Peterson v. Martinez
| Decision Date | 12 August 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 3:19-cv-01447-WHO |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of California |
| Parties | VICTORIA R. PETERSON, Plaintiff, v. WILLIAM MARTINEZ, et al., Defendants. |
Three more defendants move to dismiss claims arising out of the sexual abuse plaintiff Victoria Peterson alleges she experienced at the hands of an employee at the Federal Correctional Institute, Dublin ("FCI Dublin"). According to Peterson, defendants Joel Eddings and Bruce West, her work supervisors at FCI Dublin, knew about their coworker's misconduct for months and yet failed to act, instead mocking her about the abuse. When Eddings and West finally detailed the abuse in a memorandum to defendant Stephen Putnam, Putnam failed to act for several days while the abuse continued. Contrary to the defendants' arguments, detailed below, Peterson's Eighth Amendment deliberate indifference claims are adequately pleaded, Eddings, West, and Putnam are not entitled to qualified immunity, and this case does not present a new Bivens context. Accordingly, I will deny the defendants' motions with respect to the Eighth Amendment claim but grant Putnam's motion to dismiss the First and Fifth Amendment claims against him.
When Peterson began serving her prison sentence, she was housed at the minimum-security camp on the FCI Dublin property, where inmates live in dormitories rather than cells and have more opportunities to participate in work programs. First Amended Complaint ("FAC") [Dkt. No. 36] ¶ 42. While at the camp, Peterson took community college classes to get her associate degree in business management and obtained a work assignment doing landscaping and welding. Id. ¶¶ 43-44.
According to the First Amended Complaint, defendant William Martinez was a Bureau of Prisons ("BOP") employee who worked at the adjacent low-security facility rather than the camp where Peterson was housed. Id. ¶ 46. He encountered her when substituting for another BOP employee at the camp and later "found ways to continue supervising her on her work assignments." Id. ¶¶ 46-47. He "contrive[d] reasons to take her away from her regular work assignments to places in the camp without security cameras," where he sexually abused her. Id. ¶¶ 47-48. He used "active and passive coercion" and continued to abuse Peterson for over a year, resisting her attempts to avoid him. Id. ¶¶ 49-50. The assaults occurred on dozens of occasions and increased in frequency until they began occurring daily. Id. ¶ 51.
Eddings and West, Peterson's work supervisors, were aware that Martinez was creating reasons to be alone with her and substituting for other officers to work with her, and yet they did nothing to stop him. Id. ¶¶ 52-53. Instead, their sarcastic comments indicated that they were aware Martinez intended to abuse Peterson. Id. ¶ 54. Over time, Martinez began engaging in conduct that made it obvious he was sexually abusing Peterson, including by calling her "Princess," stopping her to talk in the parking lot, and ordering other inmates to drive Peterson to him. Id. ¶ 55. Other officers noticed and commented on Martinez's unusual behavior and yet did nothing to stop it. Id. ¶ 57. Eddings and West eventually began to mock Peterson about the abuse. Id. ¶ 56. On one occasion, West said, "Let the games begin" immediately prior to sending Peterson to work with Martinez alone. Id. On another occasion, both Eddings and West mocked Peterson about the fact that Martinez had joined her project, suggesting he had done so in order to abuse her. Id.
After a year, Eddings and West reported Martinez's sexual abuse in a memorandum to Putnam, who, as warden, was responsible for administrative investigations into violations of thePrison Rape Elimination Act ("PREA"). Id. ¶ 59. Martinez's abuse continued for several days after the report. Id. ¶ 61. A few days after he received the memorandum, Putnam moved Peterson to solitary confinement and told her that she would remain there until she confessed what Martinez had done. Id. ¶ 63. He failed to give her written notice within 24 hours of why she was being held in solitary confinement. Id. ¶ 68. In solitary confinement, Peterson lost access to education and work opportunities along with the privileges of being housed at the camp. Id. ¶ 66.
Peterson spent three months in solitary confinement, during which time she experienced two emotional breakdowns. Id. ¶¶ 73, 76, 79. When she complained, she was told that if she wanted to get out of solitary, she should talk to Putnam. Id. ¶ 71. She understood that Putnam would not release her until she confessed Martinez's conduct. Id. A month into her confinement, Putnam visited Peterson demanding a confession, which she did not give because of fear of repercussions. Id. ¶ 73. During this time, Jenkins replaced Putnam as the warden of FCI Dublin. Id. ¶ 74.
After a series of events, Peterson revealed to BOP staff that Martinez had sexually abused her for months. See id. ¶¶ 77-78. After a conversation with two BOP employees, Peterson was transferred to the Santa Rita Jail, where she spent about two months. Id. ¶¶ 80-81. Putnam and an investigator from the Office of the Inspector General interviewed her there, and soon after the interview Peterson was sent back to solitary confinement at FCI Dublin. Id. ¶¶ 81-82. After she returned, Putnam added a "management variable" to Peterson's security score, which disqualified her from being housed at FCI Dublin's camp facility. Id. ¶¶ 83-84. Peterson was later transferred to FCI Aliceville in Alabama, where she was housed when she initiated this action. Id. ¶ 85. She has since been released from custody.
On April 27, 2020, defendants Eddings and West jointly filed a motion to dismiss, and Putnam separately moved to dismiss. Eddings and West Motions to Dismiss ("E&W MTD") [Dkt. No. 105]; Putnam Motion to Dismiss ("Putnam MTD") [Dkt. No. 107]. I heard argument on the motions on June 24, 2020. Dkt. No. 122.
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a district court must dismiss a complaintif it fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, the plaintiff must allege "enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 556 (2007). A claim is facially plausible when the plaintiff pleads facts that "allow the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (citation omitted). There must be "more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully." Id. While courts do not require "heightened fact pleading of specifics," a plaintiff must allege facts sufficient to "raise a right to relief above the speculative level." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 570.
In deciding whether the plaintiff has stated a claim upon which relief can be granted, the Court accepts the plaintiff's allegations as true and draws all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff. Usher v. City of Los Angeles, 828 F.2d 556, 561 (9th Cir. 1987). However, the court is not required to accept as true "allegations that are merely conclusory, unwarranted deductions of fact, or unreasonable inferences." In re Gilead Scis. Sec. Litig., 536 F.3d 1049, 1055 (9th Cir. 2008).
The three defendants before me raise the following challenges to the FAC: (i) it fails to state a claim; (ii) they are entitled to qualified immunity for the conduct alleged; and (iii) there is and should be no Bivens remedy with respect to the conduct alleged. I address each of these arguments in turn.2
The Eighth Amendment obligates prison officials to provide inmates with humane conditions of confinement, which includes taking "reasonable measures" to guarantee their safety. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 832 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). Prison officials violate this Eighth Amendment guarantee when two elements are met. Id. at 834. First, the deprivation must be "sufficiently serious," which in failure-to-protect cases means that theconditions of confinement posed "a substantial risk of serious harm." Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Second, the official must have a "sufficiently culpable state of mind," id. at 834, meaning that he "must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference," id. at 837. Accordingly, it is not enough to show that an official should have identified a risk if he in fact did not. See id. at 837-38; see also id. at 844 ().3
In Burnam v. Smith, 787 F. App'x 387, 390 (9th Cir. 2019), the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court's order granting summary judgment in favor of the supervisor of a prison employee who had sexually abused the plaintiff.4 At trial, evidence was presented that the supervisor used nicknames for the abusive employee and his victims that "potentially referred to [the abusive employee's] reputation for sexual harassment and abuse," and that he failed to intervene in any meaningful way when he witnessed abusive conduct firsthand. Id. The Ninth Circuit concluded that a reasonable juror could have relied on this evidence to find that the supervisor "witnessed sexual abuse rising to the level of an Eighth Amendment violation and did nothing about it—and was therefore deliberately indifferent to the risk that Evans was sexually abusing inmates, including [the plaintiff]." Id.
There is no question that Peterson had a "clearly established" right to be "free from sexual abuse"; Eddings and West do not argue otherwise. See Schwenk v. Hartford, 204 F.3d 1187, 1197 (9th Cir. 2000). Instead, they assert...
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