Bond v. Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA

AUSTIN BOND, as Personal Representative )

of the Estate of BRAD LANE, Deceased, )

)

Plaintiff, )

)

v. ) Case No. CIV-23-05-D

)

OKLAHOMA COUNTY CRIMINAL )

JUSTICE AUTHORITY, et al., )

)

Defendants. )

ORDER

Defendants, Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority (OCCJA) and the Board

of County Commissioners for Oklahoma County (the Board), have filed a joint Motion for

Summary Judgment [Doc. No. 49]. Plaintiff filed a response [Doc. No. 55], to which

Defendants replied [Doc. No. 57]. The matter is fully briefed and at issue.

UNDISPUTED MATERIAL FACTS1

A. Brad Lane’s Detention and Death

Brad Lane was beaten to death by his cellmate while housed at the Oklahoma

County Detention Center (the Jail) as a pretrial detainee. When Mr. Lane was booked in,

he was wearing a medical boot from a previous ankle surgery. Mr. Lane was assigned to

1 Defendants’ motion for summary judgment contains 35 purportedly undisputed material facts, to

which Plaintiff has responded. In his response, Plaintiff also includes 29 additional material facts.

However, in Defendants’ reply, they do not specifically address any of Plaintiff’s additional

material facts, nor do Defendants raise any hearsay or other objections to the evidence relied upon

therein. Therefore, to the extent those facts are properly supported by the record, they are deemed

undisputed for purposes of ruling on Defendants’ motion. See FED. R. CIV. P. 56(e)(2) (“If a party

… fails to properly address another party’s assertion of fact as required by Rule 56(c), the court

may … consider the fact undisputed for purposes of the motion.”).

pod 13D, which was on the medical floor. Mr. Lane’s intake screening form indicates that

his criminal history was “exclusively non-violent.” Defs.’ UMF Nos. 4, 6; Pltf.’s AMF Nos.

1, 13.

Mr. Lane shared a cell with Shaquile Brown, who was being held on multiple counts

of felony aggravated assault and battery. Mr. Brown had been assigned to the medical floor

because he had a tracheotomy that required frequent medical care. Mr. Lane and Mr. Brown

shared a cell from December 12, 2020, until Mr. Brown murdered Mr. Lane on January 2,

2021. Defs.’ UMF Nos. 11, 14; Pltf.’s Resp. to UMF No. 8.

On the medical floor, officers were required to conduct visual sight checks every 30

minutes. In every other area of the Jail, if an inmate placed a call for help, the call was

transferred to “camera operations,” where an officer would presumably gauge the severity

of the call and dispatch officers based on the situation. On the medical floor, however, calls

from inmates’ cells went to the nurse’s station in medical and not to camera operations. The

phone in the medical clinic was not manned 24/7; no one was assigned to answer the phone;

and the ringer was turned down. Pltf.’s AMF Nos. 20, 28.

On January 2, 2021, Officer Melissa Wood started her shift at 6:00 p.m. and was

assigned to the medical floor. During shift change, Officer Carol Richmond told Officer

Wood that another inmate needed to be taken to the clinic. Before doing a sight check of

the medical floor, Officer Wood took the inmate to the clinic, checked on the juvenile pod,

and escorted a different inmate to do a video kiosk visit. Because Officer Wood was the

only Jail staff assigned to the medical floor, no officer supervised or conducted sight checks

for the medical floor from at least 6:00 p.m. to 7:02 p.m. Defs.’ UMF Nos. 26-27; Pltf.’s

AMF No. 3.

Between 6:15 and 6:21 p.m., inmate Jose Hernandez heard screaming in 13D, the

pod that also housed Mr. Lane and Mr. Brown.2 Mr. Hernandez popped the lock on his cell

and walked to the common area. Mr. Hernandez heard Mr. Lane yelling for help, and Mr.

Hernandez went to Mr. Lane’s cell and saw blood on the window. Mr. Hernandez saw Mr.

Lane beaten up and attempting to cover himself with a mattress to defend himself from Mr.

Brown’s attack. When Mr. Hernandez saw Mr. Brown sit down, Mr. Hernandez believed

the assault was over, and he returned to his cell. Defs.’ UMF No. 28; Pltf.’s AMF No. 4.

Approximately five minutes later, Mr. Hernandez heard loud banging coming from

Mr. Lane’s cell, and he observed Mr. Brown pull Mr. Lane out from under the bunk and

bludgeon him with Mr. Lane’s metal medical boot in the face and head. During this time,

Mr. Lane was repeatedly pleading for help. Mr. Hernandez returned to his cell and tried to

call the medical clinic for help three times, but no one answered. Mr. Hernandez then called

his girlfriend and told her to call the Jail’s main telephone number to get Mr. Lane help.

Pltf.’s AMF Nos. 5-6.

Mr. Hernandez called his girlfriend a second time, and she said she tried to call the

Jail, but she was put on hold. Mr. Hernandez told her to try to call the Jail again and that

staff needed to get to the 13th floor or Mr. Brown would kill Mr. Lane. During this time,

Mr. Hernandez could still hear the sound of Mr. Brown repeatedly striking Mr. Lane with

2 Mr. Hernandez was on the medical floor because he had four fractures in his back.

the medical boot. Mr. Hernandez went back to Mr. Lane’s cell and observed Mr. Brown

kneeling over Mr. Lane, who was still alive and trying to defend himself. Mr. Lane grabbed

the medical boot but did not have the strength to fight back. Mr. Brown took the boot back

from Mr. Lane, ignored Mr. Hernandez telling Mr. Brown to stop, and continued to strike

Mr. Lane with the boot. Pltf.’s AMF No. 7; Doc. No. 55-10, at 4.

At approximately 7:02 p.m., Officer Wood returned to 13D. Other inmates notified

her that they had heard yelling in Mr. Lane’s cell for a while. Officer Wood continued her

sight check until she got to Mr. Lane’s cell. After a struggle with Mr. Brown, officers were

able to extract Mr. Brown from the cell. Mr. Lane was already dead. Defs.’ UMF Nos. 33-

35; Pltf.’s AMF Nos. 11-12.

B. Jail Conditions and Staffing Issues

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an investigative report on the Jail’s

conditions of confinement. Among other findings, the DOJ found an “inordinately high

risk of detainee-on-detainee violence at the Jail as a result of the Jail’s chronic

overcrowding, the staff’s inability to supervise detainees, and the ability of the detainees

to bypass at will the security of their cell doors.” [Doc. No. 55-21, at 6]. The report further

noted that “while each housing unit or floor may house upwards of 500 detainees, there are

often only one or two detention officers available to supervise the large number of detainees

as well as to conduct detainee sight checks.” Id. at 4.

On May 22, 2019, Oklahoma County created the OCCJA to administer the Jail, and

the OCCJA took over operations in approximately July of 2020. Pltf.’s AMF No. 16. Staff

retention has been a continual problem at the Jail since at least 2004, but the understaffing

issues worsened after the OCCJA took over operations. Pltf.’s AMF No. 17.

At her deposition, Officer Wood testified that the 13th medical floor should have had

three officers, two medical security officers, and one officer assigned to suicide prevention

inmates, for a total of six officers [Doc. No. 55-16, at 22]. Officer Wood believed that the

two medical security officers were not in the clinic on the day of Mr. Lane’s murder because

they were dealing with a different inmate-on-inmate situation. Id. at 23. Officer Wood

further testified that one to two officers usually covered a floor of the Jail. Id. Officer Wood

described “a good shift” as having two officers per floor. Id. at 24. At her deposition,

Officer Wood stood by her previous statement that “the Jail’s staffing levels were not

enough to run the Jail correctly,” and she added that “sometimes we’d have to run two

whole floors by ourselves, just overworked to the extreme.” Id. at 25. Finally, Officer Wood

stated it was almost impossible to do all the required sight checks and duties with one

officer assigned to each floor. Id. at 26.

Lt. Yolanda Doroteo agreed in her deposition that the Jail’s understaffing was

“dangerous,” and that understaffing was causing an increase in inmate deaths and escapes

[Doc. No. 55-11, at 5-6].

By January 2021, Lt. Andrew Reeves had worked at the Jail for approximately 17

years [Doc. No. 55-19, at 25]. At the time of Mr. Lane’s death, he described staffing levels

as a “crazy low number,” especially since the OCCJA took over Jail operations. Id. Lt.

Reeves stated that “with the level of staffing, the platoon had roughly 9 to 13 officers on

it, and we house anywhere between 1,400 and 1,700 residents. So the staffing level just

made it difficult to deal with any kind of large situations, or if an incident happened, it

would distract from the officers being able to take care of everything that they had to take

care of on a day-to-day basis.” Id. at 27. He confirmed that, with short staffing, officers

could not be expected to perform all required sight checks, especially on the 13th medical

floor. Id. at 28. Lt. Reeves further testified that it was an issue to have the inmates’ phone

calls route to the clinic phone, which was unmanned and turned down. Id. at 29. Reeves

did not dispute telling the OSBI that “the phones transferring to central control instead of

the clinic might have given officers a 15-minute faster response time, which could have

saved Lane’s life.” Id. at 30.

Tiffany Carter was Chief of Security for the Jail at the time of Mr. Lane’s murder.

Ms. Carter testified that she tried to take the issue of understaffing to Greg Williams (Jail

Administrator) and William Monday (Assistant Jail Administrator) in the months leading

up to Mr. Lane’s death [Doc. No. 55-25, at 8-9]. She testified that sometimes they told her

they were working on it and, other times, they told her to make it work. Id. at 9. At the time

of Mr. Lane’s death, Ms. Carter was working with a 40% staffing level. Id. at 11. For perfect

staffing, the Jail should have had 192 staff members, but only had 77 staff members. Id.

She testified that the serious level of understaffing created a dangerous environment for

Jail staff and inmates. Id. at 12. Ms. Carter testified that she felt as though there was not

effective communication from Mr. Williams or Mr. Monday. Id. at 21. When Mr. Williams

and Mr. Monday would tell her that they were hiring, she testified that “we would have

these meetings of what we were going to do, how they were going to hire, but we never

really did what we said we were going to do.” Id. at 15. Finally, Ms. Carter testified that

she wrote a memo to Jail Administrators in September of 2020, in which she explained that

she had never seen staffing levels as low as they were at that time. Id. at 20.

The Oklahoma Department of Health (OSDH) conducts regular inspections of the

Jail. In February 2021, the OSDH Jail Inspection Division (JID) conducted an annual

inspection and investigation of the Jail [Doc. No. 55-28]. The JID found that the Jail was

not in substantial compliance with Oklahoma Jail Standards, OAC Title 310, Chapter 670.

The JID report cites to incidents of inmate deaths at the Jail and noted that Jail staff

repeatedly failed to conduct timely sight checks between June of 2020 and February of

2021. The JID report further found that interviews with inmates housed on the 13th floor

indicated a lack of staff presence on a regular basis. The JID report also highlighted

negative results with respect to inmate distress calls “with the phone either continually

ringing with no response or not ringing at all.” Pltf.’s AMF No. 25; Doc. No. 55-28.

Plaintiff has also supplied evidence of incidents involving other inmates in which

there were allegedly corresponding failures to supervise the inmates. Plaintiff cites to

Officer Kaleb Landes’ interview with the OSBI, from which the OSBI reported that “the

staffing levels at the Oklahoma County Jail created an environment where inmate deaths

were allowed to happen because there was no option to prevent them.” [Doc. No. 55-24, at

1]. In the same interview, Officer Landes relayed that an inmate had recently died in a pod

with 15-minute required sight checks and was not discovered for 12 hours. Id. at 3. In June

of 2020, a different inmate was discovered unresponsive at 5:30 p.m., after sight checks

were reportedly not performed between 12:08 p.m. and 3:38 p.m., or any time after 3:40

p.m. [Doc. No. 55-30, at 4]. In December of 2020, another inmate was reportedly assaulted

by other inmates for approximately 15 minutes before a detention officer arrived on the

floor. [Doc. No. 55-32, at 2-3]. Regarding inmate distress calls, Officer Landes stated to

the OSBI that “[t]here were times when officers did not respond to calls for hours.” [Doc.

No. 55-24, at 1].

STANDARD OF DECISION

Summary judgment is proper “if the movant shows that there is no genuine

dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”

FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a). A material fact is one that “might affect the outcome of the suit

under the governing law.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A

dispute is genuine if the facts and evidence are such that a reasonable jury could return

a verdict for the nonmoving party. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248. All facts and reasonable

inferences must be viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmovant. Id. at 255. The

inquiry is whether the facts and evidence identified by the parties present “a sufficient

disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party

must prevail as a matter of law.” Id. at 251-52.

DISCUSSION

I. Legal Framework – Municipal Liability Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983

Plaintiff asserts his claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Mr. Lane’s rights

were violated while detained at the Jail. “To state a claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must

allege the violation of a right secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States,

and must show that the alleged deprivation was committed by a person acting under color

of state law.” West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42, 48 (1988).

Generally, a local government may not be held liable under § 1983 “for an injury

inflicted solely by its employees or agents.” Monell v. Dep’t of Social Servs. of City of New

York, 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978). Rather, where a plaintiff seeks to hold a local governmental

entity liable under § 1983, he must also show that a municipal policy or custom “was the

‘moving force’ behind the injury alleged.” Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs of Bryan Cnty., Okla. v.

Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 404 (1997). Specifically, a plaintiff must demonstrate 1) an official

policy or custom; 2) causation; and 3) deliberate indifference. See Lucas v. Turn Key Health

Clinics, LLC, 58 F.4th 1127, 1145 (10th Cir. 2023).

II. Underlying Constitutional Violation

The Constitution imposes a duty on prison officials “to protect prisoners from

violence at the hands of other prisoners.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 833 (1994)

(quotation omitted). Indeed, “[h]aving incarcerated persons [with] demonstrated

proclivit[ies] for antisocial criminal, and often violent, conduct, having stripped them of

virtually every means of self-protection and foreclosed their access to outside aid, the

government and its officials are not free to let the state of nature take its course.” Id.

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted) (alterations in original). Of course, the mere

fact that a prisoner suffered injury at the hands of another prisoner does not “translate[]

into constitutional liability for prison officials responsible for the victim’s safety.” Id. at

824. Rather, to prevail on a failure to protect claim, a plaintiff must show “that he was

incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm,” and the defendant

acted with deliberate indifference, meaning the defendant “was aware of and disregarded

an excessive risk to inmate health or safety by failing to take reasonable measures to abate

the risk.” Lopez v. LeMaster, 172 F.3d 756, 761 (10th Cir. 1999) (internal quotation and

citation omitted).

In their motion, Defendants argue that Plaintiff has failed to establish that Mr. Lane

was “incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm.” See Lopez,

172 F.3d at 760. Defendants contend that claims arising from inmate-on-inmate violence

generally require evidence of either direct threats to the victim leading up to the violence;

evidence that the victim was particularly vulnerable to attacks by other inmates because of

some personal characteristic or membership; or evidence that the assailant had a recent

history of violent or disruptive behavior. Defs.’ Mot. at 12-13.

In making this argument, Defendants present an overly restrictive view of the

relevant case law and misconstrue Plaintiff’s claim. First, as the Court has stated previously

[Doc. No. 18, at 8], knowledge of specific threats or an inmate’s individual risk is not

necessarily required. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 843 (“[I]t does not matter whether the risk

comes from a single source or multiple sources, any more than it matters whether a prisoner

faces an excessive risk of attack for reasons personal to him or because all prisoners in his

situation faces such a risk.”); see also Tafoya v. Salazar, 516 F.3d 912, 916 (10th Cir. 2008)

(“The official’s knowledge of the risk need not be knowledge of a substantial risk to a

particular inmate, or knowledge of the particular manner in which injury might occur.”);

Lopez, 172 F.3d at 762, n.5 (“Even if Sheriff LeMaster was unaware of the specific risk to

appellant from his cellmates, this does not relieve him from liability.”).

Further, Plaintiff’s claim against Defendants is largely premised on “the failure to

provide any supervision of the 13th floor during the assault and after Mr. Lane repeatedly

screamed for help.” Compl., at 7. Plaintiff attributes this failure to Defendants’

longstanding history of understaffing and overcrowding the Jail and a systemic failure to

address the known problems. Accordingly, the assertions that Mr. Brown did not have a

history of being violent with Jail staff or other detainees, or that Mr. Brown and Mr. Lane

shared a cell without incident for the twenty days leading up to the murder, do not absolve

Defendants of liability.

Upon consideration of the summary judgment record, the Court finds that a

reasonable jury could conclude that Mr. Lane’s constitutional rights were violated by a

systemic failure. Courts have held that a systemic failure can serve as the underlying

constitutional violation for purposes of Monell liability. See Lucas, 58 F.4th at 1144 (“[I]t

was error for the district court to not consider a systemic failure as the underlying

constitutional violation.”). “Because municipalities act through officers, ordinarily there

will be a municipal violation only where an individual officer commits a constitutional

violation.” Crowson v. Washington Cnty., 983 F.3d 1166, 1191 (10th Cir. 2020). However,

there is a limited exception to the individual action requirement “where the alleged

violation occurred as a result of multiple officials’ actions or inactions.” Id.

In this case, Plaintiff has set forth evidence that severe understaffing at the Jail was

a longstanding and pervasive problem, known to the OCCJA and Jail staff, and that the

OCCJA knew that such understaffing posed excessive risk of inmate-on-inmate violence.

Additionally, there is sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to infer that an excessive

risk of inmate-on-inmate violence – paired with severely low staffing levels – would make

it impossible for Jail staff to reasonably respond to inmate distress calls. This is especially

true on the 13th medical floor, given that the Jail routed medical-floor inmates’ distress calls

to the unmanned and unanswered phone in the medical clinic. Viewing all facts and

reasonable inferences in favor of Plaintiff, the Court finds that Plaintiff has demonstrated

disputed material facts with respect to whether Mr. Lane suffered an underlying

constitutional violation.3

III. Municipal Liability - OCCJA

As stated above, to establish municipal liability for a constitutional violation, a

plaintiff must demonstrate 1) an official policy or custom; 2) causation; and 3) deliberate

indifference. See Lucas, 58 F.4th at 1145 (10th Cir. 2023).

a. Official Policy or Custom

An official policy or custom may take many forms, to include “a formal regulation

or policy statement, an informal custom that amounts to a widespread practice, decisions

of municipal employees with final policymaking authority, ratification by final

policymakers of the decisions of subordinates to whom authority was delegated, and the

deliberately indifferent failure to adequately train or supervise employees.” Hinkle v.

Beckham Cnty. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs, 962 F.3d 1204, 1239-40 (10th Cir. 2020) (quoting

Pyle v. Woods, 874 F.3d 1257, 1266 (10th Cir. 2017)).

On this point, Defendants merely argue that the Board cannot be held liable

“because the OCCJA is a legally separate entity over which the Board has no control over

3 Defendants also argue that Plaintiff cannot show systemic failures with respect to the Jail’s

funding or inmates’ housing assignments. In response, Plaintiff concedes that he is not asserting

those issues as distinct grounds for liability. Rather, Plaintiff’s claims center on the purported

systemic failures of severely understaffing the Jail and failing to monitor inmates.

its employees or policies.” Defs.’ Mot. at 18. Of course, both the Board and the OCCJA are

parties to this litigation. Without making any substantive argument regarding an official

policy or custom of the OCCJA, Defendants appear to have conceded the issue as to the

OCCJA. Viewing the facts and reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to

Plaintiff, the Court finds that a reasonable jury could conclude that the OCCJA maintained

an official policy or custom of understaffing the Jail and failing to monitor inmates.

b. Causation

“To establish the causation element, the challenged policy or practice must be

‘closely related to the violation of the plaintiff’s federally protected right.’” Schneider v.

City of Grand Junction Police Dept., 717 F.3d 760, 770 (10th Cir. 2013) (citation omitted).

In their motion, Defendants argue that Plaintiff has not demonstrated a causal connection

between Plaintiff’s death and the OCCJA’s purported custom of understaffing and failing

to monitor inmates. In support of their argument that Mr. Lane’s death was not caused by

any staffing or sight check issue, Defendants refer to Tiffany Carter’s testimony that Mr.

Lane’s death was “a spontaneous and serious incident that was not predictable.” Defs.’ Mot.

at 25.

In response, Plaintiff contends that the Jail’s insufficient staffing and monitoring of

inmates created the conditions for Mr. Brown’s extended bludgeoning and murder of Mr.

Lane. Specifically, Plaintiff asserts that: had Mr. Lane’s pod been sufficiently staffed,

“timely intervention would have occurred quickly after Mr. Lane’s first cry for help”; had

the officers performed the requisite 30-minute sight checks, the assault would not have

escalated into an extended and lethal bludgeoning; Lt. Doroteo agreed that understaffing

was causing an increase in inmate deaths at the Jail; and the multicounty grand jury report

listed “the failure of detention officers to conduct proper [sight] checks on inmates” as one

major issue leading to inmate deaths. Additionally, with respect to the Jail’s custom of

routing inmate distress calls from Mr. Lane’s pod to “a phone in medical that was not

manned or routinely answered,” Plaintiff cites to an interview response given by Lt. Reeves

that routing inmate distress calls to central control instead might have given officers a 15-

minute faster response time, which could have saved Mr. Lane’s life. Further, the summary

judgment record demonstrates that Mr. Lane’s murder was not the result of a brief attack,

in which case the argument might be made that even 30-minute sight checks could not have

saved Mr. Lane’s life. Rather, Mr. Lane was beaten to death over a period of 30-45 minutes,

during which two 30-minute sight checks were missed and there was no officer supervision

on the floor. There is also evidence in the record that Mr. Hernandez saw Mr. Lane alive

and attempting to fight back for much of the beating, which could also lead a reasonable

jury to conclude that proper staffing and timely sight checks would have stopped the assault

from extending into a lengthy bludgeoning and murder. Upon careful consideration of the

summary judgment record, the Court finds that a reasonable jury could determine that the

OCCJA’s custom of understaffing the Jail and failing to monitor inmates was closely

related to Mr. Lane’s murder.

c. Deliberate Indifference

Deliberate indifference in the municipal liability context “may be satisfied when the

[defendant] has actual or constructive notice that its action or failure to act is substantially

certain to result in a constitutional violation, and it consciously or deliberately chooses to

disregard the risk of harm.” Layton v. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs of Okla. Cnty., 512 F. App’x

861, 871 (10th Cir. 2013) (unpublished); Barney v. Pulsipher, 143 F.3d 1299, 1307 (10th

Cir. 1998) (“In the municipal liability context, deliberate indifference is an objective

standard which is satisfied if the risk is so obvious that the official should have known of

it.”). While notice is typically established “by proving the existence of a pattern of tortious

conduct,” deliberate indifference may also be found “absent a pattern of unconstitutional

behavior if a violation of federal rights is a highly predictable or plainly obvious

consequence of a municipality’s action or inaction[.]” Barney, 143 F.3d at 1307-08

(quotation marks and citation omitted).

In their motion, Defendants contend that Greg Williams (Jail Administrator) made

various efforts between July 1, 2020, and January 19, 2023, to address the Jail’s

understaffing. However, as noted by Plaintiff, Mr. Williams’ affidavit does not include

dates for his purported efforts to address the Jail’s staffing levels, leaving the Court unable

to determine whether Mr. Williams made any reasonable efforts to address understaffing

prior to Mr. Lane’s death in January of 2021. Further, Plaintiff has provided evidence that

the OCCJA knew of the dangers associated with understaffing the Jail prior to Mr. Lane’s

death; that Jail staff repeatedly raised the dangers of understaffing to Jail Administrators;

that Jail Administrators told the Jail staff to “make it work”; that a few months prior to Mr.

Lane’s death, the Jail’s Chief of Security sent the Jail Administrators a memorandum,

explaining that staffing levels were as low as she had ever seen; and that, when Jail

Administrators met with Ms. Carter to discuss hiring efforts, “we never really did what we

said we were going to do.” [Doc. No. 55-25, at 9- 15].

Viewing all facts and reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to Plaintiff,

a jury could conclude that a violation of a pretrial detainee’s Fourteenth Amendment rights

is a plainly obvious consequence of the purported customs of severely understaffing the

Jail, failure to monitor inmates, and failure to respond to inmate distress calls; and that the

OCCJA was deliberately indifferent to conditions at the Jail. For these reasons, Defendants’

Motion for Summary Judgment is DENIED as to the OCCJA.

IV. Municipal Liability – The Board

With respect to the Board, the Court has previously rejected the notion that the

Board cannot be held liable as a matter of law merely because the Jail is operated by the

sheriff or, in this case, the OCCJA. See Kauble v. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs of Okla. ex rel.

Okla. Cnty. Sheriff’s Off., Case No. CIV-17-729-D, 2018 WL 912285, at *3-4 (W.D. Okla.

Feb. 15, 2018) (“Under Oklahoma law, a county is a suable entity that is sued through its

board of county commissioners. … [D]etermining a party’s responsibility for a policy that

leads to a federal rights violation involves a fact-specific inquiry, and although a county’s

sheriff has charge and custody of the Jail, the board of commissioners sets policies,

including fiscal policies, that may be implicated in a violation of a county inmate’s federal

rights.”).

However, Plaintiff cites to no authority for the proposition that the Board is

automatically liable on the same evidence supplied for municipal liability against the

OCCJA. Throughout Plaintiff’s response, he combines the OCCJA and the Board, but

almost all specific evidence to establish municipal liability references the OCCJA or Jail

Administrators (Greg Williams and William Monday). For instance, Plaintiff focuses on

the knowledge of the leaders of the OCCJA with respect to systemic problems at the Jail;

the OCCJA’s failure to remedy the understaffing issue in light of this knowledge; and the

fact that Mr. Williams’ efforts to hire additional staff were not reasonable. In response to

Defendants’ argument that Plaintiff has failed to evince a policy of the Board, such as

failure to provide the OCCJA with sufficient funding to respond to the understaffing crisis,

Plaintiff merely concedes that he is not seeking a failure-to-fund theory. This is insufficient

to survive summary judgment as to the Board. To be sure, the Court is not ruling that the

Board cannot be held liable for constitutional violations that occur at the Jail. But merely

treating the OCCJA and the Board as one party is insufficient at the summary judgment

stage. Although the County’s creation of the OCCJA in “no way guarantees immunity to

[Oklahoma] County,” Plaintiff must still demonstrate a disputed material fact with respect

to his claim against the Board. Upon consideration of Plaintiff’s summary judgment

briefing, he has failed to do so. Chichakli v. Samuels, Case No. CIV-15-687-D, 2016 WL

2743542, at *4 (W.D. Okla. May 11, 2016).

CONCLUSION

Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment [Doc. No. 49] is DENIED as to the

Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority and GRANTED as to the Board of County

Commissioners for Oklahoma County. Final judgment in favor of the Board and against

Plaintiff will be entered at the conclusion of the case. The remaining parties shall propose

deadlines for the remaining scheduling order deadlines within 10 days of this Order.

IT IS SO ORDERED this 11'* day of March, 2025.

Ny Q.OyPt

TIMOTHY D. DeGIUSTI

Chief United States District Judge

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