Troutman v. Louisville Metro Dep't of Corr.

• Decision Date: 29 October 2020
• Docket Number: No. 20-5290,20-5290
• Citation: 979 F.3d 472
• Parties: Stephanie TROUTMAN, Administratrix of the Estate of Charles R. Troutman, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LOUISVILLE METRO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, et al., Defendants, Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government; Mark E. Bolton, individually and in his official capacity as Director, Louisville Metro Department of Corrections ; James Cox, Prison Classification Interviewer, individually and in his official capacity, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

979 F.3d 472

Stephanie TROUTMAN, Administratrix of the Estate of Charles R. Troutman, Jr., Plaintiff-Appellant,

v. LOUISVILLE METRO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, et al., Defendants,Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government; Mark E. Bolton, individually and in his official capacity as Director, Louisville Metro Department of Corrections ; James Cox, Prison Classification Interviewer, individually and in his official capacity, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 20-5290

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: October 6, 2020

Decided and Filed: October 29, 2020

ARGUED: Alphonse A. Gerhardstein, GERHARDSTEIN & BRANCH CO. LPA, Cincinnati, Ohio, for Appellant. J. Denis Ogburn, JEFFERSON COUNTY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Alphonse A. Gerhardstein, M. Caroline Hyatt, GERHARDSTEIN & BRANCH CO. LPA, Cincinnati, Ohio, Larry D. Simon, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellant. J. Denis Ogburn, JEFFERSON COUNTY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, Louisville, Kentucky, for Appellees. David M. Shapiro, RODERICK & SOLANGE MACARTHUR JUSTICE CENTER, Chicago, Illinois, for Amici Curiae.

Before: DAUGHTERY, DONALD, and READLER, Circuit Judges.

BERNICE BOUIE DONALD, Circuit Judge.

In this case, Charles Troutman, a pretrial detainee at the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections ("LMDC"), committed suicide after jail officials placed him in solitary confinement despite a recent suicide attempt. Plaintiff Stephanie Troutman ("Stephanie"), Charles’ daughter and administrator of his estate, filed this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the various defendants—(1) the classification officer, James Cox ("Cox"); (2) the LMDC Director, Mark Bolton ("Bolton"); and (3) the municipality itself, Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government ("Louisville Metro")—were deliberately indifferent to the serious medical needs of her father. Stephanie appeals the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of all three defendants. For the reasons explained below, we REVERSE and REMAND the district court's order granting summary judgment in favor of Cox. We AFFIRM the grant of summary judgment in favor of Bolton and Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Charles Troutman's Arrest and Suicide Attempt

The Louisville Metro Police arrested Charles for various drug offenses on November 12, 2015. His intake paperwork showed that he was a daily user of heroin and methamphetamine, including use on the date of his arrest. Early on November 13, Charles first attempted suicide inside the holding cell. According to the deposition testimony of Sergeant Eric Schmitt ("Schmitt"), another officer found Charles "with gauze tied so tightly around his neck that [Charles] was choking." Charles’ "inmate notes" prepared by Cox, show that Charles attempted to hang himself on the booking floor. The officer who discovered Charles said that the gauze was so tight that he could not get a finger in. Charles also allegedly asked the responding officer why he did not leave Charles for a few more minutes.

The reported reasons for the suicide attempt vary. Charles told Schmitt that he "was a junkie and had no reason to live because he was going to get 20 years for his charges," but Dr. Donna Smith ("Smith") later testified that Charles told her he was upset at being in holding and felt like staff was ignoring him and that Charles knew if he did "something like that, that he would get moved out of there immediately." Smith did not consider the attempt to be serious because he did not hang from anything and did not have any mark on his neck. Bolton thought that "the attempt was really nothing more than attention getting."

That same day, November 13, jail staff placed Charles on Level 1 suicide observation and detox. A nurse conducted a medical screening soon after the suicide attempt. That screening showed that Charles attempted suicide three to four times in the past, and that he was "currently thinking about suicide" and had "a plan or suicide instrument in [his] possession." ¹

Additionally, that report noted that Charles showed signs of depression; expressed feelings of hopelessness; appeared anxious, afraid, or angry; and appeared embarrassed or ashamed. The report also noted that the screener did not "feel that the subject [wa]s capable of understanding all questions being asked."

A November 14 report described Charles as distractible, agitated, and irritable with tangential thought processing and pressured speech. Charles explained that he had no head injuries

within the prior six months, although Stephanie called the jail to report that he recently experienced a traumatic brain injury that required hospitalization.² No one in the jail conveyed that information to the medical staff, according to Smith's deposition testimony. Nonetheless, a behavioral health psychiatric evaluation conducted by Correct Care Solutions on November 16 noted that Charles experienced a traumatic brain injury the prior year which left him in a coma for nine days.

That November 14 report shows that Charles told medical staff "I'm not good at all, I'm dying! The nurses don't like me because I'm a junkie." The report also indicated sleep disturbance and minimal appetitive. A report from the following day, however, showed improvement. Charles denied any suicidal intent, remarking that "I love myself the most." The reports also showed improvement in appetite and interaction with peers, though they did note continued significant sleep disturbances, presumably related to his detox.

On November 16, Charles first met with Smith. Under relevant past medical history, Smith's evaluation indicated the traumatic brain injury

the prior year as well as stuttering and hypertension. Smith wrote that Charles denied his attempt was an actual suicide attempt and noted that he was calm and cooperative during the evaluation. The two spoke about Charles’ traumatic brain injury, but Smith did not further investigate that injury. Nor did she speak with any of the officers present at the scene of the attempt, and thus she only later learned the extent to which Charles tightened the gauze around his neck or the condition in which the officers found Charles—"spitting and jerking." According to Smith, during these three days of observation, "not one person said that [Charles] was suicidal, saw him crying, saw him sad, [or] saw him with a flat affect."

B. Clearance to General Population

On November 17, mental health officials cleared Charles to move to general population. Bolton indicated that after staff cleared Charles to general population, there was nothing to indicate that he was acutely suicidal. According to Bolton, "[t]here was nothing to indicate that [Charles] had--was--was going to kill himself. If--if there was, we would've done something about it."

The following day, Stephanie called her father and became worried at the extent of Charles’ crying, which Stephanie says was unusual for him. Consistent with his explanation to the officers who found him after the suicide attempt, Charles expressed worry that he would receive a lengthy prison sentence. Stephanie told her father that she thought she had the money lined up and that he would be out on bail in a couple of days.

C. Move to Solitary

On November 18, Charles got into a verbal altercation with another inmate. Because of that altercation, jail officials moved Charles to the Community Corrections Center ("CCC") 4 North 1. The CCC does not have single segregation cells

. Days later, on November 21, Charles received another disciplinary infraction for a physical altercation with another inmate, upon which staff moved him back from CCC to the main jail complex.³ Cox was responsible for Charles’ subsequent placement, and he understood jail policy to require placement in solitary confinement pending disciplinary proceedings. When Defendant Cox moved Charles to solitary, Cox knew that Charles had a prior suicide attempt in jail, though he was not privy to all of Charles’ records from medical.⁴ Cox himself entered the note on November 13 indicating that Charles tried to hang himself in a booking cell. Nonetheless, Cox understood Charles’ clearance to return to general population as authorizing Charles for all movement within the jail.

Cox chose to place Charles in a solitary cell with barred windows. He then decided to notify Nurse Brown ("Brown") of Charles’ move to solitary. In his deposition, Cox described the call to Brown as a "general courtesy" call. Cox stated that his concern at the time was the risk of seizures from detox, not suicide. Cox spoke with Brown who indicated that she would pass the message along to the Charge Nurse. Cox entered the following into XJail, the record-keeping system: "INMATE MOVED TO H5D9 PENDING DISCIPLINARY. NOTIFIED NURSE BROWN OF SINGLE CELL USE AND WAITING TO HERE [sic ] BACK FROM MEDICAL ON THAT." Cox stated in his deposition that he would expect to hear back if there were any problems with Charles going to that particular cell.⁵

Later, however, Cox stated in his deposition that he understood jail policy to require at minimum verbal clearance from medical before placing someone like Charles in a solitary cell. In response to a 2014 suicide in a barred solitary cell,⁶ the jail classification coordinator Kyle Ernst ("Ernst") circulated an email with a purported policy requiring classification officers to fill out a form showing explicit approval from medical staff to move an inmate to a single cell. This procedure required staff to call medical and obtain approval, specifically indicating who in medical made the approval. Jail staff received training on this clearance procedure: "[a]nytime anyone is placed in a single cell, they have to call the charge nurse and get clearance." If the charge nurse is not immediately available, the nurse is trained to locate the charge nurse and get single-cell clearance. Classification officers must receive affirmative medical clearance before making...