Malsh v. Austin

• Decision Date: 20 October 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94 Civ. 6860(JGK).,94 Civ. 6860(JGK).
• Parties: Luxley George MALSH, Plaintiff, v. Correctional Officer AUSTIN, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

901 F. Supp. 757

Luxley George MALSH, Plaintiff, v. Correctional Officer AUSTIN, et al., Defendants.

No. 94 Civ. 6860(JGK).

United States District Court, S.D. New York.

October 20, 1995.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Luxley G. Malsh, Fallsburg, NY, for plaintiff.

Dennis Vacco, Attorney General of the State of New York, New York City, for defendants.

OPINION AND ORDER

KOELTL, District Judge:

Plaintiff Luxley George Malsh, an inmate currently incarcerated at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility (hereinafter Woodbourne), brought this action against defendants Thomas A. Coughlin III, former Commissioner of the New York State Department of Correctional Services, Robert Hanslmaier, Acting Superintendent of the Woodbourne Correctional Facility, Sergeant Daniel Reed, Dr. James Green, D.D.S., Dental Director of the dental clinic at Woodbourne, and Corrections Officer Austin. The plaintiff claims that a dental appointment was rescheduled in violation of his federal constitutional rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and contrary to Directives of the New York State Department of Correctional Services and Woodbourne and that those violations in turn were unlawful under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985(3) and 1986. The plaintiff seeks exemplary damages, a declaratory judgement that defendants violated his rights, and injunctive relief barring future postponement of his dental care and retaliation against him. The defendants have moved pursuant to Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to dismiss the complaint, arguing that this court lacks subject matter jurisdiction under Rule 12(b)(1) and that plaintiff's complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under Rule 12(b)(6).

On this motion to dismiss, the court accepts the allegations in the plaintiff's pro se complaint as true for purposes of this motion. Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.S. 546, 84 S.Ct. 1733, 12 L.Ed.2d 1030 (1964). The pro se complaint is to be "liberally construed", Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972), held to "less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers", and can only be dismissed for failure to state a claim if it appears "beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Id. at 520-521, 92 S.Ct. at 595-596, quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 101-102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957).

Even taking all of the plaintiff's allegations as true and liberally construing his complaint, the plaintiff has failed to state a claim for violations of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985(3) and 1986. Accordingly, the plaintiff's complaint must be dismissed.

The allegations in the complaint are as follows: the plaintiff was scheduled for a dental appointment on June 13, 1994 with the Woodbourne Dental Clinic. On June 13, his appointment was cancelled and rescheduled for July 6, 1994. When the plaintiff inquired as to why his appointment was rescheduled, he was informed by defendant Corrections Officer Austin that it was rescheduled because he was currently in "keeplock." The plaintiff was not satisfied with the response to his inquiry and filed a grievance against defendant Austin with the Woodbourne Grievance Office.

Defendant Dr. Green, the director of the dental clinic at Woodbourne, responded to plaintiff's grievance by submitting a memorandum to the Woodbourne Grievance Office explaining that, on June 13, 1994, plaintiff's appointment, which was a routine follow-up to his regular dental care, was rescheduled due to several dental emergencies which required immediate emergency attention. On June 29, 1994, a hearing was held in connection with the plaintiff's grievance. The grievance committee did not find any merit to the plaintiff's claim and dismissed the case. The plaintiff appealed the dismissal to defendant Acting Superintendent Hanslmaier; Hanslmaier subsequently denied the appeal. Seemingly in protest of the handling of his claim, the plaintiff thereafter chose not to keep his rescheduled appointment at the dental clinic on July 6, 1994.

The plaintiff also claims that, as a result of his arguments and complaints following the rescheduling of his dental appointment, he was threatened by parties unidentified in the complaint. The plaintiff alleges he was told that, if he continued to complain, a "Direct Order" report detailing his misbehavior would be filed against him, he would suffer physical violence, he could incur further detention in keeplock, and he might be subject to segregation.

The plaintiff's first claim is that he was denied his Fourteenth Amendment right to Due Process because he was denied adequate dental care. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that a State shall not "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...." U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1. To allege a Fourteenth Amendment Due Process violation in this case, the plaintiff must allege that he was deprived of a constitutionally protected liberty interest. In determining whether state officials have deprived an inmate, such as the plaintiff, of such a protected "liberty" interest, the Supreme Court has recently instructed that:

States may under certain circumstances create liberty interests which are protected by the Due Process Clause.... these interests will generally be limited to freedom from restraint which, while not exceeding the sentence in such an unexpected manner as to give rise to protection by the Due Process Clause of its own force, nonetheless imposes atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life. Sandin v. Conner, ___ U.S. ____, ____, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 2295, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995).

Sandin thus held that, for an inmate to prove he was deprived of a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, the inmate must meet the standard of an "atypical and significant hardship ... in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life" and generally, this has been limited to freedom from restraint.

The initial question here is whether the plaintiff had a protected right not to have his dental appointment adjourned. Plaintiff's rescheduled dental appointment plainly does not meet the "atypical and significant hardship standard" articulated in Sandin. When compared to the examples given in Sandin of violated liberty interests which would satisfy this standard (involuntary commitment to a mental hospital, Vitek v. Jones, 445 U.S. 480, 491-494, 100 S.Ct. 1254, 1263-1264, 63 L.Ed.2d 552 (1980); involuntary administration of antipsychotic drugs, Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 221-222, 110 S.Ct. 1028, 1036-1037, 108 L.Ed.2d 178 (1990)), it is clear that plaintiff's claim does not reach the severity necessary to violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. A rescheduled routine dental appointment is not atypical, nor did it pose a significant hardship to the plaintiff in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life, nor did it involve any restraint against plaintiff; plaintiff was simply forced to wait three weeks for non-emergency dental care.

In Sandin, the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the prior reasoning articulated in Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U.S. 460, 103 S.Ct. 864, 74 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983), which allowed courts to find protected liberty interests in either (1) the nature of the deprivation (e.g., how severe, in degree or kind) or (2) the State's rules governing the imposition of the deprivation (whether the rules, in effect, give the inmate a "right" to avoid the deprivation). Sandin v. Conner, ___ U.S. ____, ____, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 2304. (Breyer, J., dissenting). Under the latter standard, the mandatory language of prison regulations could be found to create protected liberty interests. After Sandin, however, the inquiry must focus not on the mandatory nature of a State's rule governing the imposition of the deprivation, but rather on the nature of the deprivation itself.

The plaintiff bases his claim in part upon the rejected Hewitt methodology of identifying liberty interests from prison regulations which had used "language of an unmistakably mandatory character." Hewitt, 459 U.S. at 471-472, 103 S.Ct. at 871. The plaintiff argues that Woodbourne's own directives and procedures gave him a protected liberty interest. However, regardless of whether the Woodbourne directives required that the plaintiff must have his appointment on the day scheduled or that the grievance committee must follow certain prison procedural directives, the plaintiff does not have a protected liberty interest derived from the State's prison rules and has not suffered a violation of his Fourteenth Amendment Due Process rights.

The plaintiff's second claim arising from his rescheduled dental appointment alleges that the postponement of his dental appointment constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. CONST. amend. VIII; see also Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 666, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 1420, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1982) (the Eighth Amendment applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment). In Farmer v. Brennan, ___ U.S. ____, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994), the Supreme Court held that prison officials have a duty under the Eighth Amendment to provide humane conditions of confinement: adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. Id. at ____, 114 S.Ct. at 1976. However, a constitutional violation occurs only where the deprivation alleged is objectively "sufficiently serious," and the official has acted with "deliberate indifference" to inmate health or safety. Id. at ____, 114 S.Ct. at 1977 (quoting Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294, 298, 302-03, 111 S.Ct. 2321, 2324, 2326-27, 115 L.Ed.2d 271 (1991)). The plaintiff's burden consists of both objective...