Johnson v. Haug

• Decision Date: 08 April 2021
• Docket Number: 530019
• Citation: 193 A.D.3d 1200,145 N.Y.S.3d 673
• Parties: Johnathan JOHNSON, Appellant, v. Don HAUG et al., Respondents.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

193 A.D.3d 1200
145 N.Y.S.3d 673

Johnathan JOHNSON, Appellant,
v.
Don HAUG et al., Respondents.

530019

Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, New York.

Calendar Date: March 16, 2021
Decided and Entered: April 8, 2021

145 N.Y.S.3d 674

Johnathan Johnson, Malone, appellant pro se.

Letitia James, Attorney General, Albany (Joseph M. Spadola of counsel), for respondents.

Before: Egan Jr., J.P., Lynch, Aarons, Pritzker and Colangelo, JJ.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

Aarons, J.

Appeal from an order of the Supreme Court (Main Jr., J.), entered September 4, 2019 in Franklin County, which granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint.

Plaintiff, a prison inmate, commenced this action to assert a 42 USC § 1983 claim alleging that defendants had violated his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. He specifically alleged that, after he began receiving meals on Styrofoam trays in 2013, the meals included smaller portions of food and sometimes arrived cold. Supreme Court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a cause of action. Plaintiff appeals.

Accepting the allegations in the complaint as true and affording plaintiff every favorable inference, as is required upon defendants’ motion to dismiss, we affirm (see Nomura Home Equity Loan, Inc., Series 2006–FM2 v. Nomura Credit & Capital, Inc., 30 N.Y.3d 572, 582, 69 N.Y.S.3d 520, 92 N.E.3d 743 [2017] ; Johnson v. Bruen, 187 A.D.3d 1294, 1294–1295, 131 N.Y.S.3d 740 [2020] ). "It is undisputed that the treatment a prisoner receives in prison and the conditions under which he [or she] is confined are subject to scrutiny under the Eighth Amendment," and that prison officials may not deprive a prisoner of food and other basic needs as a result ( Helling v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25, 31, 113 S.Ct. 2475, 125 L.Ed.2d 22 [1993] ; see Phelps v. Kapnolas, 308 F.3d 180, 185 [2d Cir.2002] ). To state a 42 USC § 1983 claim for such a deprivation, plaintiff was obliged to "allege that: (1) objectively, the deprivation [he] suffered was...