Premises Liability in Jail and Prison Cases

Jails and prisons can be dangerous places, and sometimes it is the facility itself that is dangerous, not simply the people inside it. Facilities can be extremely dirty, leading to infections and sickness, can contain other sorts of environmental hazards, and can have physical conditions that are dangerous, leading to inmate and detainee injuries. As climate change accelerates, the unbearable and largely unmitigated heat of these places in the summertime is also potentially an issue.

A Slippery Situation: Jails and prisons can involve dangerous premises, but litigating these issues requires showing "deliberate indifference," which is more demanding than mere negligence.  Photo by Michael Pointner on Unsplash.

However, premises liability arguments in jail and prison cases, like arguments around medical care in the same places, involve higher burdens than are at issue in the free world. It’s not enough simply to show that a condition was dangerous or that the staff were “negligent”: the standard that must be met is “deliberate indifference,” which is akin to knowing and willful blindness to the existence of a serious problem. (The requirements for meeting this standard under the Eighth Amendment for prisoners are different than those under the Fourteenth Amendment for pretrial detainees being held in jails. The Eighth Amendment standard requires both a “subjective” and an “objective” showing of deliberate indifference, whereas the Fourteenth Amendment standard is only “objective,” meaning that it can be satisfied if a “reasonable officer” would have recognized the risk to the detainee.)

One of the most basic challenges with these types of cases will consequently be knowing enough information in the first place about who, in particular, at the jail/prison was (or should have been) aware of the dangerous condition, and when they knew (or should have known) about the condition, so that a case can survive an almost inevitable motion to dismiss that will need to be litigated before discovery can start. Bodycamera and surveillance footage may potentially be able to establish these points, but it typically won’t be available until the case reaches discovery. Therefore, in these kinds of cases, the perceptions of witnesses and, even more so, documentation of prior complaints about the dangerous condition are critical for success.

It's a Trap! For California Inmates, "Administrative Exhaustion" and Presentation of a Tort Claim Are Not the Same Thing

There’s more to litigating prison cases than “exhausting” the prison’s administrative grievance system. In fact, there’s a trap for the unwary built into the process.

Some California inmates know about the need to file a 602 grievance form, and then to completely exhaust the appellate process, in order to go to court related to any sort of incident in prison. That’s a mandatory requirement of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) if the person who files the complaint in court is in custody.

What most folks don’t realize is that there is a second, parallel process that should also be going on at the same time that administrative exhaustion is happening: the inmate should also be submitting a government tort claim form. Without submitting that tort claim form, inmates risk being unable to raise causes of action under California law, because rejection of the tort claim is a requirement for asserting such state claims.

The “trap” created by these two different systems is that an inmate may focus on the “exhaustion” piece of the process and burn up precious time, not realizing that they only have six months from the time of the underlying incident (normally) to submit the tort claim.

By the time they’ve “exhausted” their claim, the time to file the tort claim may have run.

Don’t fall for the trap! Get your paperwork going right away. If you need help, get in touch.

Fierro v. Smith: Deference to Prison Officials in Eighth Amendment Claims

A jury should not be instructed on the need to defer to prison officials’ decisions regarding the administration of prisons, in cases raising Eighth Amendment claims, unless the treatment that is at issue (1) was provided pursuant to a security-based policy or practice, and, if so, (2) was a necessary, justified, and non-exaggerated response to security needs. That point is reiterated in the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Fierro v. Smith (19-16786), filed yesterday, where Arizona prison officials repeatedly disregarded an inmate’s request to be put in protective custody before the inmate was attacked by gang members. Fierro brought a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the correctional officers who failed to respond to his requests to be housed safely.

In Fierro, the Ninth Circuit concluded, there were genuine factual disputes as to both of the two prongs of the analysis, and the jury should therefore have been given, at most, an instruction saying it was their choice whether to defer to prison officials’ judgment. In a footnote, the Ninth Circuit panel points out that even a “jury’s choice”-type instruction “could risk confusion without much added benefit,” which seems like a charitable way of putting it.