Andujar v. Rodriguez

• Decision Date: 15 May 2007
• Docket Number: No. 05-17162.,05-17162.
• Citation: 486 F.3d 1199
• Parties: Julio Cesar ANDUJAR, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jorge RODRIGUEZ, et al., Defendants, Harry Newcomb, Robert A. Barea, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

486 F.3d 1199

Julio Cesar ANDUJAR, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jorge RODRIGUEZ, et al., Defendants, Harry Newcomb, Robert A. Barea, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 05-17162.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

May 15, 2007.

Christopher Allan Green, Miami, FL, for Defendants-Appellants.

P. Christine Deruelle, Christopher R.J. Pace, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, LLP, Miami, FL, for Andujar.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING

Before TJOFLAT, HULL and BOWMAN,^* Circuit Judges.

BOWMAN, Circuit Judge:

Appellee's Petition for Panel Rehearing is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. While almost all of the previous opinion remains the same, this court has revised footnote 4 of the previous opinion to address a matter raised in Appellee's Petition for Panel Rehearing. Thus, the court VACATES and WITHDRAWS the previous opinion dated March 16, 2007, and substitutes the following opinion. In this revised opinion, the former footnote 4 now appears as footnote 5.

REVISED OPINION

This is an interlocutory appeal by Harry Newcomb and Robert Barea, paramedics for the City of Miami, Florida, from the denial of summary judgment based on qualified immunity. Julio Cesar Andujar sued Newcomb and Barea under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Newcomb and Barea violated his constitutional rights by acting with deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs. We reverse the denial of summary judgment.

I.

On the morning of May 2, 1999, Andujar and accomplices hijacked a freight truck at gunpoint.¹ As police pursued the truck, Andujar jumped from the truck and fled on foot into a residential neighborhood. Police officers canvassed the neighborhood, and a police dog located Andujar hiding in the yard of a home. The dog bit Andujar on his right upper thigh and dragged him from the yard to the street. Andujar's thigh began to bleed, and a police officer called for medical assistance. Newcomb and Barea responded to the request for medical assistance.

Newcomb and Barea determined that Andujar had multiple puncture wounds on his thigh but that his vital signs were good. They cleaned the wounds and wrapped Andujar's thigh in a sterile bandage. After the bandage was applied, Andujar's wounds stopped bleeding, but he continued to feel pain. Newcomb and Barea released Andujar to police custody for post-arrest processing.

While being transported to the police station, Andujar was tortured by a police officer who repeatedly plunged a police baton into the bandaged wounds. The wounds began bleeding again. Upon arrival at the station, Andujar was taken to an interrogation room and left alone. Blood from his wounds began puddling on the floor, and he called for help. When police officers returned to the room and saw the blood, they arranged for Andujar to be transported to a hospital. Andujar's wounds were stitched at the hospital approximately two hours after he was bitten.

Andujar brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Newcomb, Barea, and several police officers. Andujar's claim against Newcomb and Barea asserts that they acted with deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs when they released him to police custody instead of transporting him to a hospital for further medical treatment. Newcomb and Barea moved for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. The district court denied the motion, and this appeal followed.

II.

"Although the denial of summary judgment generally is not a final appealable order subject to immediate appeal, an interlocutory appeal may be taken where the district court denies the defense of qualified immunity and the appeal involves a question of law." Gray ex rel. Alexander v. Bostic, 458 F.3d 1295, 1303 (11th Cir. 2006), petition for cert. filed, 75 U.S.L.W. 3355 (U.S. Dec. 27, 2006) (No. 06-895). We review de novo a district court's denial of a motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. See Bozeman v. Orum, 422 F.3d 1265, 1267 (11th Cir. 2005) (per curiam).

III.

"Qualified immunity protects government officials performing discretionary functions from suits in their individual capacities unless their conduct violates `clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.'" Dalrymple v. Reno, 334 F.3d 991, 994 (11th Cir. 2003) (quoting Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 739, 122 S.Ct. 2508, 153 L.Ed.2d 666 (2002) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982))), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 935, 124 S.Ct. 1655, 158 L.Ed.2d 355 (2004); see also Lee v. Ferraro, 284 F.3d 1188, 1194 (11th Cir. 2002) (ruling that qualified immunity "protect[s] from suit `all but the plainly incompetent or one who is knowingly violating the federal law'" (quoting Willingham v. Loughnan, 261 F.3d 1178, 1187 (11th Cir. 2001))). When a government official seeks summary judgment based on qualified immunity, courts apply a two-step test to determine whether qualified immunity is appropriate. First, "[a] court required to rule upon the qualified immunity issue must consider ... this threshold question: Taken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury, do the facts alleged show the officer's conduct violated a constitutional right?" Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001). When a court answers this question affirmatively, the court moves to the second step, which is to consider whether the constitutional right was "clearly established" on the date of the violation. Id.²

We first turn to the question "whether [Andujar's] allegations, if true, establish a constitutional violation." Hope, 536 U.S. at 736, 122 S.Ct. 2508. Andujar asserts that Newcomb and Barea violated the Fourteenth Amendment by acting with deliberate indifference to his serious medical condition. See Crosby v. Monroe County, 394 F.3d 1328, 1335 (11th Cir. 2004). While Andujar admits that Newcomb and Barea cleaned and bandaged his dog-bite wounds and that the wounds stopped bleeding, Andujar contends that the paramedics acted with deliberate indifference when they did not immediately transport him to a hospital for further treatment. According to Andujar, there is a genuine issue as to whether Newcomb and Barea "intentionally delayed providing necessary medical treatment to Andujar," Br. of Andujar at 27, when they "released Andujar to the custody of the Miami-Dade Police Department, leaving it to the police to determine when he should receive further medical treatment," id. at 26.

To prevail on his Fourteenth Amendment³ claim, Andujar "`must satisfy both an objective and a subjective inquiry. First, [he] must prove an objectively serious medical need. Second, [he] must prove that the [government] official acted with deliberate indifference to that need.'" Bozeman, 422 F.3d at 1272 (quoting Brown v. Johnson, 387 F.3d 1344, 1351 (11th Cir. 2004)). We have defined an objectively serious medical need as "`one that is so obvious that even a lay person would easily recognize the necessity for a doctor's attention.'" Farrow v. West, 320 F.3d 1235, 1243 (11th Cir. 2003) (quoting Hill v. Dekalb Reg'l Youth Det. Ctr., 40 F.3d 1176, 1187 (11th Cir. 1994)). Viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Andujar, Andujar's dog-bite wounds could be deemed objectively serious. Andujar presented evidence that the wounds covered both the front and back of his thigh, that the wounds were more than superficial, that he was crying in pain, and that his ability to walk was impaired.⁴

Andujar cannot establish, however, that Newcomb and Barea acted with deliberate indifference to his medical needs. To satisfy this subjective part of the Fourteenth Amendment inquiry, Andujar is required to prove three things: (1) that Newcomb and Barea knew of a risk of serious harm; (2) that Newcomb and Barea disregarded that risk; and (3) that the conduct of Newcomb and Barea amounted to more than gross negligence. Bozeman, 422 F.3d at 1272. Andujar's claim fails on the third element, if not the first two.⁵ There is no question that Andujar received prompt medical treatment for the dog-bite wounds. Newcomb and Barea responded to the scene of the arrest and cleaned and dressed the wounds. Newcomb and Barea ensured that the wounds stopped bleeding, that Andujar's condition was stable, and that Andujar's vital signs were good. Only then did they release Andujar to the custody of the police for processing of the serious charges against him. Newcomb and Barea assumed that the police would transport Andujar to a medical facility for further treatment after processing. Andujar's medical needs at the time Newcomb and Barea released him to the police were not urgent,⁶ and to the extent that Newcomb and Barea's conduct delayed Andujar's receipt of stitches by two hours or less, the short delay was tolerable to give the police an opportunity to book Andujar. See Harris v. Coweta County, 21 F.3d 388, 393-94 (11th Cir. 1994) ("The tolerable length of delay in providing medical attention depends on the nature of the medical need and the reason for the delay."). Newcomb and Barea's conduct, tested by the ordinary standards of negligence, did not amount to more than mere negligence. See Adams v. Poag, 61 F.3d 1537, 1543 (11th Cir. 1995) ("`[I]t is obduracy and wantonness, not inadvertence or error in good faith,' that violates the Eighth Amendment in `supplying medical needs.'" (quoting Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312, 319, 106 S.Ct. 1078, 89 L.Ed.2d 251 (1986))).⁷

Alternately, even if we were to find Newcomb and Barea's conduct constitutionally impermissible, we would nonetheless conclude that Newcomb and Barea are shielded from civil liability under the second step of the qualified immunity analysis because "their actions did not violate `clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable...