on a

Pro Se 14 (INND Rev. 2/20) Prisoner Complaint form which is available from his law

library. He needs to write the word “Amended” on the first page above the title

“Prisoner Complaint” and send it to the court after he properly completes the form.

Accordingly:

(1) Curt Endres is GRANTED until March 20, 2025, to file an amended

complaint; and

(2) Curt Endres is CAUTIONED if he does not respond by the deadline, this case

will be dismissed under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A without further notice because the current

complaint does not state a claim for which relief can be granted.

SO ORDERED.

ENTERED: February 14, 2025.

/s/ Philip P. Simon

PHILIP P. SIMON, JUDGE

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT