Senalan v. Curran

• Decision Date: 02 February 2015
• Docket Number: No. 13 C 05161,13 C 05161
• Citation: 78 F.Supp.3d 905
• Parties: Hakan Senalan, Plaintiff, v. Mark C. Curran, Jr. et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

78 F.Supp.3d 905

Hakan Senalan, Plaintiff

v.Mark C. Curran, Jr. et al., Defendants.

No. 13 C 05161

United States District Court, N.D. Illinois, Eastern Division.

Signed February 2, 2015

Jed H. Stone, Stone & Associates, Waukegan, IL, for Plaintiff.

Stephen Joseph Rice, Gunnar Borgthor Gunnarsson, Waukegan, IL, for Defendants.

Memorandum Opinion and Order

Edmond E. Chang, United States District Judge

Plaintiff Hakan Senalan brings this lawsuit against several corrections officers at the Lake County Jail, and Senalan also names the Lake County Sheriff and the Lake County Sheriff's Office, alleging violations of his constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.¹ R. 29, Second Am. Compl. Senalan has amended his complaint twice, and each complaint has drawn a motion to dismiss from Defendants. See R. 8, First Mot. Dismiss; R. 15, Second Mot. Dismiss. Defendants now move to dismiss his second amended complaint. R. 31, Third Mot. Dismiss. For the reasons discussed below, Defendants' motion is granted in part and denied in part.

I. Background

Hakan Senalan was arrested on May 11, 2011 for misdemeanor domestic battery and taken to Lake County Jail. Second Am. Compl. ¶ 8. Senalan suffers from schizophrenia and was allowed to bring his prescribed antipsychotic medication, Seroquel, into jail with him. Id. ¶¶ 7, 9. A few weeks later, Senalan ran out of his medication. Id. ¶¶ 9–10. He told the medical staff at Lake County Jail that he had run out, but he refused to take the generic substitute offered by the jail medical staff. Id.

On July 18, 2011, Senalan was still unmedicated. Id. ¶ 11. That day, Corrections Officers John Upton and Martin Mazur went to Senalan's cell to discuss a minor rule violation. Id. ¶ 12. “Feeling threatened by the presence of the two officers in the doorway to his cell, an unmedicated and delusionally paranoid Hakan Senalan rose to his feet while the officers were blocking the doorway.”Id. ¶ 13. When Senalan stood, Upton forcefully pushed Senalan back. Id. Upton then sprayed Senalan in the face with pepper spray. Id. ¶ 14. When Senalan remained standing, Upton tried to use his taser to stun Senalan. Id. The taser did not deploy, so Upton used the taser directly on Senalan's body. Id. Because the taser “had not had its full and intended effect,” Upton hit Senalan in the face. Id. ¶ 15. Upton and Mazur then subdued Senalan in his cell. Id. ¶ 17. A few minutes later, Corrections Officers Carnell Reed, Matthew Rice, and Timothy Pfleger arrived at Senalan's cell. Id. ¶ 18. Reed directed Upton and Mazur to leave the cell, and Rice, Reed, and Pfleger restrained Senalan and removed him from his cell. Id. They took him to a booking cell, stripped him naked, and pushed him to the floor. Id. ¶ 19.

After hearing about the incident, Lake County Jail psychiatrist Dr. H. Singh, who is not a defendant in this lawsuit, determined that Senalan should be forcibly given an antipsychotic medication. Id. ¶ 20. In response to Dr. Singh's order, Sergeants W.R. Kinville and Terry King “activated the Lake County Jail Corrections Response Team to assist the Lake County Jail medical staff” in administering the medicine to Senalan. Id. ¶ 21. Kinville was tasked with videotaping the forced medication. Id. ¶ 22. Reed, Rice, Mazur, and Pfleger went to Senalan's cell, where he was still lying naked on the floor. Id. ¶ 23. After ordering Senalan to remain on the floor, the officers “rushed into the cell and piled on top of” Senalan. Id. ¶ 24. Reed restrained Senalan's right side, Rice restrained his left side, and Mazur restrained his legs, all while Senalan was pleading with them to stop. Id. ¶ 25. While Senalan was restrained, Lake County Jail Nurse Oscar Caceres, who is also not a defendant in this suit, injected the antipsychotic. Id. ¶ 26. The officers then backed out of the cell, while Senalan remained on the floor. Id. ¶ 27. Based on this incident, Senalan was charged with misdemeanor battery, aggravated assault of a peace office, and resisting a peace officer. Id. ¶ 28. Those charges were later dismissed. Id. ¶ 29.

II. Legal Standard

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), a complaint generally need only include “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). This short and plain statement must “give the defendant fair notice of what the ... claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) (alteration in original) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The Seventh Circuit has explained that this rule “reflects a liberal notice pleading regime, which is intended to ‘focus litigation on the merits of a claim’ rather than on technicalities that might keep plaintiffs out of court.” Brooks v. Ross, 578 F.3d 574, 580 (7th Cir.2009) (quoting Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A., 534 U.S. 506, 514, 122 S.Ct. 992, 152 L.Ed.2d 1 (2002) ).

“A motion under Rule 12(b)(6) challenges the sufficiency of the complaint to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.” Hallinan v. Fraternal Order of Police of Chi. Lodge No. 7, 570 F.3d 811, 820 (7th Cir.2009). “[A] complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’ ” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955 ). These allegations “must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955. The allegations that are entitled to the assumption of truth are those that are factual, rather than mere legal conclusions. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678–79, 129 S.Ct. 1937.

III. Analysis

Many of Defendants' arguments supporting their motion to dismiss are based upon the labels that Senalan assigned to each count of his complaint. Although the Court is sympathetic to the difficulty of responding to a poorly labelled complaint (like this one), strictly speaking, plaintiffs in federal court are not required to plead legal theories. See Del Marcelle v. Brown Cnty. Corp., 680 F.3d 887, 909 (7th Cir.2012) (en banc) (per curiam). “The question for [the court] is whether the petition adequately presents the legal and factual basis for the claim, even if the precise legal theory is inartfully articulated or more difficult to discern.” Ambrose v. Roeck e man, 749 F.3d 615, 618 (7th Cir.2014) (citations omitted). The Court will therefore look to the facts alleged by Senalan—not the label given to each count in the complaint—to determine if he has stated a claim upon which relief can be granted.

A. False Arrest/Unlawful Detention

Senalan first asserts a claim for false arrest or unlawful detention under § 1983. Second Am. Compl. ¶¶ 32–37. “[A] false arrest is an unreasonable seizure prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” Ienco v. Angarone, 429 F.3d 680, 683 (7th Cir.2005). “A ‘seizure’ triggering the Fourth Amendment's protections occurs only when government actors have, ‘by means of physical force or show of authority, ... in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen.” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395 n. 10, 109 S.Ct. 1865, 104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989) (alteration in original) (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 n. 16, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) ). But after an individual becomes a pretrial detainee, the Fourth Amendment no longer provides the source of their protection from unconstitutional seizures within that already-custodial setting; that protection comes instead (and if at all) from the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.² See Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 744 F.3d 443, 448–49 (7th Cir.2014) (“Between the status of arrestee and sentenced prisoner is the intermediate status of the detainee, who similarly is entitled to protection from physically abusive government conduct. The constitutional source of that protection lies in the right to be free from deprivations of liberty without due process of law.”); see also Forrest v. Prine, 620 F.3d 739, 743–44 (7th Cir.2010) (“[T]he Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures has temporal limitations.”). When the events described in the complaint occurred, Senalan was a pretrial detainee at the Lake County Jail. To state a claim based on a restraint of his liberty, therefore, Senalan must allege facts that support a claim for relief under the due process clause, not the Fourth Amendment.

Construing the factual allegations in the complaint generously, Senalan seems to be alleging that his liberty was restricted when he was moved from one cell to another, which resulted in him being charged with various misdemeanors based on the incident of July 18, 2011. Second Am. Compl. ¶¶ 17–19, 24–25, 28 (describing the forcible move to a second cell and noting that he was charged with misdemeanor battery, aggravated assault of a police officer, and resisting a peace officer); see also R. 34, Pl.'s Resp. Br. at 4 (describing the move to the cell as a wrongful seizure). Defendants argue that Senalan cannot state a claim for relief because he was already in custody at the time of the July 18, 2011 incident, and therefore suffered no loss of liberty from Defendants' actions. Third Mot. Dismiss at 3–4. Defendants are partially correct.

A pretrial detainee may make two types of due process claims. The first challenges the conditions of the detainee's confinement that deprive him of liberty or property without due process of law. See Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 484–86, 115 S.Ct. 2293, 132 L.Ed.2d 418 (1995) ; see also Miller v. Dobier, 634 F.3d 412, 415 (7th Cir.2011) (“[D]etainees still have the same right as criminals to complain of a deprivation of liberty without due process of law if the restrictions constitute a deprivation of liberty within the meaning of the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court ... in Sandin .”). The second protects a pretrial detainee's right to be...