Cavanagh v. Taranto
| Decision Date | 31 March 2015 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 12–10745–DPW. |
| Citation | 95 F.Supp.3d 220 |
| Parties | Anthony J. CAVANAGH, Individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Gina M. Scopa, Plaintiff, v. Christopher TARANTO, Dana Fitzpatrick, Daniel Fitzgibbon, and James Coppinger, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts |
Brian C. Dever, Keches Law Group, P.C., Taunton, MA, Louis J. Muggeo, Salem, MA, for Plaintiff.
On May 4, 2009, Gina Scopa, then a pretrial detainee at the Suffolk County House of Correction (“HOC”), committed suicide by hanging herself in her cell in the medical housing unit. Her son, Anthony Cavanagh,1 individually and as administrator of Ms. Scopa's estate, initiated this suit against certain HOC administrators and correctional officers under the federal Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and certain state laws. As a result of motion to dismiss practice, the two administrator defendants were terminated from the case and several of the claims were dismissed, leaving only the § 1983 claims in issue. The remaining defendants, who have been sued in their individual capacities, are four correctional officers employed by the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department who were on duty on the day of Ms. Scopa's suicide: Officers Christopher Taranto, Dana Fitzpatrick, Daniel Fitzgibbon, and James Coppinger.
Cavanagh asserts that these defendants were deliberately indifferent to Ms. Scopa's mental health and safety needs, in violation of her Fourteenth Amendment due process rights. The defendants now move to strike the report of the plaintiff's expert, Melvin Tucker, from the summary judgment record and for summary judgment in their favor.
On April 28, 2009, Ms. Scopa was detained by the Boston Police Department and placed into the custody of the HOC. Nurse Claire Diaz completed an intake process with Ms. Scopa on her arrival at the HOC, during which she reviewed Ms. Scopa's mental health history and completed a standard intake form. Ms. Scopa reported a history of a mental health disorder, denoted on the intake form as “major depression,”2 as well as use of psychotropic medication and benzodiazepines, including Klonopin, Neurontin, and Methadone HCI, the last of which she had taken the day prior. However, she also reported that she had no history of suicide attempts and that she did not demonstrate any of the warning signs of suicide risk, including feeling hopeless or helpless, thoughts of hurting herself, a recent significant loss, or a family history of suicide.
Diaz determined that Ms. Scopa did not require critical observation and did not place Ms. Scopa on suicide watch, but did refer her for a routine mental health assessment. Detainees with intake forms like Ms. Scopa's were considered low priority referrals for the mental health clinicians; accordingly, Ms. Scopa would not have been evaluated right away if there were referrals pending for higher priority inmates. Given her low priority status, Ms. Scopa never received this mental health evaluation.
The medical unit of the HOC consists of two areas: a clinic for treatment of regularly housed inmates, and a medical housing unit. The medical housing unit employs two forms of mental health watches: one consisting of a one-on-one watch where an officer maintains visual contact of the inmate, and the other consisting of checks by an officer on an inmate every fifteen minutes. For inmates who are placed on suicide watch, a suicide prevention policy governs monitoring and treatment of the inmate. Classification for mental health watch is made by the mental health clinicians; correctional officers do not have access to inmates' medical or mental health records. The officers perform one-on-one observations, as directed by the mental health clinicians, but also may be asked to assume the responsibilities of a standard correctional officer in the unit on a break.
When an inmate is admitted to the unit for mental health reasons, the mental health clinicians complete a checklist indicating items that cannot be brought into the cell. Inmates who are not on mental health watch may bring any property they have on their person into the medical housing unit.
On May 4, 2009, Fitzgibbon was stationed at the front of the infirmary, in the clinic section, and was tasked with operating the doors connecting the medical housing unit to the clinic. At no point in the relevant time period did Fitzgibbon leave this post. At approximately 3:00 p.m., Taranto—a security supervisor—and Coppinger began their shifts in the medical housing unit. At 3:40 p.m., Fitzpatrick reported to the unit to conduct a one-on-one observation of an inmate.
Ms. Scopa was admitted to the medical housing unit at or around 2:45 p.m. on May 4, 2009, due to recurrent challenges in undergoing methadone detoxification.3 Nurse Tatiana Musandipa, who evaluated Ms. Scopa on her arrival at the unit, considered her primary health issue to be dehydration and the purpose of her admittance to ensure that she remained hydrated despite vomiting. Musandipa did not observe any signs of suicidal ideation and did not place Ms. Scopa on mental health or suicide watch within the unit.
Accordingly, Ms. Scopa was not subject to the special processes or policies applicable to those on mental health or suicide watches. She was placed in cell # 16, which is not designated for mental health watches, and she was permitted to bring any property she had on her person into the unit, including her shoes and shoelaces. She was to be checked by way of officer-conducted rounds at irregular intervals every thirty minutes. These rounds are intended to ensure the safety of the inmates and account for all inmates in the unit.
The following activity occurred in Ms. Scopa's cell that afternoon, as depicted on closed-circuit television (CCTV) video footage from within the cell. Around 3:07 p.m., shortly after her arrival in the unit, a correctional officer delivered Ms. Scopa's personal affects to her. At approximately 4:00 p.m., Ms. Scopa was banging on the cell door and yelling for a nurse. Around 4:26 p.m., Nurse Samantha Thomas entered Ms. Scopa's cell to give her anti-nausea medication. Coppinger accompanied Thomas into the cell for security purposes. They left Ms. Scopa's cell about a minute after they entered, without conducting an inspection of any objects in the room.
Cavanagh contends that during Coppinger and Thomas's visit to Ms. Scopa's cell, there was a visible loop of string, specifically a shoelace potentially knotted into a noose, on the floor of Ms. Scopa's cell. The parties agree that a loop of string, whether knotted as a noose or unknotted, in a detainee's cell could be considered by a correctional officer to pose a significant risk of self-harm, although the defendants contend that it does not necessarily pose such a risk. Coppinger says that he does not have a specific memory of his interaction with Ms. Scopa and that he cannot definitively state whether he observed specific objects on the floor of her cell. He further contends, however, that if he were to see such an object that would pose a serious risk of self-inflicted harm in the cell of a non-mental-health watch detainee, he would take action immediately to prevent such harm.
Between 5:05 and 5:10 p.m., Fitzpatrick assisted in distributing food trays to inmates in the medical housing unit, at the request of Taranto. Ms. Scopa refused her meal. At that time, Fitzpatrick observed Ms. Scopa lying on her side on the bunk in her cell. At approximately 5:20 p.m., when the food trays were being collected in the unit, Fitzpatrick again observed Ms. Scopa lying on her bunk in her cell and, from his perspective, thought she was “okay.”
At 5:24 p.m., Ms. Scopa began attempting to hang herself by securing a shoelace fashioned as a noose around the top bunk bed post. She succeeded in hanging herself at 5:28 p.m. and was dead within minutes. None of the officers observed Ms. Scopa again until around 6:10 p.m.4 At that time, Taranto returned from dinner and checked in with Fitzgibbon at the front of the infirmary before returning to the unit officer's station in the medical housing unit to relieve Fitzpatrick, who had taken a break from his one-on-one suicide watch to monitor the unit's inmates overall.
As was his custom upon returning from a break, Taranto conducted a visual check of the three CCTV monitors in the medical housing unit. When he viewed cell # 16 on the monitor, he noticed that Ms. Scopa had “her back against the post of the bunk, slouched over in an awkward position.” He ran immediately to Ms. Scopa's cell, looked through the window, and saw her “hanging from the bunk with what appeared to be a shoelace around her neck.” He sent a radio notification of a “man down” and entered the cell with Coppinger. Taranto and Coppinger took hold of Ms. Scopa and released her from the bunk, removing the shoelace from her neck. Numerous emergency personnel thereafter arrived at the cell, but resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful. Ms. Scopa was transported to Boston Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. The cause of her death was asphyxia by hanging, brought about by suicide.
Cavanagh filed this action on April 26, 2012, against the four correctional officers—Taranto, Fitzgibbon, Coppinger, and Fitzpatrick—in their individual capacities, and against Andrea Cabral and Gerald Horgan in their individual and official capacities as Sheriff of Suffolk County and Superintendent of the Suffolk County House of Correction, respectively. In an amended complaint, filed on December 28, 2012, Cavanagh asserts the violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by all defendants (Count I), supervisory liability under § 1983 by Defendants Cabral and...
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...result; and (3) plaintiff's failure is not justified. Courts have granted preclusion under similar circumstances. In Cavanagh v. Taranto, 95 F. Supp. 3d 220 (D. Mass. 2015), for example, the court struck an untimely expert report where the plaintiff "supplied a draft expert report only as a......
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