### In the 

# United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

____________________ No. 19-1346
L EVI A. L ORD , Plaintiff-Appellant ,

v.
J OSEPH B EAHM , 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

.

____________________
S UBMITTED J ANUARY 21, 2020 *

— D ECIDED M ARCH 13, 2020

____________________

Before E ASTERBROOK, B RENNAN , and S CUDDER , Circuit Judges

. S CUDDER , 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 ne cessary for our decision. F ED . R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).2 No. 19-1346

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 th at they acted with deliberate indi ff erence 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 an d 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 a tt ention and demonstrated no recoverable injury. Other fact pa tt erns may yield di ff erent outcomes, but here the resolution is clear. We a ffi rm, 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 defe ndants, as the moving party, show that there remains “no ge nuine dispute as to any material fact.” F ED

. R. C IV

. 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.No. 19-1346 3

A On December 10, 2017, Correctional O ffi cer Lisa Sto ff elwas escorting an inmate to the shower when she heard someone call her name. She turned aro und and saw Lord staring at her from inside his cell while masturbating. Sto ff el told Lord he would receive a conduct report and walked away. Lord then began shouting th at he had a razor blade and was going to kill himself. Two inmates submi tt ed declarations

con fi rming that they heard Lord’s threat. For their part, however, three correctional o ffi cers (defendants Sto ff el, Christopher O’Neal, and Joseph Beahm) denied hearing Lord threaten suicide. O ffi cer Christopher Pass provided a di ff erent account, acknowledging that at some point he heard Lord say he would kill himself if he was not able to talk to O ffi cer Sto ff el. Pass told Lord that his sexual misconduct eliminated any chance of Sto ff el returning to his cell. About thirty minutes later, O ffi cer 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 minorscratches 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 o ffi cers who he believed heard but failed to respond to his suicide threat. Alleging a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on4 No. 19-1346

cruel and unusual punishment, Lord contended that the o ffi cers acted with deliberate indi ff erence to a serious medical need by not responding faster to stop him from a tt empting suicide. Following discovery, the dist rict court entered summaryjudgment 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 indi ff erence claim. From there the court emphasized that Lord self-in fl icted 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 [O ffi cer] Sto ff el.”
II
A “A prison o ffi cial’s ‘deliberate indi ff erence’ to a substantial risk of serious harm to an in mate violates the Eighth Amendment.” Farmer v. Brennan , 511 U.S. 825, 828 (1994). To establish an entitlement to damages for su ch a violation, the prisonermust provide evidence that he presented an objectively serious medical need that a defendant correctional o ffi cer responded to with deliberate indi ff erence, thereby resulting in some injury. See Pe tt ies 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 o ffi cials 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 thatNo. 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 di ff erent, as it re fl ects an inmate’s insincere suicide threat to get a tt ention. Lord was upset that O ffi cer Sto ff el would not return to his cell, and he reacted by screaming that he had a blade and was taking his life, only then to in fl ict minor scratches. Lord did not fo cus his § 1983 claim on these scratches or, for that ma tt er, 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 o ffi cers 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 fi nd that any of the defendant o ffi cers heard but failed to respond promptly to his suicide threat. Remember that two of Lord’s fellow inmates con fi rmed hearing the threat, and thatevidence shows a factual disagreement. This observation extends no further, however. To survive summary judgment, Lord needed to show that the di ff ering 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 (anEighth 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. Wexford6 No. 19-1346

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 plainti ff must ‘establish not only that a state actor violated his constitutional rights, but also that the violation caused the plainti ff 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 on ly 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 su ff ered 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 o ffi cers 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 a tt ention. But tomorrow’s case may entail a fact pa tt ern nowhere near as straightforward. That re ality is not hypothetical, for inmate suicide on the rise in our nation’s prisons. See E. A NN C ARSON , U.S. D EPARTMENT OF J USTICE , B UREAU OF J USTICE S TATISTICS , M ORTALITY IN S TATE AND F EDERAL P RISONS , 2001- 2016 — S TATISTICAL T ABLES 5 (2020) (providing statistics onNo. 19-1346 7

the number of deaths by suicide in state and federal prisons and reporting that suicides reac hed a 15-year high in 2016). It

su ffi ces to remind that the Ei ghth Amendment prohibits prison o ffi cials from imposing wanton or unnecessary pain by ignoring an inmate who, whet her 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.