Hall v. Bennett

• Decision Date: 12 August 2004
• Docket Number: No. 02-2683.,02-2683.
• Parties: Christopher S. HALL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Allen BENNETT and Stan Russell, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

379 F.3d 462

Christopher S. HALL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Allen BENNETT and Stan Russell, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 02-2683.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 19, 2004.

Decided August 12, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Larry J. McKinney, Chief Judge.

Christopher S. Hall, Plainfield, IN, pro se.

Bryan K. Nowicki (argued), Reinhart, Boerner, Van Deuren, Norris & Rieselbach, Madison, WI, for Plaintiff-Appellant,

Frances Barrow (argued), Indianapolis, IN, for Defendant-Appellee.

Before CUDAHY, RIPPLE, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge.

After receiving a severe electrical shock while working as an electrician at the Correctional Industrial Facility in Pendleton, Indiana, inmate Christopher Hall sought to hold supervisors Stan Russell and Allen Bennett liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law. Concluding that Hall lacked evidence that the defendants had knowingly placed him in a dangerous situation, the district court granted summary judgment on the federal deliberate-indifference claim and then relinquished supplemental jurisdiction over the state-law negligence claim. We vacate the district court's judgment and remand for further proceedings.

From June to August 1997, Hall worked in the Food Industry Plant, where Russell was the plant engineer. Hall performed regular maintenance duties, primarily as an electrician. Hall and another inmate worked under the supervision of Bennett, the electrician foreman. On July 29, 1997, Russell directed Bennett's team to locate an electrical circuit in the plant capable of handling the additional load of another machine. What happened next is disputed.

According to Hall, he was assigned to do electrical work even though he was not a journeyman electrician. Before commencement of the July 29 task, Hall alleges that the team first asked Russell to let them perform the work after hours with the power off, but Russell refused, citing his desire to reduce overtime costs. To begin the assignment, the team obtained a circuit tracer, a voltage meter, and lineman's pliers with protective insulation on the handles. Hall insists that he also asked Bennett for protective gloves but was refused. Hall and Bennett then climbed above the ceiling of the plant and began testing the electric lines. Hall says that his first task with respect to each potential circuit was to attach the circuit tracer by stripping the insulation from the line and attaching alligator clips to the exposed wire. While he did this, Hall insists, Bennett stayed by his side instead of climbing down to shut off the power. Hall was using lineman's pliers to strip the insulation from a live 480-volt line in order to attach the tracer's alligator clips when current from the line entered his left middle finger and exited his left knee. Hall was knocked unconscious. He later surmised that the current had traveled into his hand because of a slit in the protective insulation covering the grips on the pliers, but he was never able to examine the pliers to confirm his suspicion. Bennett, says Hall, came to his cell afterward and apologized, taking responsibility for the incident. And, Hall notes, the day after his injury Russell ordered new insulation for the pliers as well as electrician's gloves.

Russell and Bennett deny much of Hall's account. According to Bennett, he first asked Russell to authorize after-hours work only to prevent an accidental power outage elsewhere in the plant, and not because of safety issues concerning the team. Additionally, Bennett claims that when the team gathered the necessary equipment, Hall declined his offer of leather gloves. And, Bennett contends, Hall was not shocked until after he had tested numerous lines. Bennett maintains that, once they identified a circuit for testing, he went to the Mechanical Room to locate the circuit breaker that would shut off electricity to that line. As Bennett turned off the breakers one at a time, Hall was to use a voltage meter to determine whether the line was dead. That procedure, says Bennett, was being followed when Hall was injured. Hall called out that the correct circuit breaker had been located, and so Bennett returned to the room where Hall was. At that point Hall began stripping the insulation from the wire with the lineman's pliers and suffered the shock. Upon later inspection Bennett noticed that the pliers had a thin slit in the protective insulation on the grips. Russell, however, could not determine whether or not a crack existed in the pliers. Both Russell and Bennett attest that Hall declared himself at fault for his injury because he failed to verify that the line was dead before stripping away the insulation. But of course on summary judgment we resolve these factual disputes and inferences in favor of Hall, as the nonmoving party. Payne v. Pauley, 337 F.3d 767, 770 (7th Cir.2003).

In granting summary judgment, the district court concluded that at most Hall could establish that the defendants had acted negligently rather than with deliberate indifference. The district court reasoned that Hall lacked evidence that the defendants knew that requiring him to work without gloves would create a substantial risk to his safety. Because the court inferred that the defective pliers must have caused the injury, the court determined that, to succeed on his deliberate-indifference claim, Hall would have to prove that the defendants knew that the pliers had defective insulation on the grips and that allowing Hall to use the pliers without gloves would subject him to substantial risk of harm. Finally, taking note of the circuit tracer, the voltage meter and the pliers, the court reasoned that the defendants had provided Hall with other "safety equipment," thus negating the inference of deliberate indifference arising from the failure to supply protective gloves. The court then declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the negligence claim.

To prevail on a deliberate-indifference claim under the Eighth Amendment, a plaintiff must produce evidence that satisfies two elements. First, the danger to the inmate must be objectively serious. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994); Sherrod v. Lingle, 223 F.3d 605, 610 (7th Cir.2000). For the subjective prong, the defendants must have acted with deliberate indifference. Farmer, 511 U.S. at 838, 114 S.Ct. 1970. Regardless whether the defendants intended harm, they need only have known of a substantial risk to inmate safety that they easily could have prevented but did not. Id. at 838, 114 S.Ct. 1970; Case v. Ahitow, 301 F.3d 605, 605 (7th Cir.2002). In this case the defendants do not dispute that working on a live electrical line without adequate protective equipment presents an objectively serious risk to inmate safety; rather, the defendants focus their defense on the subjective...