Woodall v. Foti
| Decision Date | 16 June 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 79-3601,79-3601 |
| Parties | Ray Thomas WOODALL, Jr., Petitioner-Appellant, v. Charles A. FOTI, Jr., et al., Respondents-Appellees. Summary Calendar. . Unit A |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Ray T. Woodall, Jr., pro se.
Freeman R. Matthews, Legal Staff, Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Dept., New Orleans, La., for respondents-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Before CHARLES CLARK, REAVLEY and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
Ray T. Woodall is an inmate in the Orleans Parish Prison. Acting pro se, he brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Charles A. Foti, the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff in charge of the parish prison, and against the Louisiana Department of Corrections, alleging that he had been denied medically necessary psychiatric care in derogation of his rights under the Eighth Amendment. The district court denied Woodall leave to proceed in forma pauperis, holding that his lawsuit was frivolous, and dismissed the case for failure to state a claim. We vacate and remand.
Woodall's handwritten form petition alleges that he had been receiving psychiatric counseling twice weekly before he was incarcerated and that he had been diagnosed as a manic depressive with suicidal tendencies. He also alleges that he had previously been confined at the Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville, Louisiana, for treatment of pedophilia, a psychiatric condition in which the patient has an abnormal sexual desire for children, and that his incarceration resulted from his engaging in this deviant sexual practice. He states that he had written letters to Sheriff Foti requesting psychiatric counseling, that he had seen the Orleans Parish Prison psychiatrist, and that the psychiatrist had advised him that he was in need of psychiatric counseling but that the prison could not provide the type of counseling necessary for treating pedophilia. He sought injunctive relief requiring the parish prison to provide him with the psychiatric treatment appropriate for his condition.
The district court denied Woodall's motion to proceed in forma pauperis, but it permitted him to file his complaint without prepayment of fees and then ordered the case to be dismissed immediately thereafter. The district court held that Woodall's lawsuit was frivolous within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d) because it failed to state a claim cognizable under section 1983. The court recognized that deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of prisoners could amount to cruel and unusual punishment. However, it concluded that Woodall's complaint did not allege such deliberate indifference by Foti since Woodall had seen the parish prison's staff psychiatrist who had told him that he could not provide treatment for pedophilia. The district court construed Woodall's complaint to be that the staff psychiatrist had determined Woodall's condition to be insufficiently serious to warrant further treatment. The court also apparently assumed that Woodall and the prison psychiatrist had merely disagreed about what kind of psychiatric treatment would be appropriate and then decided that such a difference of opinion would not state a cause of action under section 1983.
Shortly after the district court entered its order dismissing his complaint, Woodall filed two handwritten letters addressed to the district judge. In the first letter, Woodall insisted that the district court had misinterpreted his complaint, requested the court to reconsider its prior holding, and elaborated on the circumstances surrounding Sheriff Foti's denial of psychiatric treatment. Woodall denied that he and the prison psychiatrist had disagreed about the appropriate manner of psychiatric treatment. According to Woodall, the psychiatrist had not told Woodall that further treatment was unnecessary as the district court had apparently assumed. Rather, the psychiatrist said that psychotherapy was the medically indicated method of treatment that he was a chemotherapist unqualified to administer psychotherapy, and that his own heavy case load at the prison and other institutions prohibited his rendering effective medical assistance to Woodall. The letter alleges that Sheriff Foti categorically refused to provide specialized psychiatric treatment.
Woodall also provided additional background information concerning his prior psychiatric treatment. He explained that his depression was a reaction to his crime and the subsequent legal proceedings. Although he had been receiving regular psychiatric treatment, including drug therapy, his depression gradually grew more acute. Finally, after Woodall attempted to commit suicide, his psychiatrist recommended he be hospitalized. He then remained in the hospital's custody throughout his criminal trial but was "kept in virtual solitary confinement" in the Orleans Parish Prison for the first three and a half weeks of his imprisonment. He then alleged,
Placing a person diagnosed to be a manic depressant etc. in such adverse circumstances, after having the day before, been under close psychiatric observation (to thwart plaintiff's possible suicide), in a state mental hospital, for even a day, showed deliberate indifference to plaintiff's health and well being.
Woodall further complained that the conditions of his prison confinement exacerbated the possibility of suicide and hampered the prospects of his medical recovery. Woodall requested to be placed under psychiatric observation in the prison's hospital ward.
In Woodall's second letter, he supplied billing records and other documents reflecting his hospitalization at the Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville, Louisiana.
The district court construed Woodall's letter pleadings as a "motion to review" but found nothing in the supplemental allegations to warrant reconsideration of its prior dismissal. No responsive pleadings were ever filed by the defendants. Apparently they were never served with process or any of these "pleadings."
This circuit has adopted a two-stage procedure for processing a prisoner's pro se civil rights complaint filed in forma pauperis under 28 U.S.C. § 1915. First, the district court should determine whether the plaintiff satisfies the economic eligibility criterion under section 1915(a). Upon a finding of economic justification, the court should allow the complaint to be docketed without prepayment of fees. Second, once leave has been granted, section 1915(d) allows the district court to dismiss the complaint prior to service of process if it determines the complaint to be frivolous or malicious and spare the defendant the inconvenience and expense of answering a frivolous complaint. See Mitchell v. Beauboef, 581 F.2d 412, 416 (5th Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 441 U.S. 966, 99 S.Ct. 2416, 60 L.Ed.2d 1072 (1979); Watson v. Ault, 525 F.2d 886, 891-92 (5th Cir. 1976). Although the district court substantially complied with this procedure, it prematurely decided that Woodall's complaint should be dismissed as frivolous.
As to whether an action is frivolous under section 1915(d) we have said,
In Anderson v. California, 1967, 386 U.S. 738, 744, 87 S.Ct. 1396, 1400, 18 L.Ed.2d 493, 498, the Supreme Court defined a frivolous appeal as being one without arguable merit. In our view this same test or standard should be applied in the trial court but in terms of the arguable substance of the claim presented, both in law and in fact.
Watson v. Ault, 525 F.2d at 892. Moreover, because Woodall's complaint was dismissed for failure to state a claim, the court must accept its allegations as true. Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.S. 546, 546, 84 S.Ct. 1733, 1734, 12 L.Ed.2d...
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