Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01952/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01952-0/pdf.json

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. 14-1952 

PEDRO DIAZ, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

MALCOLM DAVIDSON, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Central District of Illinois. 

No. 1:08-cv-1280 — Joe Billy McDade, Judge. 

____________________ 

SUBMITTED MAY 26, 2015 — DECIDED AUGUST 20, 2015 

____________________ 

Before POSNER, ROVNER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff complains that while 

he was an inmate of the Pontiac state prison in Illinois the 

defendants (prison guards, prison grievance officers, the 

warden, the assistant warden, a “correctional major” at the 

prison, who is responsible for ensuring the safety and security of the prison, and the director of the Illinois Department 

of Corrections) refused to equip him with gloves and a hat 

when he exercised in his outdoor cell in the prison yard in 

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2 No. 14-1952 

very cold winter weather. According to medical evidence, he 

needed the exercise to prevent muscles in his back from atrophying because of arthritis, and without gloves and a hat 

to protect him from intense cold he could not exercise adequately; in particular he could not do chin ups, which he 

needed for his back—there was a chin-up bar in his outdoor 

cell (it was the only piece of exercise equipment in the cell) 

but it was too cold to grasp tightly in very cold weather. His 

indoor cell was warm enough but tiny—too small for him to 

be able to do the exercise he needed to do for his back. He 

claims that the denial of adequate exercise, aggravating his 

back condition, constituted cruel and unusual punishment in 

violation of federal law. 

The refusal to allow him to wear gloves and a hat was 

pursuant to a policy that the prison justified on the ground 

that “offenders in the past have used hats and gloves as a 

tool for assaulting staff and offenders by placing feces inside 

the gloves or stocking cap” and “then swing[ing] the hat or 

gloves in a circular motion to create enough force to fling the 

feces into a staff member or offender from a distance,” and 

that “the gloves or hat can also be used by offenders to hide 

dangerous contraband.” The plaintiff in discovery asked for 

incident reports of inmates who had used hats or gloves as 

weapons but was told that because the database of incident 

reports is searchable only by date of report, the plaintiff’s 

demand was too burdensome to comply with. The district 

judge agreed. 

Prison officials who claim that inmates must be denied 

exercise that they need have to be able to back up the claim. 

See, e.g., Turley v. Rednour, 729 F.3d 645, 652 (7th Cir. 2013); 

Pearson v. Ramos, 237 F.3d 881, 885 (7th Cir. 2001); cf. 

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No. 14-1952 3 

Chandler v. Crosby, 379 F.3d 1278, 1295 (11th Cir. 2004). It is 

difficult to believe that Pontiac prison has no searchable records of inmates’ assaults on guards and other prisoners and 

of their use of hats or gloves to conceal contraband. But if 

indeed it has no searchable records, this should alter rather 

than extinguish the plaintiff’s right to discovery; in response 

to the plaintiff’s request for evidence to support the defendants’ denial of medically needed exercise rights, the defendants should at least be required to present testimony by 

prison personnel documenting the use of gloves and hats by 

prisoners as weapons. Failure to respond to a plaintiff’s reasonable discovery request was held in Bryant v. City of Chicago, 746 F.3d 239, 242–43 (7th Cir. 2014), to be reversible error. 

For all we know the alleged prisoner misconduct is so rare 

that the possibility of it could not justify the denial of gloves 

and a hat to the plaintiff, for whom they are medical needs. 

The denial of gloves seems a more serious concern than 

denial of a hat, for which ear muffs might be an adequate 

alternative—and whoever heard of ear muffs as weapons? 

But gloves might well be needed to grip a cold object (the 

chin-up bar), though just gloves that protect the surface of 

the palm and fingers, and a backless glove would do that job 

without being usable to contain or hurl any unpleasant substance. We can’t imagine on what ground the prison could 

object to providing Diaz with a backless glove. 

But although the record compiled in the district court 

suggests that the plaintiff’s federal rights may have been violated—see, e.g., Lopez v. Smith, 203 F.3d 1122, 1132–33 (9th 

Cir. 2000) (en banc); Turley v. Rednour, supra, 729 F.3d at 652;

Delaney v. DeTella, 256 F.3d 679, 683–84 (7th Cir. 2001)—his 

suit must fail because he does not allege that the failure to 

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provide him with a hat and gloves reflected indifference on 

the part of the defendants to his need for those items. “[I]n a 

case like this, an inmate must allege actual knowledge of 

impending harm easily preventable.” Id. As far as appears, 

the defendant guards gave him what they were required by 

the prison’s policy to give him in the way of clothing when 

he exercised outdoors in cold weather without realizing, or 

being irresponsible in failing to realize, that he needed 

gloves and a hat to do the specific exercises that he needed 

to do for his back. As for the warden, his knowledge of 

Diaz’s problem, so far as the record reveals, was extremely 

limited. The warden received only one pertinent grievance 

from Diaz, which complained that on one occasion he’d been 

left outdoors without a hat and gloves for two hours. There 

was no suggestion that this was other than an isolated failure to equip him properly for the cold. 

The grievance officers were in the same position as the 

district judge: not receiving allegations indicative of a systematic failure to provide Diaz with the protective clothing 

that he needed, they had no basis for inferring misconduct 

by the guards or the warden, and thus were doing their job 

in not acting on the grievance. See Burks v. Raemisch, 555 F.3d 

592, 595 (7th Cir. 2009). There are no allegations of deliberate 

indifference by the other defendants, either. 

AFFIRMED

Judge Hamilton concurs in the judgment for the reasons 

given by the district court. 

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