Lemire v. Cal. Dep't of Corr. & Rehab.

Decision Date07 August 2013
Docket NumberNo. 11–15475.,11–15475.
PartiesSherie LEMIRE, Individually and as personal representative for the Estate of Robert St. Jovite; Gerard Charles St. Jovite and Nicole St. Jovite; Nicole St. Jovite; Gerard Charles St. Jovite; Estate of Robert St. Jovite, Plaintiffs–Appellants, v. CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND REHABILITATION; Arnold Schwarzenegger, Individually and in his official capacity as Governor of the State of California; James E. Tilton, Individually and in his official capacity as Secretary of CA Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; Tom L. Cary, Individually and in his official capacity as Warden of CSP–Solano; D.K. Sisto, Individually and in his official capacity as Warden of CSP–Solano; Cahoon, Individually and in her official capacity as Correctional Officer; Alcaraz, Individually and in his official capacity as Correctional Officer; Wade, Individually and in his official capacity as Correctional Officer; Orrick, Individually and in her official capacity as Correctional Officer; Martinez, Individually and in her official capacity as Correctional Officer; Gordon Wong, Individually and in his official capacity; Hak, MTA, Individually and in her official capacity; Alvaro C. Tranquina, M.D., Individually and in his official capacity as Chief Medical Officer/Health Care Manager; Noriega, Individually and in his official capacity; Dusay, Dr., Individually and in his official capacity; Neuhring, Individually and in his official capacity; Dodie Hicks, Senior RN; C. Holliday, Correctional Officer, Badge No. 70808; Jaime Chua, Correctional Officer, Badge No. 55696, Defendants–Appellees.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Geri Lynn Green, Attorney, San Francisco, CA, for PlaintiffsAppellants.

Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California, Jonathan L. Wolff, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Thomas S. Patterson, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Diana Esquivel (argued), Deputy Attorney General, Sacramento, CA, for DefendantsAppellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, Garland E. Burrell, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. 2:08–cv–00455–GEB–EFB.

Before: STEPHEN REINHARDT, RICHARD R. CLIFTON, and N. RANDY SMITH, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:

This action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 arises from the apparent suicide of an inmate in the California prison system, Robert St. Jovite. The estate, parents, and daughter of the deceased prisoner seek to recover damages for alleged violations of the Eighth Amendment, based on St. Jovite's right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendment, based on the family's substantive due process right of familial association. These claims are predicated on allegations that members of the custodial, medical, and supervisory staff at California State Prison at Solano (“CSP–Solano”) failed to protect and provide adequate medical care by failing to (1) ensure the presence of floor officers to provide sufficient supervision of the inmates, (2) administer CPR immediately after St. Jovite was found unconscious in his cell, and (3) sufficiently train the prison staff in proper CPR procedure. The district court granted summary judgment to Defendants on all claims.

We hold that the district court erred in granting summary judgment with respect to Plaintiffs' claims that Defendants Warden Dennis Sisto and Captain James Neuhring impermissibly convened a staff meeting that resulted in the absence of all floor officers from the building where St. Jovite was incarcerated for a period of as long as three and a half hours because those claims present triable issues of fact. A jury could conclude, on the basis of the factual record before the district court, that the complete withdrawal of all supervision created an unconstitutional risk of harm to the mentally ill inmates in St. Jovite's building and that Sisto and Neuhring were responsible for, and deliberately indifferent to, this lack of supervision. The jury could also conclude that the lack of floor staff was an actual and proximate cause of St. Jovite's death. We affirm, however, the grant of summary judgment on the inadequate staffing claim with respect to Defendants Lieutenant Gordon Wong, Sergeant Gale Martinez, and Sergeant Cheryl Orrick.

We also hold that the district court erred in granting summary judgment with respect to Plaintiffs' claims based on the failure to administer CPR by Defendants Officer Rebecca Cahoon and Officer Chris Holliday. We conclude that there is a triable issue of fact as to whether Defendants Cahoon and Holliday were deliberately indifferent to St. Jovite's potentially serious medical need when they first arrived at his cell. We affirm with respect to Plaintiffs' claims for failure to provide proper medical treatment with respect to the remaining defendants. We also affirm with respect to the failure to train claims.

Accordingly, we vacate the summary judgment as to the claims against Defendants Sisto and Neuhring for withdrawing all floor officers from St. Jovite's building, and as to the claims against Defendants Cahoon and Holliday for failure to provide CPR and remand for further proceedings with respect to these claims.

I. Background

Robert St. Jovite was found unconscious and unresponsive in his cell at CSP–Solano on May 10, 2006. During his incarceration, St. Jovite was treated for depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and early stages of agoraphobia. After his last treatment session, St. Jovite filled out an inmate appeal form in which he stated that his “daily life [was] almost unmanageable” as a result of his mental condition. St. Jovite never expressed any suicidal thoughts, intentions, or feelings to his treating psychiatrist, however, and his psychiatrist saw no evidence of suicidal ideation during his treatment or through his review of St. Jovite's medical records.

In order to explain St. Jovite's death, we first recount the circumstances that led to his being left without supervision, along with his fellow inmates, for as much as three and a half hours. We then recount the chaotic and disputed circumstances surrounding the response of CSP–Solano's staff to St. Jovite's apparent suicide as stated by the parties, in that same light. As we must at the summary judgment stage, we view the relevant facts in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs.

A. The Staffing of Building 8

The high rate of suicides in California prisons was a “focus” of California prison administrators, including those at CSP–Solano, from 2004 onwards as a result of the Coleman v. Schwarzenegger litigation.1 In addition to suicide concerns, inmate-on-inmate violence was also a problem at CSP–Solano. Warden Sisto explained that when he was hired to run CSP–Solano he was told that the prison “needed some work” and that “due to all the violence they were having, they continued to have lockdowns, a lot of violence.”

St. Jovite was housed on the second tier in Building 8 of CSP–Solano. Each of the two tiers in Building 8 had fifty cells, and there were roughly 190 inmates between them at the time of St. Jovite's death. Building 8 was the designated facility at CSP–Solano for housing inmates who utilized certain psychotropic medications 2 including patients classified as Correctional Clinical Case Management System inmates (“CCCMS”), a status given to inmates with psychiatric illnesses. The majority of the inmates in Building 8, including St. Jovite and his cell mate John Lee Harden, were classified as CCCMS inmates, meaning they suffered from any of a variety of psychiatric illnesses. CCCMS is the lowest level of care in the State's prison mental health delivery system, and is designed to provide a level of care equivalent to that received by non-incarcerated patients through outpatient psychiatric treatment. Although CSP–Solano provided air conditioned facilities and otherwise protected the inmates from exposure to heat, it did not provide any additional security to the inmates in Building 8.

The security staffing at CSP–Solano was broken into three watches: first watch (10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.), second watch (6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.), and third watch (2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.). During the daytime watches (second and third watch), Building 8 was staffed with two floor officers and one control booth officer. During the graveyard shift (first watch), Building 8 had a leaner staff, with a control booth operator and one floor officer who split his time between Building 8 and another housing unit.

According to the Post Orders 3 for correction officers at Building 8, one of a floor officer's “primary function[s] is to act as a safeguard against suicide attempts as well as fires set by inmates within the unit.” Naturally, floor officers are also responsible for preventing crime, including inmate-on-inmate violence, and maintaining order and safety. In order to accomplish these goals, [s]ecurity inspections of the unit shall be made upon assuming and prior to leaving the post and on an irregular basis throughout the shift (emphasis added). Security checks are supposed to be performed at least after every unlock, and at least once an hour during daytime watches regardless of whether there has been an unlock. According to Neuhring, the Facility Captain in charge of Building 8 and the officer who called the May 10 staff meetings during which St. Jovite's apparent suicide attempt occurred, [i]f the [floor] officers are doing their job” they should regularly be “checking their tiers” and “walking around.” The purpose of doing so is to “check[ ] the welfare of the inmates, both looking for crime occurring and their welfare.”

The extended absence of floor officers at Building 8 was generally considered unacceptable. Neuhring stated that floor officers should not all be pulled from the floor at the same time except in “very rare” circumstances and that such...

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