Smith v. Dart

• Decision Date: 25 September 2015
• Docket Number: No. 14–1169.,14–1169.
• Citation: 803 F.3d 304
• Parties: Donald A. SMITH, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Thomas J. DART, et al., Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

803 F.3d 304

Donald A. SMITH, Plaintiff–Appellant

v.Thomas J. DART, et al., Defendants–Appellees.

No. 14–1169.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 2, 2015.

Decided Sept. 25, 2015.

Sarah O'Rourke Schrup, Attorney, Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.

Andrea Lynn Huff, Attorney, Chicago, IL, for Defendants–Appellees.

Before BAUER, POSNER, and MANION, Circuit Judges.

Opinion

BAUER, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff-appellant, Donald A. Smith, a pretrial detainee at the Cook County Jail, brought this pro se civil rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that defendant-appellee, Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart (“Dart”), violated his federal rights by paying him insufficient wages and subjecting him to inhumane working and living conditions. The district court dismissed Smith's work- and wage-related claims on preliminary review under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. The court later dismissed Smith's remaining claims without prejudice for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Smith filed two post-dismissal motions, each of which the district court treated as a motion for reconsideration, and each of which the district court denied. The court then dismissed Smith's case with prejudice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b). Smith appealed. For the reasons that follow, we affirm in part and reverse in part.

I. BACKGROUND

On July 15, 2013, Smith filed a pro se complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Smith named Dart and two other jail officials as defendants in the caption of his complaint.¹ The complaint states that Smith, as a pretrial detainee and United States Army veteran, was placed in Division Five and enrolled in a special program that the jail offered to veterans. As a part of the veterans' program, Smith was given a job in the jail laundry. The program afforded him other benefits as well, including the opportunity to live in a special wing for veterans, apart from the general jail population, and to have his case heard in veterans' court. Smith claimed that he was paid only $3 a day for his work in the jail laundry and not the required federal minimum wage. He also claimed that he was subjected to inhumane working conditions, alleging that his job in the jail laundry required him to stand in a “hot, smelly room” from five or six o'clock in the morning until one o'clock in the afternoon. Lastly, Smith claimed that he was subjected to inhumane conditions of confinement. Specifically, he alleged insufficient food portions, the presence of rodents and insects, no mirrors, lack of outdoor recreation, and that he was forced to drink filthy water.

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the district court conducted a preliminary review of the complaint. The court summarily dismissed Smith's work- and wage-related claims. The court held that Smith had “no constitutional right to be paid for his jail job assignment at all, let alone in accordance with minimum wage laws,” and that his “allegation that he has to work 7– and 8–hour days in a ‘hot, smelly room’ [was] insufficiently egregious to rise to the level of a constitutional violation.” However, the court determined that Smith had stated colorable conditions of confinement claims.

Dart then moved to dismiss the remainder of Smith's claims for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), or alternatively, for a more definite statement under Rule 12(e). In response, Smith submitted two letters, the substance of which we set forth in our discussion below. The district court did not address Smith's first letter and treated his second letter as a motion to introduce evidence, which it denied. The court then granted Dart's motion to dismiss as uncontested and dismissed Smith's complaint without prejudice. In doing so, the court advised Smith of the deficiencies in his original pleading and instructed him to file an amended complaint.

Subsequent to the district court's dismissal order, Smith filed a “Motion Clarifying Preivously [sic] Cited Complaint About Conditions At Cook County Jail; Pluss [sic] Reconcideration [sic] of Portion of Same dismissed under The Eigth [sic] Amendment.” This motion included the date on which he was first incarcerated in Division Five (December 12, 2012) and the dates that he worked in the jail laundry (January 15, 2013 to November 18, 2013). The motion also indicated that he was “transfered [sic] against his wishes” out of Division Five (and presumably the veterans' program) to Division Eleven. The district court construed this filing as a motion for clarification (which it granted) and reconsideration of the dismissal order (which it denied). The court specifically directed Smith, for a second time, to file an amended pleading and granted him additional time to do so.

Smith then submitted another filing, entitled “Amended Motion in Support of Original Complaint.” In this filing, Smith claimed that he was subjected to “the previously mentioned violations of his Constitutional rights” since the date of his incarceration in Division Five. He also set forth case law and referenced newspaper articles and a Department of Justice study to support the allegations he had pleaded in his original complaint. Relevant to his conditions of confinement claims, he alleged that the water at the jail contained radioactive chemicals, “sex[,] drugs[,] and lead,” and that corrections officers were fully aware of this. He reiterated that he had been transferred from Division Five to Division Eleven and further stated that he had been housed in Division Eleven for approximately one and a half months and that there had been “very little change for the better due to [the] transfer.” The district court construed this filing as a second motion for reconsideration, which it denied.

Two weeks later, on January 27, 2014, the district court dismissed Smith's case with prejudice pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b). The court explained that, despite warning Smith that failure to amend his complaint would result in summary dismissal, Smith did not submit an amended complaint as instructed. This appeal followed.

II. DISCUSSION

Smith, represented by counsel on appeal, challenges the district court's dismissal of his work- and wage-related claims under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, as well as the court's dismissal of his conditions of confinement claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). We review de novo both a § 1915A dismissal at the screening stage and a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal for failure to state a claim. Lagerstrom v. Kingston,

463 F.3d 621, 624 (7th Cir.2006). When reviewing a motion to dismiss, we accept all facts alleged in the complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences from those facts in favor of the plaintiff. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 563, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) ; Vill. of DePue v. Exxon Mobil Corp., 537 F.3d 775, 782 (7th Cir.2008).

To satisfy the notice pleading standard of Rule 8(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a complaint must merely provide “a short and plain statement of the claim,” which is sufficient to “give the defendant fair notice of what the ... claim is and the grounds upon which it rests,” Bell Atl. Corp., 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 47, 78 S.Ct. 99, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957) ), including “some indication ... of time and place,” Thomson v. Washington, 362 F.3d 969, 970–71 (7th Cir.2004). Although detailed factual allegations are not required, “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 Bell Atl. Corp., 550 U.S. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955 ); Bonte v. U.S. Bank, N.A., 624 F.3d 461, 463 (7th Cir.2010). In other words, a plaintiff “must plead some facts that suggest a right to relief that is beyond the speculative level.” Atkins v. City of Chicago, 631 F.3d 823, 832 (7th Cir.2011) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Because pro se pleadings are to be held to “less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers,” Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520, 92 S.Ct. 594, 30 L.Ed.2d 652 (1972) (per curium), we accord a liberal reading to pro se complaints, Arnett v. Webster, 658 F.3d 742, 751 (7th Cir.2011). With these general principles in mind, we turn to Smith's challenges on appeal.

A. Conditions of Confinement

At the outset, we note that Smith's constitutional rights as a pretrial detainee are derived from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, rather than the Eighth Amendment, which is applicable to convicted prisoners. See, e.g., Kingsley v. Hendrickson, ––– U.S. ––––, 135 S.Ct. 2466, 2475, 192 L.Ed.2d 416 (2015) ; Budd v. Motley, 711 F.3d 840, 842 (7th Cir.2013). In the context of a conditions of confinement claim, a pretrial detainee is entitled to be free from conditions that amount to “punishment,” Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), while a convicted prisoner is entitled to be free from conditions that constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 832, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994). In both cases, however, the alleged conditions must be objectively serious enough to amount to a constitutional deprivation, and the defendant prison official must possess a sufficiently culpable state of mind.² See, e.g., Sain v. Wood, 512 F.3d 886, 893–94 (7th Cir.2008) ; Board v. Farnham, 394 F.3d 469, 478 (7th Cir.2005) ; Cavalieri v. Shepard, 321 F.3d 616, 620 (7th Cir.2003). An adverse condition amounts to a constitutional deprivation when it results in the denial of a basic human need, Rice ex rel. Rice v. Corr. Med. Servs., 675 F.3d 650, 664 (7th Cir.2012), such as “adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical...