Williams v. Jackson
| Citation | 600 F.3d 1007 |
| Decision Date | 25 March 2010 |
| Docket Number | No. 09-1843.,09-1843. |
| Parties | Eric WILLIAMS, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Moses JACKSON, Captain, East Arkansas Regional Unit, ADC, individual and official capacities; Jeremy Andrews, Major, East Arkansas Regional Unit, ADC, individual and official capacities; Marion Beard, Lt., East Arkansas Regional Unit, ADC, individual and official capacities; Billy Parsons, in official and individual capacities, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit) |
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Ali Brady, argued, Little Rock, AR, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Nicholas Lincoln Rogers, argued, Little Rock, AR, for Defendants-Appellants.
Before WOLLMAN, RILEY, and MELLOY, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Eric Williams, a former Arkansas inmate, brought Eighth Amendment claims against a prison maintenance supervisor and three correction officers alleging that they willfully and maliciously exposed him to ultraviolet radiation resulting in physical injury. The defendants argued that Williams failed to adequately exhaust his administrative remedies and that they were entitled to qualified immunity. The district court denied qualified immunity as to all four defendants and found that Williams had adequately exhausted all of the administrative remedies practically available to him.
We hold that defendant Parsons, the maintenance supervisor, is entitled to qualified immunity. As to the other defendants, we hold that, given the prevalence of outstanding factual disputes, the district court correctly denied qualified immunity. Finally, the district court's rejection of the defendants' failure-to-exhaust affirmative defense is not an appealable final order. It is legally and conceptually separate from the issues involved in the qualified-immunity appeal. Accordingly, it is not inextricably intertwined with the qualified-immunity issue, and we will not address it at this time.
When Williams was an Arkansas inmate, he was in a shared room containing a germicidal ultraviolet radiation lamp used for the treatment of tuberculosis. In normal operation, the lamp contained a shield to protect occupants from exposure to the ultraviolet radiation. The allegations in the present case focus on correction officers' removal of the shield and exposure of Williams to radiation.
The parties agree that correction officers Jackson, Andrews, and Beard conducted a "shake down" of the room looking for contraband. According to Williams's deposition testimony and affidavit, an inmate made comments to these officers when the officers were leaving the room. As an apparent act of retaliation, the officers then removed the protective shield from the ultraviolet lamp, and one of the officers stated, "I got something for y'all." Williams states that he and other inmates asked the officers to replace the shield or turn off the lamp due to its danger but that the officers refused. Williams also states that the shield contained a conspicuous warning label. Further, the inmates and officers alike had previously observed maintenance personnel don protective gear before working on or handling the lights. Williams argues that, based on these allegations, it is necessary at this preliminary stage of the proceedings to infer that officials knew of health risks from the unshielded ultraviolet radiation lamp and that they purposefully exposed him to the ultraviolet light as a malicious and retaliatory act.
A guard who was not involved in the "shake down" and who is not named as a defendant in this case arrived for work the next day. He saw the unshielded lamp and ordered that it be turned off. At the time it was turned off, the unshielded lamp had been exposing Williams to radiation for at least fourteen hours.
Williams was sleeping when the guard arrived. The guard woke Williams and took him and other inmates to the infirmary. The inmates reported red skin, burning eyes, swollen eyes, blurred vision, and headaches. Medical reports show that Williams exhibited facial swelling during this initial infirmary visit. Williams received eyedrops and patches for both eyes. He wore the patches for two days. He began having migraine headaches shortly thereafter and received painkillers for the headaches.
In a return visit to the prison infirmary, Williams exhibited redness in his eyes. He claims that his headaches continue through the present time and that he suffers sporadically blurred vision as well as an increased risk of cancer. He has not sought medical help for these alleged symptoms since his release from prison. He attributes this fact to a lack of money and insurance. Williams asserts that an expert will testify to offer an opinion that his symptoms are of a type that can be caused by ultraviolet radiation. The expert is not a medical doctor, but rather, an ultraviolet lighting specialist.
Shortly after these events, Williams filed an administrative complaint through the prison's grievance system. The administrative complaint named the three correction-officer defendants: Jackson, Andrews, and Beard. Williams received no relief through the administrative grievance system, and he subsequently filed the present action against Jackson, Andrews, and Beard in the district court. After Williams was released from prison, he learned that Parsons purportedly received notice of the unshielded lamp but failed to take timely action to replace the shield. Williams added Parsons as a defendant in an amended complaint.
The defendants moved for summary judgment asserting qualified immunity and failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The correction-officer defendants asserted that they removed the shield because prisoners had damaged it, the officers had no knowledge of possible harm from ultraviolet radiation, and the prisoners did not demand that the defendants replace the shield. The officers also asserted a general argument that, as a matter of law, reasonable officers would not have known that the lamp could be harmful. Parsons asserted that Williams's allegations against him suggested, at the most, garden variety negligence in that Williams described merely Parson's failure to act in a timely manner to repair or replace the shield.
The parties devote considerable argument to the question of whether Williams adequately exhausted his administrative remedies through the prison grievance system. It is well established that, in the absence of outstanding questions of material fact, we have jurisdiction over interlocutory appeals regarding denials of qualified immunity. White v. McKinley, 519 F.3d 806, 812-13 (8th Cir. 2008). That jurisdiction, however, is limited and does not extend to other issues unless those issues are free of material factual disputes and inextricably intertwined with the legal issues involved in the qualified immunity analysis. Id. at 815. Issues are not inextricably intertwined if different legal analyses or standards apply to resolution of the issues. Id.; see also Kincade v. City of Blue Springs, 64 F.3d 389, 395 (8th Cir.1995) () (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, the failure-to-exhaust affirmative defense involves an entirely separate and distinct legal standard and analysis than the qualified immunity issue. Accordingly, it is not inextricably intertwined with the qualified immunity issue, and we may not address it at this time. Further, we note as an aside that all of the defendants' arguments on this point appear to rely on disputed facts, providing a separate basis for refusing to review this issue on an interlocutory basis.
Qualified immunity generally shields "government officials performing discretionary functions ... from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). To resolve a government official's claim of qualified immunity, we apply a two-part test, asking whether the plaintiff has demonstrated a violation of a constitutional right and whether that constitutional right was clearly established at the time of the violation. Id. We may address these questions in either order. Pearson v. Callahan, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 129 S.Ct. 808, 818, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009).
Williams alleges excessive force and deliberate indifference, both in violation of the Eighth Amendment, based on the correction-officer defendants' purportedly retributory and malicious behavior in purposefully removing the shield, exposing him to radiation, and ignoring demands to replace the shield or deactivate the light. We first address the excessive force claim.
It is "well established that a malicious and sadistic use of force by a prison official against a prisoner, done with the intent to injure and causing actual injury, is enough to establish a violation of the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause." Foulk v. Charrier, 262 F.3d 687, 702 (8th Cir.2001). The Supreme Court recently clarified that the extent of any resulting injury, while material to the question of damages and informative as to the likely degree of force applied, is not in and of itself a threshold requirement for proving this type of Eighth Amendment claim. See Wilkins v. Gaddy, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1175, ___ L.Ed.2d ___ (2010) (per curiam). In doing so, the Court expressly rejected the theory that lower courts may dismiss such claims based solely on the de minimis nature of the resulting injury. Id. at ___-___, 130 S.Ct. at 1177-78. The Court, however, left open the possibility of dismissal where...
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