Williams v. Jackson

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

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No. 09-1843

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Eric Williams, *

*

Plaintiff - Appellee, *

*

v. *

*

Moses Jackson, Captain, East Arkansas * Appeal from the United States

Regional Unit, ADC, individual and * District Court for the

official capacities; Jeremy Andrews, * Eastern District of Arkansas.

Major, East Arkansas Regional Unit, *

ADC, individual and official capacities; *

Marion Beard, Lt., East Arkansas *

Regional Unit, ADC, individual and *

official capacities; Billy Parsons, in *

official and individual capacities, *

*

Defendants - Appellants. *

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Submitted: December 17, 2009

Filed: March 25, 2010

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Before WOLLMAN, RILEY, and MELLOY, Circuit Judges.

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MELLOY, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff Eric Williams, a former Arkansas inmate, brought Eighth Amendment

claims against a prison maintenance supervisor and three correction officers alleging

that they willfully and maliciously exposed him to ultraviolet radiation resulting in

physical injury. The defendants argued that Williams failed to adequately exhaust his

administrative remedies and that they were entitled to qualified immunity. The district

court denied qualified immunity as to all four defendants and found that Williams had

adequately exhausted all of the administrative remedies practically available to him.

We hold that defendant Parsons, the maintenance supervisor, is entitled to

qualified immunity. As to the other defendants, we hold that, given the prevalence of

outstanding factual disputes, the district court correctly denied qualified immunity.

Finally, the district court’s rejection of the defendants’ failure-to-exhaust affirmative

defense is not an appealable final order. It is legally and conceptually separate from

the issues involved in the qualified-immunity appeal. Accordingly, it is not

inextricably intertwined with the qualified-immunity issue, and we will not address

it at this time.

I. Background

When Williams was an Arkansas inmate, he was in a shared room containing

a germicidal ultraviolet radiation lamp used for the treatment of tuberculosis. In

normal operation, the lamp contained a shield to protect occupants from exposure to

the ultraviolet radiation. The allegations in the present case focus on correction

officers’ removal of the shield and exposure of Williams to radiation.

The parties agree that correction officers Jackson, Andrews, and Beard

conducted a “shake down” of the room looking for contraband. According to

Williams’s deposition testimony and affidavit, an inmate made comments to these

officers when the officers were leaving the room. As an apparent act of retaliation,

the officers then removed the protective shield from the ultraviolet lamp, and one of

the officers stated, “I got something for y’all.” Williams states that he and other

inmates asked the officers to replace the shield or turn off the lamp due to its danger

but that the officers refused. Williams also states that the shield contained a

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conspicuous warning label. Further, the inmates and officers alike had previously

observed maintenance personnel don protective gear before working on or handling

the lights. Williams argues that, based on these allegations, it is necessary at this

preliminary stage of the proceedings to infer that officials knew of health risks from

the unshielded ultraviolet radiation lamp and that they purposefully exposed him to

the ultraviolet light as a malicious and retaliatory act.

A guard who was not involved in the “shake down” and who is not named as

a defendant in this case arrived for work the next day. He saw the unshielded lamp

and ordered that it be turned off. At the time it was turned off, the unshielded lamp

had been exposing Williams to radiation for at least fourteen hours.

Williams was sleeping when the guard arrived. The guard woke Williams and

took him and other inmates to the infirmary. The inmates reported red skin, burning

eyes, swollen eyes, blurred vision, and headaches. Medical reports show that

Williams exhibited facial swelling during this initial infirmary visit. Williams

received eyedrops and patches for both eyes. He wore the patches for two days. He

began having migraine headaches shortly thereafter and received painkillers for the

headaches.

In a return visit to the prison infirmary, Williams exhibited redness in his eyes.

He claims that his headaches continue through the present time and that he suffers

sporadically blurred vision as well as an increased risk of cancer. He has not sought

medical help for these alleged symptoms since his release from prison. He attributes

this fact to a lack of money and insurance. Williams asserts that an expert will testify

to offer an opinion that his symptoms are of a type that can be caused by ultraviolet

radiation. The expert is not a medical doctor, but rather, an ultraviolet lighting

specialist.

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Shortly after these events, Williams filed an administrative complaint through

the prison’s grievance system. The administrative complaint named the three

correction-officer defendants: Jackson, Andrews, and Beard. Williams received no

relief through the administrative grievance system, and he subsequently filed the

present action against Jackson, Andrews, and Beard in the district court. After

Williams was released from prison, he learned that Parsons purportedly received

notice of the unshielded lamp but failed to take timely action to replace the shield.

Williams added Parsons as a defendant in an amended complaint.

The defendants moved for summary judgment asserting qualified immunity and

failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The correction-officer defendants asserted

that they removed the shield because prisoners had damaged it, the officers had no

knowledge of possible harm from ultraviolet radiation, and the prisoners did not

demand that the defendants replace the shield. The officers also asserted a general

argument that, as a matter of law, reasonable officers would not have known that the

lamp could be harmful. Parsons asserted that Williams’s allegations against him

suggested, at the most, garden variety negligence in that Williams described merely

Parson’s failure to act in a timely manner to repair or replace the shield.

II. Discussion

A. Jurisdiction

The parties devote considerable argument to the question of whether Williams

adequately exhausted his administrative remedies through the prison grievance

system. It is well established that, in the absence of outstanding questions of material

fact, we have jurisdiction over interlocutory appeals regarding denials of qualified

immunity. White v. McKinley, 519 F.3d 806, 812–13 (8th Cir. 2008). That

jurisdiction, however, is limited and does not extend to other issues unless those issues

are free of material factual disputes and inextricably intertwined with the legal issues

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involved in the qualified immunity analysis. Id. at 815. Issues are not inextricably

intertwined if different legal analyses or standards apply to resolution of the issues.

Id.; see also Kincade v. City of Blue Springs, 64 F.3d 389, 395 (8th Cir. 1995) (“Both

issues require application of the same constitutional test, and therefore, the question

concerning . . . constitutional protection is coterminous with, or subsumed in the

qualified immunity issue.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the failure-to-

exhaust affirmative defense involves an entirely separate and distinct legal standard

and analysis than the qualified immunity issue. Accordingly, it is not inextricably

intertwined with the qualified immunity issue, and we may not address it at this time.

Further, we note as an aside that all of the defendants’ arguments on this point appear

to rely on disputed facts, providing a separate basis for refusing to review this issue

on an interlocutory basis.

B. Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity generally shields “[g]overnment officials performing

discretionary functions . . . from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct

does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a

reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818

(1982). To resolve a government official’s claim of qualified immunity, we apply a

two-part test, asking whether the plaintiff has demonstrated a violation of a

constitutional right and whether that constitutional right was clearly established at the

time of the violation. Id. We may address these questions in either order. Pearson

v. Callahan, 129 S. Ct. 808, 818 (2009).

i. Correction-Officer Defendants

Williams alleges excessive force and deliberate indifference, both in violation

of the Eighth Amendment, based on the correction-officer defendants’ purportedly

retributory and malicious behavior in purposefully removing the shield, exposing him

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to radiation, and ignoring demands to replace the shield or deactivate the light. We

first address the excessive force claim.

It is “well established that a malicious and sadistic use of force by a prison

official against a prisoner, done with the intent to injure and causing actual injury, is

enough to establish a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual

punishment clause.” Foulk v. Charrier, 262 F.3d 687, 702 (8th Cir. 2001). The

Supreme Court recently clarified that the extent of any resulting injury, while material

to the question of damages and informative as to the likely degree of force applied, is

not in and of itself a threshold requirement for proving this type of Eighth Amendment

claim. See Wilkins v. Gaddy, 130 S. Ct. 1175 (2010) (per curiam). In doing so, the

Court expressly rejected the theory that lower courts may dismiss such claims based

solely on the de minimis nature of the resulting injury. Id. at *1–2. The Court,

however, left open the possibility of dismissal where the injury conclusively shows

that the force applied was not unconstitutional. Id. at *4.

The Court’s analysis rested on the well-established rule that, “[t]he ‘core

judicial inquiry’ . . . [is] not whether a certain quantum of injury was sustained, but

rather ‘whether force was applied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore

discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.’” Id. at *2 (quoting Hudson

v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 7 (1992)). In other words, because “not . . . every

malevolent touch by a prison guard gives rise to a federal cause of action,” a de

minimis application of force will not give result in a constitutional violation. Hudson,

503 U.S. at 9; see also Wilkins, 2010 WL 596513 at *2 (“An inmate who complains

of a push or shove that causes no discernable injury almost certainly fails to state a

valid excessive force claim.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). Where the force

applied is excessive, however, a constitutional claim may survive summary dismissal

even if the resulting injury is de minimis. Wilkins, 2010 WL 59651713 at *4.

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Here, the correction-officer defendants present two arguments, one factual and

one legal, in attempting to show that there was no violation of a clearly established

constitutional right. Neither argument provides a basis for relief at this stage of the

proceedings.

Regarding the factual argument, the officers rely on their own version of the

facts to assert that they took no malicious or retaliatory action towards Williams.

Such an argument may be presented at trial, but in our review, we must interpret the

record in the light most favorable to Williams. Howard v. Kansas City Police Dep’t,

570 F.3d 984, 988 (8th Cir. 2009). Accordingly, for the purpose of this appeal, we

interpret the record as showing that the officers acted in response to derisive inmate

comments, removed the shield as a retaliatory act, ignored inmate complaints and

requests to deactivate the light, and made a comment to inmates in the room

demonstrating a malicious and retaliatory intent. We make no judgment as to the

strength of the officers’ contrary factual assertions. We note only that the officers’

assertions are largely irreconcilable with Williams’s affidavit and deposition

testimony. As such, we need not address further any arguments that rely upon the

officers’ disputed assertions.

The officers’ legal argument merits more consideration. The officers argue that

reasonable correction officers in their position would not have known that disinfecting

ultraviolet radiation could be harmful and that, in the absence of authority holding that

inmates have a clearly established right to be free from such radiation, qualified

immunity applies. In this regard, the officers assert that Williams will need an expert

to prove causation and that if experts can debate the level of hazard posed by the

radiation, a right to be free from such radiation could not have been clearly

established.

We believe this argument overstates the degree of specificity required in

existing law for a constitutional right to be clearly established. It also ignores the

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importance of reasonable factual inferences that we must draw against the officers.

In presenting qualified immunity arguments, plaintiffs and defendants often spar over

the appropriate level of specificity to apply in assessing whether there has been a

violation of a clearly established constitutional right. In the present case, Williams

argues that the officer defendants are attempting to make his “rights seem trivial and

obscure by framing them very narrowly.” He concludes that it is not surprising that

he and the district court cited no cases dealing with disinfecting ultraviolet radiation

because, “[c]ase law is unable to keep up with the countless tools and methods by

which a state official might physically harm a prisoner.”

“Qualified immunity analysis ‘must be undertaken in light of the specific

context of the case, not as a broad general proposition.’” Smook v. Minnehaha

County, 457 F.3d 806, 813 (8th Cir. 2006) (quoting Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194,

201(2001)). That having been said, officers cannot escape suit merely because no

prior case involved exactly the same facts as alleged by the plaintiff. Rather, “the

contours of an alleged constitutional right must be ‘sufficiently clear that a reasonable

official would understand that what he is doing violates that right.’” Id. (quoting

Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987)). In other words, the rights as set

forth in the holdings of existing cases are clearly established not only as to the facts

of the prior cases, but also as applied in contexts that reasonable officers would

understand to fall within the scope of those rights.

We have often stated that “[o]fficials are not liable for bad guesses in gray

areas; they are liable for transgressing bright lines.” Littrell v. Franklin, 388 F.3d 578,

582 (8th Cir. 2004) (quotation omitted). We have never held, however, that bright

lines only exist where facts as alleged are identical to what a court has previously

addressed. Rather, “[t]he Supreme Court has clearly stated that in establishing

qualified immunity, the test must be applied at a level of specificity that approximates

the actual circumstances of the case.” Engleman v. Murray, 546 F.3d 944, 949 n.4

(8th Cir. 2008).

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Here, for purposes of our review, the allegations in the case involve the

malicious and retaliatory exposure of inmates to an apparently intended harm without

a penological purpose. In our view, these are the allegations that matter when

“approximat[ing] the actual circumstances of the case,” and we emphasize the

allegations of purposefulness and retaliation. Id. We do not believe that qualified

immunity in this context hinges on the question of whether prior cases referenced the

particular, technological manner in which force was applied. Similarly, we do not

believe qualified immunity applies simply because the precise degree of harm likely

to result was uncertain. As already discussed, the material inquiry is not the degree

of harm, but rather, the degree of force applied and the reason for applying that force.

The constitution clearly protects against the “sadistic use of force by a prison official,”

Foulk, 262 F.3d at 702. As such, reasonable officers are on sufficient notice that they

may not purposefully expose prisoners to potentially harmful radiation in the complete

absence of a penological purpose.

Importantly, the record here taken in a light most favorable to Williams shows

just such a complete absence of a penological purpose in removing the shield and in

failing to deactivate the light immediately upon removal of the shield. Given the

reasonable inference that the officers acted maliciously in an effort to cause harm, and

the allegations that an injury did result, the correction-officer defendants are not

entitled to qualified immunity at this time. Similarly, in this case, the same rationale

supports the denial of qualified immunity as to the related claim of deliberate

indifference.

ii. Maintenance-Supervisor Parsons

Regarding maintenance-supervisor Parsons, we find that Williams has failed

to allege a constitutional violation; Williams alleges nothing more than simple

negligence. The claim against Parsons is in the nature of a deliberate-indifference

claim, and such a claim requires more than a showing of simple or even gross

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negligence. See Krout v. Goemmer, 583 F.3d 557, 567 (8th Cir. 2009) (“Even if an

official acts unreasonably in failing to take particular measures to improve conditions

at a jail facility, for example, ‘reasonableness is a negligence standard,’ and

‘negligence cannot give rise’ to a deliberate indifference claim.” (quoting Crow v.

Montgomery, 403 F.3d 598, 602 (8th Cir. 2005)). Accordingly, even if we were to

assume that an inmate or former inmate could present a viable deliberate indifference

claim against a maintenance supervisor, Williams has not alleged facts that might

support such a claim in this case.

III. Conclusion

We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand for further proceedings consistent

with this opinion.

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