Gawloski v. Dallman

• Decision Date: 16 March 1992
• Docket Number: No. C-1-88-711,C-1-89-309.,C-1-88-711
• Citation: 803 F. Supp. 103
• Parties: Raymond D. GAWLOSKI, Plaintiff, v. William H. DALLMAN, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Ohio

803 F. Supp. 103

Raymond D. GAWLOSKI, Plaintiff, v. William H. DALLMAN, et al., Defendants.

Nos. C-1-88-711, C-1-89-309.

United States District Court, S.D. Ohio, W.D.

March 16, 1992.

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Robert Clark Neff, Jr., and Lynn D Pundzak, Helmer, Lugbill & Whitman Co., Cincinnati, Ohio, for plaintiff.

Steven Philip Fixler, Ohio Atty. General's Office, Cincinnati, Ohio, for defendants.

ORDER

HERMAN J. WEBER, District Judge.

Plaintiff Raymond Gawloski, a former inmate at the Lebanon Correctional Institution (LCI) and a present inmate at the Grafton Correctional Institution, brings these consolidated actions under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging the constitutionality of the conditions he endured while incarcerated in LCI's protective custody unit. Plaintiff alleges that the conditions violated his rights under the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. He seeks compensatory and punitive damages as well as injunctive relief.

Plaintiff seeks permission to amend his complaint to add claims against two defendants in their individual capacities. Since leave to amend is freely given when justice requires, Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a), plaintiff's motion for leave to amend (doc. no. 76) is GRANTED. See Hafer v. Melo, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 112 S.Ct. 358, 364, 116 L.Ed.2d 301 (1991). Plaintiff's second amended complaint, which he attached to his motion, is accepted as filed and has been fully taken into consideration by this Court.

Defendants are William H. Dallman, Warden of LCI; Reginald Wilkinson, Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction; Ronald Hart, an inspector of institutional services at LCI; Stephen Bowman, a supervisor of the protective custody unit at LCI; and Dan Kammer, R. Pennington, and Bradley Couch, correctional officers assigned to the protective custody unit at LCI. Plaintiff's second amended complaint adds defendants Dallman and Wilkinson in their individual capacities.

This matter is before the Court upon defendants' motions to dismiss (doc. nos. 8, 47, 55), which the Court converted to motions for summary judgement (doc. no. 51); plaintiff's responses (doc. nos. 10, 59); and the parties' proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law (doc. nos. 57, 58, 78). On January 6, 1992, the Court held a hearing on defendants' motion for summary judgement.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

During the time material to this action, plaintiff was incarcerated in the protective custody unit at LCI. LCI officials placed plaintiff in protective custody on November 18, 1987, where he remained for twenty-five months. LCI officials placed inmates in protective custody to safeguard them from physical harm by fellow inmates.

Plaintiff's cell in protective custody measured approximately six feet wide, ten feet long, and eight feet high. The cell contained a bed, a toilet, and a sink. For approximately twenty of the twenty-five months that plaintiff lived in protective custody, he was locked alone in his cell twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week except for two hours per week of recreation outside the cell and two to three showers per week. Plaintiff always had water and light in his cell when he wanted it and access to a window, which he could open or close. (Pl.'s dep., pp. 83-84).

Plaintiff alleges that during his stay in protective custody, one or more of the defendants violated his constitutional rights by denying him adequate heating in cold weather and adequate ventilation in warm weather, denying or severely limited his access to out-of-cell recreation, interfering with his personal and legal mail, denying him access to LCI's law library, denying him access to congregational religious services, denying him the opportunity to participate in educational or rehabilitative programs, denying his requests for a radio or television, denying him hot meals, and retaliating against him for filing institutional grievances.

Plaintiff alleges that defendants Bowman, Pennington, Kammer, and Couch enforced a no-talking rule during their shifts. Enforcement of this rule, according to plaintiff, "continued for weeks and months at a time." (Pl.'s dep., p. 90).

Plaintiff claims that defendants denied him the opportunity to purchase personal hygiene products at LCI's commissary; he admits, however, that prison officials provided him with personal hygiene items. (Pl.'s dep., pp. 124-25).

Defendants deny most of plaintiff's factual allegations and argue that the deprivations, if any, were reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. Placement of an inmate in protective custody, according to defendants, was generally discouraged because it interfered with rehabilitation. Defendants explain that the conditions in protective custody were more restrictive than conditions in the general inmate population in order to ensure the safety of the inmates living in protective custody.

THE PARTIES' SPECIFIC CONTENTIONS

Plaintiff argues that taken individually or collectively his allegations regarding the conditions he endured in protective custody at LCI violated his rights under the Eighth Amendment. Plaintiff contends that defendants violated his constitutional rights by denying him meaningful access to the courts, by denying him the opportunity to exercise his religious beliefs, by housing him in protective custody for nearly twenty-five months, and by treating him differently than the inmates in LCI's general population. Plaintiff seeks injunctive relief because the injuries he suffered at LCI are capable of repetition yet evade review. This is so, according to plaintiff, even though he was transferred out of LCI in December 1989, since he is still incarcerated within the Ohio Correctional system, since he has been incarcerated for short periods of time at LCI since his transfer from LCI, and since he may in the future be transferred back to LCI or suffer constitutional violations in protective custody at other Ohio prisons.

Defendants contend that they are entitled to qualified immunity because at the time plaintiff lived in protective custody at LCI, clearly established constitutional law did not provide plaintiff with the rights defendants allegedly violated.

Plaintiff argues that defendants are not protected by qualified immunity because at the time of his incarceration at LCI, federal courts had repeatedly recognized the constitutional rights he seeks to enforce.

OPINION

The Court has reviewed the arguments made by the parties and has applied the principles of controlling law to the facts presented. The legal standard for consideration and disposition of issues on summary judgment is well settled and is set forth in Goldstein v. D.D.B. Needham, 740 F.Supp. 461, 463 (S.D.Ohio 1990).

I. INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

Plaintiff is not entitled to injunctive relief because his transfer out of LCI in December 1989, as well as his present status as an inmate at the Grafton Correctional Institution, moots his claim for equitable relief. See Cooper v. Sheriff, Lubbock County, Tex., 929 F.2d 1078, 1084 (5th Cir. 1991) (Per Curiam); Young v. Lane, 922 F.2d 370, 373 (7th Cir.1991); Kimble v. Withrow, No. 91-1813, unpublished slip op. (6th Cir., Nov. 1, 1991) 947 F.2d 945 (table).

During oral argument defendants' counsel represented that LCI no longer has a protective custody unit and that LCI prisoners in need of physical protection are sent to the protective custody unit at the Warren Correctional Institution. As the Eleventh Amendment protects defendants from monetary liablity in their official capacities, see Hafer, ___ U.S. at ___ - ___, 112 S.Ct. at 363; Ex Parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908), and as plaintiff's equitable claims are moot, defendants are dismissed in their official capacities. The remaining issues presented in this action are, therefore, related to past conditions at LCI and to whether defendants should be exposed in their individual capacities to monetary liability.

II. QUALIFIED IMMUNITY

Prison officials performing discretionary duties are entitled to qualified immunity if their actions do not violate clearly established constitutional law of which a reasonable prison official would have known. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982); Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U.S. 555, 565-66, 98 S.Ct. 855, 861-62, 55 L.Ed.2d 24 (1978); Marsh v. Arn, 937 F.2d 1056, 1066 (6th Cir.1991); Haynes v. Marshall, 887 F.2d 700, 703 (6th Cir.1989). When an inmate seeks to impose monetary liability upon prison officials or corrections officers for an injury suffered during incarceration, the concerns underlying qualified immunity are particularly acute. These concerns include preventing "excessive disruption of government," and reducing the social costs of lawsuits such as "the expense of litigation, the diversion of official energy from pressing ... issues, and the deterrence of able citizens from acceptance of public office." Harlow, 457 U.S. at 814, 817, 102 S.Ct. at 2736, 2737. "Finally, there is the danger that fear of being sued will `dampen the ardor or all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible public officials, in the unflinching discharge of their duties.'" Id. at 814, 102 S.Ct. at 2736 (citation omitted).

To determine whether a constitutional right is clearly established, this Court must examine Supreme Court cases and cases within the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals including decisions by local District Courts and the Ohio Supreme Court. Ohio Civil Service Employees Ass'n. v. Seiter, 858 F.2d 1171, 1177 (6th Cir.1988). Decisions from outside the Sixth Circuit provide clearly established law only if they "point unmistakably to the unconstitutionality of the conduct complained of and are so clearly foreshadowed by applicable direct authority as to leave no doubt in the mind of a reasonable officer that his conduct, if challenged on constitutional grounds, would be found wanting." Id.

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