Spears v. Ruth

• Decision Date: 10 December 2009
• Docket Number: No. 09-5408.,09-5408.
• Citation: 589 F.3d 249
• Parties: Eunice M. SPEARS, individually and as Representative of the Estate of Christopher McCargo et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Matthew RUTH and City of Cleveland, Tennessee, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

589 F.3d 249

Eunice M. SPEARS, individually and as Representative of the Estate of Christopher McCargo et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Matthew RUTH and City of Cleveland, Tennessee, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 09-5408.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: November 18, 2009.

Decided and Filed: December 10, 2009.

ARGUED: Reid A. Spaulding, Watson, Roach, Batson, Rowell & Lauderback, P.L.C., Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellants. Zachary H. Greene, Miller & Martin PLLC, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Reid A. Spaulding, Robert H. Watson, Jr., Watson, Roach, Batson, Rowell & Lauderback, P.L.C., Knoxville, Tennessee, for Appellants. Zachary H. Greene, Roger W. Dickson, Travis R. McDonough, Kevin D. Hudson, Miller & Martin PLLC, Chattanooga, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Before: MARTIN and SUTTON, Circuit Judges; REEVES, District Judge.^*

OPINION

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., Circuit Judge.

Matthew Ruth, a police officer, and the City of Cleveland, Tennessee, bring this interlocutory appeal of the district court's denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds. Eunice M. Spears, mother of the deceased, responds individually and as representative of the estate of Christopher McCargo. Christie McCargo, the daughter of the deceased, Clay McCargo and Madeline McCargo, relatives of the deceased, respond individually. Officer Ruth claims that the district court erred in denying his request for summary judgment and that he is entitled to qualified immunity as a matter of law because plaintiffs have not shown that Officer Ruth was "deliberately indifferent" to Chrisopher McCargo's serious illness or injury while McCargo was in Officer Ruth's care. "Deliberate indifference" is required to establish a Fourteenth Amendment claim for failure to provide medical assistance.¹ The City of Cleveland claims that the district court erred in denying its request for summary judgment because plaintiffs have not shown that the city's "no transport" policy caused a constitutional violation. This showing is necessary to establish a cause of action against a municipality under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.² For the reasons set forth below, we REVERSE the district court's denial of summary judgment to Officer Ruth and the City of Cleveland and REMAND for entry of judgment for the defendants.

I.

In February 2006, Officer Ruth received a dispatch that a man, later identified as Christopher McCargo, was running up and down the street, hallucinating and otherwise behaving bizarrely. When Officer Ruth arrived at the scene, McCargo told Officer Ruth that he had smoked crack cocaine. Shortly thereafter, the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) arrived, and, after examining McCargo, decided not to take him to the hospital. A factual dispute exists regarding whether Officer Ruth told the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) that McCargo had been behaving in a bizarre manner and that McCargo had admitted smoking crack cocaine. It is unclear whether McCargo affirmatively refused medical treatment or remained silent when asked if he needed help.

Officer Ruth arrested McCargo for public intoxication and transported him to the Bradley County Justice Center. Witnesses at the scene and Officer Ruth testified that McCargo kicked violently once placed into the back seat of the car. When Officer Ruth arrived at the jail, Bradley County jail officers, including a nurse, noticed McCargo "rocking back and forth stating don't let the dogs get me." The nurse performed another medical exam before checking McCargo into the jail, though Officer Ruth told them that the "EMTs at the scene had already cleared him." Testimony differs as to whether Officer Ruth told the Bradley County jail officers that McCargo admitted smoking crack cocaine and that the EMTs had noticed something white in McCargo's mouth.³

As McCargo continued to hallucinate, jail officers placed him in a restraint chair "for his own safety," tasing him to "relax his muscles." McCargo remained restrained for approximately three and a half hours, during which time he was calm but continued to hallucinate. Shortly after the officers released him from the chair, McCargo began to shake and spit up blood and then became unconscious. EMS personnel took McCargo to the hospital where he was diagnosed with respiratory and cardiac failure and multi-organ failure resulting from cocaine use. McCargo lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered. He died eleven months later.

At the time that Officer Ruth encountered McCargo, two conflicting police department policies regarding the transportation of individuals for medical services existed. One policy instructed police who encountered detainees exhibiting signs of "excited delirium" to transport them to the hospital for treatment, making no provision for officers to engage the services of an EMS vehicle instead.⁴ However, Police Chief Wes Snyder's concurrent written memorandum prohibited his officers from transporting any individual to the hospital in a police vehicle for medical services. Plaintiffs claim that this policy caused Officer Ruth not to transport McCargo to the hospital himself, resulting in his death.

Plaintiffs filed their original complaint in the Circuit Court of Bradley County, Tennessee. The Defendants removed the case to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. The defendants timely filed motions for summary judgment asserting various defenses including qualified immunity. Summary judgment was granted for Defendants on all grounds but two: (1) Ruth's request for summary judgment on the basis that he was protected by qualified immunity against the charge of violating McCargo's Fourteenth Amendment right to adequate medical care; and (2) the City's request for summary judgment on plaintiffs' theory as to Police Chief Synder's "no transport" policy. Ruth and the City timely sought interlocutory review of these rulings.

II.

"We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo." Hiney Printing Co. v. Brantner, 243 F.3d 956, 959 (6th Cir.2001). "Summary judgment is appropriate where `the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.'" Cummings v. City of Akron, 418 F.3d 676, 682 (6th Cir.2005) (citing FED.R.CIV.P. 56(c)). "We `must view all the facts and the inferences drawn therefrom in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party,'" id. (quoting Birch v. Cuyahoga County Probate Court, 392 F.3d 151, 157 (6th Cir.2004)), and we will "uphold a grant of summary judgment `[w]here the record as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the non-moving party,'" Id. (quoting Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986)).

III.

Government officials are immune from civil liability unless, in the course of performing their discretionary functions, they violate the plaintiff's clearly established constitutional rights. See Hills v. Kentucky, 457 F.3d 583, 587 (6th Cir.2006) (citing Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001)).

"Pretrial detainees have a right under the Fourteenth Amendment to adequate medical treatment, a right that is analogous to the right of prisoners under the Eighth Amendment." Estate of Carter v. City of Detroit, 408 F.3d 305, 311 (6th Cir.2005) (citing Watkins v. City of Battle Creek, 273 F.3d 682, 685-86 (6th Cir. 2001)). "A cause of action under § 1983 for failure to provide adequate medical treatment requires a showing that the defendants acted with deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of the pretrial detainee." Id. (internal citations and quotations omitted). Deliberate indifference requires that the defendants "knew of and disregarded a substantial risk of serious harm to [the plaintiff's] health and safety." Watkins, 273 F.3d at 686 (citing Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 835-37, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994)).

"There are two parts to the claim, one objective, one subjective. For the objective component, the detainee must demonstrate the existence of a sufficiently serious medical need." Estate of Carter, 408 F.3d at 311 (internal citations and quotations omitted). "For the subjective component, the detainee must demonstrate that the defendant possessed a sufficiently culpable state of mind in denying medical care." Id. (internal citations and quotations omitted).

A. Officer Ruth

In this case, plaintiffs allege that, because Officer Ruth failed to inform the EMTs on the scene and at the jail that McCargo had admitted he smoked crack cocaine, Officer Ruth violated McCargo's constitutional right to receive medical care.

1. Existence of a Sufficiently Serious Medical Need

"[W]here a plaintiff's claims arise from an injury or illness so obvious that even a layperson would easily recognize the necessity for a doctor's attention ... it is sufficient to show that [the plaintiff] actually experienced the need for medical treatment, and that the need was not addressed within a reasonable time frame." Blackmore v. Kalamazoo County, 390 F.3d 890, 899-900 (6th Cir.2004) (internal citations and quotations omitted).

In Blackmore, we previously denied prison officials' request for summary judgment, finding that the seriousness of the detainee's underlying medical condition, appendicitis, could be discerned by the average layperson without medical proof because the detainee complained of sharp stomach pain over two days and vomited, which were "classic signs of appendicitis." Id. at 900.⁵ Similarly, we have found that a detainee lying face down, unresponsive and exhibiting symptoms of delirium tremens showed medical need sufficient for lay people to recognize he needed medical attention. Bertl v. City of Westland, ___ Fed.Appx. ___, ___,...