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Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 19-1346 

LEVI A. LORD, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

JOSEPH BEAHM, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 2:18-cv-00351 — J. P. Stadtmueller, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED JANUARY 21, 2020* — DECIDED MARCH 13, 2020 

____________________ 

Before EASTERBROOK, BRENNAN, and SCUDDER, Circuit 

Judges. 

SCUDDER, Circuit Judge. Levi Lord, an inmate in the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, exposed himself to 

* We have agreed to decide this case without oral argument, because 

oral argument would not significantly aid the court, and the briefs and 

record contain everything necessary for our decision. FED. R. APP. P. 

34(a)(2)(C). 

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a female guard. After the guard told him that she would write 

him up and walked away, Lord began yelling that he had a 

razor blade and intended to kill himself. A short while later, a 

male guard went to Lord’s cell, ordered him out, and saw he 

had minor scratches treatable with a gauze bandage. Lord 

nonetheless invoked 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and sued four guards 

for money damages, alleging that they acted with deliberate 

indifference to a material risk to his life by not responding 

faster to his suicide threat. The district court rejected the claim 

and entered summary judgment for the defendants. 

Prison suicide is very real and very serious, but any fair 

reading of this record, even in the light most favorable to 

Lord, shows that he leveled an insincere threat of suicide to 

get attention and demonstrated no recoverable injury. Other 

fact patterns may yield different outcomes, but here the resolution is clear. We affirm, as Lord (thankfully) did not hurt 

himself and that reality leaves nothing for a jury to decide. 

I 

The summary judgment record supplies the operative 

facts, which we review in the light most favorable to Lord. See 

Lewis v. McClean, 864 F.3d 556, 564 (7th Cir. 2017). Summary 

judgment is warranted if the defendants, as the moving party, 

show that there remains “no genuine dispute as to any material fact.” FED. R. CIV. P. 56(a). The law considers a dispute 

genuine “if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could 

return a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Anderson v. Liberty 

Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). “As to materiality, the substantive law will identify which facts are material.” Id. 

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No. 19-1346 3

A 

On December 10, 2017, Correctional Officer Lisa Stoffel 

was escorting an inmate to the shower when she heard someone call her name. She turned around and saw Lord staring at 

her from inside his cell while masturbating. Stoffel told Lord 

he would receive a conduct report and walked away. 

Lord then began shouting that he had a razor blade and 

was going to kill himself. Two inmates submitted declarations 

confirming that they heard Lord’s threat. For their part, however, three correctional officers (defendants Stoffel, Christopher O’Neal, and Joseph Beahm) denied hearing Lord 

threaten suicide. Officer Christopher Pass provided a different account, acknowledging that at some point he heard Lord 

say he would kill himself if he was not able to talk to Officer 

Stoffel. Pass told Lord that his sexual misconduct eliminated 

any chance of Stoffel returning to his cell. 

About thirty minutes later, Officer O’Neal saw what appeared to be two blood droplets on Lord’s cell door window. 

O’Neal asked Lord what he was doing. Lord responded by 

displaying a razor blade and saying he was trying to kill himself. After securing the blade, O’Neil unlocked the door, removed Lord, and walked him to a separate cell. Medical personnel arrived and applied a gauze bandage to the few minor 

scratches they saw on Lord’s forearm. While no further medical treatment was necessary, Lord remained under observation. 

B 

Lord sued each of the four correctional officers who he believed heard but failed to respond to his suicide threat. Alleging a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on 

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cruel and unusual punishment, Lord contended that the officers acted with deliberate indifference to a serious medical 

need by not responding faster to stop him from attempting 

suicide. 

Following discovery, the district court entered summary 

judgment for the defendants. The court viewed the record evidence as disproving that Lord presented any objectively serious medical need, the threshold element of a deliberate indifference claim. From there the court emphasized that Lord 

self-inflicted only minor scratches, requiring “but a brief 

cleaning and a single application of gauze.” Nor, the court 

continued, could any reasonable jury conclude that Lord was 

“genuinely suicidal, rather than childishly seeking secondary 

gain, namely more direct contact with [Officer] Stoffel.” 

II 

A 

“A prison official’s ‘deliberate indifference’ to a substantial 

risk of serious harm to an inmate violates the Eighth Amendment.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 828 (1994). To establish 

an entitlement to damages for such a violation, the prisoner 

must provide evidence that he presented an objectively serious medical need that a defendant correctional officer responded to with deliberate indifference, thereby resulting in 

some injury. See Petties v. Carter, 836 F.3d 722, 727–28 (7th Cir. 

2016) (en banc). 

All agree that suicide is an objectively serious medical condition. Our case law makes equally clear that prison officials 

cannot intentionally disregard a known risk that an inmate is 

suicidal. See Lisle v. Welborn, 933 F.3d 705, 716 (7th Cir. 2019) 

(collecting cases). We have likewise emphasized that 

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No. 19-1346 5

policymakers responsible for prison operations must take diligent precautions to respond to and mitigate a meaningful 

risk of inmate suicide. See Woodward v. Corr. Med. Servs. of Ill., 

Inc., 368 F.3d 917, 926–29 (7th Cir. 2004). 

This case is different, as it reflects an inmate’s insincere suicide threat to get attention. Lord was upset that Officer Stoffel 

would not return to his cell, and he reacted by screaming that 

he had a blade and was taking his life, only then to inflict minor scratches. Lord did not focus his § 1983 claim on these 

scratches or, for that matter, on any other physical injury. To 

the contrary, he focused exclusively on risk—on the danger he 

presented to himself by having a razor blade and the officers 

then ignoring his unmistakable plea that he intended to kill 

himself. 

Lord is right in one respect. The district court may have 

been too quick to conclude that the facts did not allow a jury 

to find that any of the defendant officers heard but failed to 

respond promptly to his suicide threat. Remember that two of 

Lord’s fellow inmates confirmed hearing the threat, and that 

evidence shows a factual disagreement. This observation extends no further, however. To survive summary judgment, 

Lord needed to show that the differing accounts of what happened (and did not happen) left unresolved a genuine dispute 

over a material fact essential to the resolution of liability under 

§ 1983. And that is where Lord’s claim fell short. 

Lord’s claim fails on the basic proposition that he has sued 

for damages under § 1983 and alleged a constitutional tort (an 

Eighth Amendment violation) without then developing evidence of a recoverable injury. See Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 

261, 278 (1985) (recognizing that § 1983 confers “a general 

remedy for injuries to personal rights”); Gabb v. Wexford 

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Health Sources, Inc., 945 F.3d 1027, 1032 (7th Cir. 2019) (quoting Roe v. Elyea, 631 F.3d 843, 864 (7th Cir. 2011)) (“In order to 

succeed in a § 1983 suit, a plaintiff must ‘establish not only 

that a state actor violated his constitutional rights, but also 

that the violation caused the plaintiff injury or damages.’”); 

Bart v. Telford, 677 F.2d 622, 625 (7th Cir. 1982) (“Section 1983 

is a tort [and] [a] tort to be actionable requires injury.”). 

Unlike the district court, we do not wade into Lord’s credibility because, even viewing the evidence as he urges, he did 

not show that he experienced any cognizable harm. Lord’s 

physical injuries consisted only of minor scratches, quickly 

and easily treated with a gauze bandage. By any measure, the 

injuries were trivial—indeed, almost nonexistent—and Lord 

supplied no evidence that he suffered any other form of injury 

(for example, psychological harm) from his insincere suicide 

threat. Lord’s summary judgment papers show that he 

wanted to recover money damages solely for the risk to his 

life—a serious medical need—the defendant officers ignored 

by not immediately responding to his suicide threat. That risk 

is not compensable without evidence of injury, however. Put 

most simply, the summary judgment record revealed and left 

nothing for Lord to present to a jury at trial. 

B 

Today’s case presents a clear instance of an insincere suicide threat from an inmate wanting nothing more than attention. But tomorrow’s case may entail a fact pattern nowhere 

near as straightforward. That reality is not hypothetical, for 

inmate suicide on the rise in our nation’s prisons. See E. ANN 

CARSON, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, BUREAU OF JUSTICE 

STATISTICS, MORTALITY IN STATE AND FEDERAL PRISONS, 2001-

2016 — STATISTICAL TABLES 5 (2020) (providing statistics on 

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the number of deaths by suicide in state and federal prisons 

and reporting that suicides reached a 15-year high in 2016). It 

suffices to remind that the Eighth Amendment prohibits 

prison officials from imposing wanton or unnecessary pain by 

ignoring an inmate who, whether because of major mental illness or some other serious medical need, goes beyond voicing 

an idle threat of suicide. Levi Lord fell on the opposite end of 

the spectrum, and so we AFFIRM. 

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