Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-1_96-cv-05576/USCOURTS-caed-1_96-cv-05576-7/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 550
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Civil Rights (U.S. defendant)
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Prisoner Civil Rights

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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE

EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

REX CHAPPELL, )

)

Plaintiff, )

v. )

)

C/O DICKERSON, )

)

Defendant. )

____________________________________)

1: 96 - CV - 5576 AWI DLB P

ORDER DENYING MOTION FOR

RECONSIDERATION

[Document #115]

BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Rex Chappell (“Plaintiff”), a state prisoner proceeding pro se, has filed a civil

rights action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The matter was referred to a United States

Magistrate Judge pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B) and Local Rule 72-302. 

On December 11, 2006, the Magistrate Judge filed Findings and Recommendations,

recommending that Defendant’s motion for summary judgment be granted in part and denied in

part. The Magistrate Judge granted the parties several extensions of time within which to file

objections to the Findings and Recommendation. On March 5, 2007, Defendant filed timely

objections.

On March 14, 2007, the court adopted the Findings and Recommendations without

considering the objections. The court’s March 14, 2007 granted Defendant’s motion for

summary judgment on Plaintiff’s due process claim but denied Defendant’s motion for summary

judgment on Plaintiff’s Eighth Amendment claim and retaliation claim. 

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On March 15, 2007, Defendant filed a motion for reconsideration. Defendant contends

that the court failed to consider the objections Defendant filed on March 5, 2007. Because the

court did not consider the objections in the court’s March 14, 2007 order, Defendant asks the

court to conduct a de novo review of this case, including the objections, and grant Defendant’s

motion for summary judgment. 

LEGAL STANDARD

The court has discretion to reconsider and vacate a prior order. Barber v. Hawaii, 42 F.3d

1185, 1198 (9 Cir.1994); United States v. Nutri-cology, Inc., 982 F.2d 394, 396 (9 Cir.1992). th th

Motions for reconsideration are disfavored, however, and are not the place for parties to make

new arguments not raised in their original briefs. Northwest Acceptance Corp. v. Lynnwood

Equip., Inc., 841 F.2d 918, 925-26 (9 Cir.1988). Motions to reconsider are committed to the th

discretion of the trial court. Rodgers v. Watt, 722 F.2d 456, 460 (9 Cir. 1983) (en banc); th

Combs v. Nick Garin Trucking, 825 F.2d 437, 441 (D.C.Cir. 1987). To succeed, a party must set

forth facts or law of a strongly convincing nature to induce the court to reverse its prior decision. 

See, e.g., Kern-Tulare Water Dist. v. City of Bakersfield, 634 F.Supp. 656, 665 (E.D.Cal. 1986),

aff’d in part and rev’d in part on other grounds, 828 F.2d 514 (9 Cir. 1987). When filing a th

motion for reconsideration, Local Rule 78-230(k) requires a party to show the “new or different

facts or circumstances claimed to exist which did not exist or were not shown upon such prior

motion, or what other grounds exist for the motion.” 

DISCUSSION

Here, the court clearly erred by adopting the Findings and Recommendations without

considering the objections. The court agrees with Defendant’s proposed solution to resolve the

court’s error. As such, the court will conduct a de novo review of the file, review the Findings

and Recommendations, and consider the March 5, 2007 objections to determine if the court

should amend or change the court’s March 14, 2007 order denying in part and granting in part

Defendant’s motion for summary judgment.

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A. New Evidence and Arguments

In the objections, Defendant provides considerable evidence and arguments not made in

Defendant’s original motion for summary judgment. A new theory cannot properly be raised in

objections to Findings and Recommendations. Greenhow v. Secretary of HHS, 863 F.2d 633,

638-39 (9 Cir. 1988), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Hardesty, 977 F.2d 1347 th

(9 Cir.1992). Factual assertions that which could have been but were not presented to the th

Magistrate Judge should be given no consideration when the court is deciding whether to adopt

Findings and Recommendations Sundaram v. County of Santa Barbara, 2001 WL 540515, *1

(C.D.Cal. 2001); Beam System, Inc. v. Checkpoint Systems, Inc., 1997 WL 423113, *9 n.9

(C.D.Cal. 1997). "[A]llowing parties to litigate fully their case before the magistrate and, if

unsuccessful, to change their strategy and present a different theory to the district court would

frustrate the purpose of the Magistrates Act." Greenhow, 863 F.2d at 638. Accordingly, the

court will not consider any new proposed undisputed facts and/or any arguments that were never

presented to the Magistrate Judge and were made for the first time in the objections. With this

standard in mind, the court turns the Findings and Recommendations and the remainder of the

objections.

B. Failure to Protect

Defendant contends in the objections that the fact Plaintiff was not injured is fatal to

Plaintiff’s failure to protect claim. The Eighth Amendment imposes a duty upon prison officials

to take reasonable steps to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners. See

Farmer v. Brennan, 111 U.S. 825, 833 (1994); Hoptowit v. Ray, 682 F.2d 1237, 1250-51 (9th

Cir. 1982). To establish liability under the Eighth Amendment based on a failure to prevent

harm, the prisoner must meet an objective and subjective test. See Allen v. Sakai, 48 F.3d 1082,

1087 (9th Cir.1994). First, there is the objective component which requires the inmate to “show

that he is incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm.” Farmer, 111

U.S. at 834. Second, there is a subjective component requiring that the prison official have a

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In Valandingham v. Bojorquez, 866 F. 2d 1135, 1138 (9th Cir. 1989), the Ninth Circuit 1

held that a prison official’s deliberate spreading of a rumor that the prisoner was a “snitch” states

a claim for violation of the right to be protected from violence while in state custody, even

though no assault by other inmates was claimed. While Valandingham discussed potential

violence in the context of a First Amendment retaliation claim, the opinion supports the court’s

decision that an attack must occur for a failure to protect claim.

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“sufficiently culpable state of mind,” meaning deliberate indifference to the known risk in

question. Id. The Supreme Court has found “a prison official cannot be found liable under the

Eighth Amendment for denying an inmate humane conditions of confinement unless the official

knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety; the official must both be

aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm

exists, and he must also draw the inference.” Id. at 837. For example, a prison official may

avoid liability by presenting evidence that he lacked knowledge of the risk to the prisoner’s

safety or by presenting evidence of a reasonable, albeit unsuccessful, response to the risk. Id. at

844-45.

Although “not every injury suffered by one prisoner at the hands of another . . . translates

into constitutional liability,” id. at 834, the court agrees with the Magistrate Judge that Defendant

cannot avoid liability for failing to protect Plaintiff merely because Plaintiff was never actually

attacked by other inmates. If accepted, such an holding would assess a prison official’s actions

based on hindsight, rather than on the facts and circumstances of which the official was aware at

the time the official was allegedly deliberately indifferent. Such an approach is at odds with

Farmer, which holds that conditions posing a “substantial risk” of serious harm violate the Eighth

Amendment when prison officials are deliberately indifferent to those risks. While Farmer

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itself did not directly state that a physical injury is not necessary to maintain a cause of action for

a prison official’s failure to protect, Farmer found that a prisoner need not wait for the

consummation of a threatened injury before obtaining preventative relief. See Farmer, 511 U.S.

845-47. The state of the law in 1996 was such that Farmer and its progeny gave fair warning to

officials that being deliberately indifference to the safety of prisoners by motiving other prisoners

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to assault them was unconstitutional. See Clement v. Gomez, 298 F.3d 898, 906 (9 Cir. 2002) th

(qualified immunity). 

While proof of an injury is not a required element in a failure to protect claim, a plaintiff

who was never attacked may have difficulty convincing a jury that he is entitled to damages. The

court recognizes that Plaintiff must prove at trial that Defendant's actions caused some form of

injury to establish a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See Mt. Healthy City School Dist. Bd. of

Educ. v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274, 285-87 (1977). Here, Plaintiff states that he experienced fear for

his life that day. This fear could potentially constitute emotional distress damage. In addition,

Plaintiff may still be able to obtain nominal damages in the event a trier of fact does not find any

actual damage. Thus, even considering the arguments made in the objections, the court still

agrees with the Magistrate Judge that Defendant is not entitled to summary judgment on the

failure to protect claim.

C. Retaliation

In recommending the court deny summary judgment on the retaliation claim, the

Magistrate Judge found as follows: 

Plaintiff claims that prior to letting him out on the yard, Officer Dickerson also

refused to process his CDC 602 because he felt that plaintiff had disrespected

another officer. These allegations are sufficient to state a claim for retaliation. 

Defendant presents no evidence on these claims and therefore has not met his

burden as the party moving for summary judgment on this claim. 

12/11/06 Findings and Recommendations at 9. In the objections, Defendant contends that no

claim concerning an administrative appeal is present in the complaint and any retaliation for

Plaintiff’s act of masturbation does not state a claim for retaliation because masturbation is not a

protected activity. 

Allegations of retaliation against a prisoner’s First Amendment rights to speech or to

petition the government may support a section 1983 claim. Rizzo v. Dawson, 778 F.2d 527, 532

(9 Cir. 1985); see also Pratt v. Rowland, 65 F.3d 802, 807 (9 Cir. 1995) Valandingham v. th th

Bojorquez, 866 F.2d 1135 (9 Cir. 1989). “Within the prison context, a viable claim of First th

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Amendment retaliation entails five basic elements: (1) An assertion that a state actor took some

adverse action against an inmate (2) because of (3) that prisoner’s protected conduct, and that

such action (4) chilled the inmate’s exercise of his First Amendment rights, and (5) the action did

not reasonably advance a legitimate correctional goal.” Rhodes v. Robinson, 408 F.3d 559, 567-

68 (9 Cir. 2005). th

While brief, the operative complaint, filed on August 5, 1996, does reference a retaliation

claim based on Defendant discarding Plaintiff’s administrative appeal, concerning the events

leading up to Plaintiff being let out of the cell. While a retaliation claim based on Plaintiff’s

alleged actions in his cell may not be protected conduct, retaliation based on Plaintiff giving

Defendant an administrative appeal does state a claim. The court does note that adverse action

is action that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from filing further administrate appeals. 

See Pinard v. Clatskanie School Dist., 467 F.3d 755, 770 (9 Cir. 2006); White v. Lee, 227 F.3d th

1214, 1228 (9 Cir. 2000). Because the motion for summary judgment focused on whether th

masturbation is a protected activity rather than on whether Plaintiff received an adverse action by

handing the administrative appeal to Defendant, Defendant has not met its burden on summary

judgment to show that Defendant’s discarding of the appeal would not have chilled a person of

ordinary firmness from filing further appeals. Accordingly, the court does not find that the

objections present a basis to not adopt the Findings and Recommendations.

ORDER

Accordingly, having considered the evidence and arguments made in the March 5, 2007

objections, the court ORDERS that Plaintiff ‘s Motion for Reconsideration of the court’s March

14, 2007 order is DENIED. This action is REFERRED to the Magistrate Judge for further

proceedings.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: June 13, 2007 /s/ Anthony W. Ishii 

0m8i78 UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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