Dolihite v. Maughon By and Through Videon

• Decision Date: 23 January 1996
• Docket Number: No. 94-6343,94-6343
• Citation: 74 F.3d 1027
• Parties: Michael Leroy DOLIHITE, Individually and as Father and Next Friend of David Michael Dolihite; Joyce Mary Dolihite, Individually, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Robert MAUGHON, M.D., Deceased, By and Through Mary Fay VIDEON, as Executrix of the Estate of Robert Maughon, M.D.; Royce G. King, Individually; R. Emmett Poundstone, III, Individually; Anthony R. Dykes, Individually; Bradley Mazick, Individually; Karen Jurls, individually; Andrew McBride, Individually; Chester Jenkins, M.D.; Medical Money Management, Inc., Defendants-Appellants, The Alabama Department of Mental Health; Eufaula Adolescent Center; Neuropsychiatry Associates, P.C.; Medical Management, Inc., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1027

74 F.3d 1027

Michael Leroy DOLIHITE, Individually and as Father and Next Friend of David Michael Dolihite; Joyce Mary Dolihite, Individually, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Robert MAUGHON, M.D., Deceased, By and Through Mary Fay VIDEON, as Executrix of the Estate of Robert Maughon, M.D. Royce G. King, Individually; R. Emmett Poundstone, III Individually; Anthony R. Dykes, Individually; Bradley Mazick, Individually; Karen Jurls, individually; Andrew McBride, Individually; Chester Jenkins, M.D.; Medical Money Management, Inc., Defendants-Appellants The Alabama Department of Mental Health; Eufaula Adolescent Center; Neuropsychiatry Associates, P.C. Medical Management, Inc., Defendants.

No. 94-6343.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Jan. 23, 1996.

Thomas H. Keene, Nathan Wayne Simms, Jr., Rushton, Stakely, Johnston & Garrett, P.A., Montgomery, AL, for Maughon, Jenkins, Medical Money Management.

G.R. "Rick" Trawick, Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, Montgomery, AL, for King, Poundstone, Dikes, K. Jurls, McBride.

Philip S. Gidiere, Jr., Carpenter & Gidiere, Montgomery, AL, for Dr. Bradley Mazick.

Kathryn H. Sumrall, Ezra B. Perry, Jr., James S. Ward, Corley, Moncus & Ward, PC, Birmingham, AL, for Michael L. Dolihite.

Fred W. Tyson, Rushton, Stakely, Johnston & Garrett, Montgomery, AL, for Videon.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

Before KRAVITCH, ANDERSON and EDMONDSON, Circuit Judges.

ANDERSON, Circuit Judge:

The appellants in this Sec. 1983 action argue that the district court erred in denying them summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity. We affirm the district court's denial of summary judgment as to one of the appellants, Karen Jurls. We reverse the district court's order as to the remaining appellants; we hold that they are entitled to summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds.

On February 17, 1991, the Baldwin County Juvenile Court, having adjudged David Dolihite in need of supervision, ordered David committed to the Eufaula Adolescent Center ("Eufaula"), a facility of the Alabama Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation ("ADMHMR"). David was not admitted to Eufaula until almost a year later, on January 13, 1992. He was fifteen years old. Approximately seventy days after his arrival at Eufaula, David hung himself. Although he was resuscitated, the injury he sustained during his suicide attempt left him severely brain-damaged.

David's parents, individually, and David's father, as his next friend ("the plaintiffs"), brought this Sec. 1983 action against various mental health professionals and administrators working for or under contract with ADMHMR. The individual defendants include: Bradley Mazick, Ph.D., Eufaula's clinical director; Karen Jurls, a Eufaula social worker; Andrew McBride, a licensed psychologist with Eufaula; Medical Money Management, Inc., a private corporation under contract with ADMHMR to provide psychiatric services to Eufaula; Drs. Robert Maughon ¹ and Chester Jenkins, psychiatrists in the employ of Medical Money Management, Inc.; Anthony Dykes, Eufaula's director; Emmett Poundstone, ADMHMR Associate Commissioner for Mental Health; and Royce King, ADMHMR Commissioner.

The Dolihites allege that the defendants violated David's substantive rights under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment set forth in Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 73 L.Ed.2d 28 (1982), ² i.e., his right to reasonably safe conditions of confinement, freedom from unreasonable bodily restraints, and such minimally adequate training as might be required to ensure safety and freedom from restraint. Id. 457 U.S. at 315-17, 102 S.Ct. at 2458-59. Discovery was completed. The defendants all moved for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds. The district court denied their motions. Dolihite v. Videon, 847 F.Supp. 918 (M.D.Ala.1994). The defendants-appellants brought this interlocutory appeal. We have jurisdiction. ³ Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 525-28, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 2815-16, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985).

This opinion will set out the background facts and the relevant law and then address the entitlement of each defendant to qualified immunity. In the summary judgment posture of this case, we take all reasonable factual inferences in favor of the plaintiffs below. However, the plaintiffs bear the burden of proof. With respect to each appellant, we have taken the relevant facts as identified by the district court and supplemented same as necessary to evaluate whether a reasonable public official could have believed that the actions of each appellant were lawful, in light of the clearly established law and in light of the information possessed by each appellant.

I. BACKGROUND FACTS

In February of 1991, the Baldwin County Juvenile Court adjudged David Dolihite in need of supervision because of David's problematic behavior at home and at school. ⁴ The court placed David in the custody of ADMHMR and instructed the Department to return the child to the custody of his parents after he successfully completed the Eufaula program. David continued to reside, for the most part, with his parents until he was admitted to Eufaula on January 13, 1992. ⁵

By January 23, 1992, David had been evaluated by three of the defendants--Dr. Maughon, a psychiatrist, Jurls, a social worker, and McBride, a psychologist. ⁶ It was determined through these evaluations that David had reported having attempted suicide, ⁷ had frequent suicidal ideations, was obsessed with writing poetry about death, and had some family history of suicide. ⁸ Appellees also contend that behavior described in David's Baldwin County Mental Health Department evaluation could be construed as psychotic. ⁹ After his initial Eufaula evaluations, David was assessed as giving the "diagnostic impression of conduct disorder solitary aggressive type."

Ten days after David's arrival, the psychiatrist Dr. Jenkins and appellants McBride and Jurls became members of David's treatment team and, as such, signed David's master treatment plan. The treatment plan noted, among other things, that David suffered an active suicidal ideation and gesture problem, and it prescribed weekly, thirty-minute individual therapy sessions as well as a weekly forty-five-minute group session.

David exhibited self-destructive behavior while at Eufaula, including making suicidal threats and gestures. The following incidents occurred while David was at Eufaula and are documented in his Eufaula record unless otherwise indicated. On January 26, 1992, a nurse treated David for a deep puncture wound in his left wrist. David told the nurse that he "was going to cut his arm off and kill himself." David was placed on continuous observation, i.e., one-on-one observation, until the next day when Jurls, after completing a suicide assessment, moved him to close observation with one-hour checks. ¹⁰ On the suicide assessment form, Jurls noted that David's family did not have knowledge of David's past suicide attempts and that David's self-reported past gestures could not be confirmed. In David's Progress Notes, Jurls indicated that his reported suicidal thoughts were intermittent and without genuine intent.

In David's Progress Notes dated February 4, Jurls indicated that David had presented as extremely irrational during the previous week; she added that he was not out of touch with reality. On the afternoon of that day, David injured himself, creating an ulcer one centimeter in diameter on his left wrist. On February 13, a staff member reported that David wrote with a rock on the security screen over his window, "Oh, God I want to die, please take me or I'll commit suicide, Death, Suicide are the facts of life." David was given work restitution for his behavior but no additional therapeutic intervention, nor was he prescribed any medications, and no suicide assessment form was completed. ¹¹

On February 18, David was talking to himself and advised a nurse that he was talking "to a friend who told him what to do." On February 24, a staff member found David sitting on the floor in his room beside the figure of a star he had made of salt, cutting into a sore on the back of his wrist with his belt buckle, and allowing blood to drip onto the star. David told the staff member he was a devil-worshipper. David later that day wrote the staff member a note which indicated that he was not talking because the devil told him not to. On March 2, Jurls indicated in David's Progress Notes that he continued to enjoy the "shock value" of talking about suicide.

On March 8 at about 2:45 p.m., David cut his arm with a piece of metal. A staff member described the incident in David's Progress Notes: "When I arrived in the dorm he was standing in the bathroom and his left arm in the sink and the H sub2 O running, bleeding profusely from a cut to his left arm...." David was taken to the emergency room. The cut required ten stitches and, as indicated by Jurls on David's suicide assessment form, was "fairly lethal due to vertical, wide cut and possibility of loss of excessive blood."

Around 4:45 p.m. the same day, David removed the sutures with his teeth. He told the Eufaula nurse that "he was going to kill himself and he was not going to have sutures put in" and "would remove them again." The nurse notified Dr. Jenkins about David's behavior. Over the phone, Dr. Jenkins prescribed 25 mg of Vistaril, a tranquilizer, and authorized the use of soft restraints. David was taken to the emergency room again. Jurls ordered David placed on continuous, i.e., constant, observation.

The next day Jurls completed a suicide assessment form on David. According to her notes, David denied suicidal intent, psychotic symptoms, and feelings of depression, but admitted self-injurious thoughts due to problems with peers. Although David's act of cutting himself and pulling his sutures out on March 8 was...