United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued November 1, 2022 

Decided November 16, 2022 

Before

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

No. 21-1389 

STEVEN ZIRKO,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v. 

KAREN RABIDEAU, et al.

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 16-cv-10996 

John J. Tharp, Jr., 

Judge.

O R D E R

The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment brings 

with it the affirmative duty for prison officials to protect prisoners from violence at the 

hands of other inmates. A correctional officer violates that duty by acting with 

deliberate indifference to an objectively serious risk to the prisoner’s health and safety. 

These principles find straightforward application in this appeal.

Steven Zirko claims that Officer Joel Shaw violated his Eighth Amendment rights 

by failing to protect him from violence at the hands of his cellmate, Patrick Palaggi. But 

the evidentiary record developed during discovery does not show that Officer Shaw 

had the information necessary to give him actual knowledge of any risk that Palaggi 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
No. 21-1389 Page 2 

might have posed to Zirko. The district court rightly recognized, therefore, that Officer 

Shaw could not have acted with deliberate indifference to such a risk. This leaves us to 

affirm the district court’s entry of summary judgment for Officer Shaw.

I 

Because this appeal rises from a motion for summary judgment, we take our own 

fresh look at the record and construe the facts in the light most favorable to Zirko, the 

nonmoving party. See LaBrec v. Walker, 948 F.3d 836, 839 (7th Cir. 2020). Here is what 

the record shows:

In 2015 Zirko was an inmate at Stateville Correctional Center. He started sharing 

a cell with Palaggi that spring, and their relationship deteriorated toward the end of the 

year after Zirko—who is, in his own words, “something of a jailhouse attorney”—

refused to help Palaggi review his criminal records. Zirko did so because he did not 

want “to have anything to do with” Palaggi after learning that he had sexually 

assaulted and murdered a young boy. Palaggi then threatened Zirko, saying that he 

would “beat [Zirko] to within an inch of [his] life” if Zirko told anyone about Palaggi’s 

offenses. Palaggi threatened Zirko on several other occasions, about ten times in total.

Zirko does not remember when Palaggi first threatened him, only that it 

happened sometime in late 2015. Soon after, in November or early December, Zirko told 

Officer Shaw that Palaggi had threatened to beat him within an inch of his life. Officer 

Shaw dismissed Zirko’s report, directing him to “deal with [his] own problems.”

At least a month later, on January 10, 2016, Palaggi assaulted Zirko early one 

morning while Zirko was still asleep. Palaggi hit Zirko multiple times in the face, and 

these blows caused Zirko to lose vision in his right eye. Zirko required two surgeries to 

restore his vision, though his right eye remains photosensitive to this day.

Zirko sued Officer Shaw, as well as several other correctional employees, under 

42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating his Eighth Amendment rights. The district court granted 

the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Zirko now appeals, challenging the 

grant of summary judgment with respect to Shaw alone.

II

The Supreme Court has explained that the Eighth Amendment requires prison 

officials to protect prisoners from violence at the hands of other prisoners. See 

Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 833–34 (1994). But the Court has also instructed that not 
No. 21-1389 Page 3 

“every injury suffered by one prisoner at the hands of another [ ] translates into 

constitutional liability for prison officials.” Id. at 834. Rather, prison officials who do not 

protect one inmate from violence at the hands of another may be found liable under the 

Eighth Amendment only if two requirements are met. First, the prisoner must have 

been exposed to a risk of objectively serious harm. Second, the prison official must have 

had actual knowledge of that risk and responded with deliberate indifference. See 

LaBrec, 948 F.3d at 841; see also Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837–38.

The evidence as viewed in the light most favorable to Zirko suffices to show that 

he faced a risk of objectively serious harm. See, e.g., Brown v. Budz, 398 F.3d 904, 910 (7th 

Cir. 2005) (holding that “a beating suffered at the hands of a fellow detainee ... clearly 

constitutes serious harm”). But Zirko’s burden does not end there, for the evidence 

must also permit a jury to find that Officer Shaw knew of that risk.

A prison official’s awareness of a “specific, repeated, imminent, and plausible 

threat” to a prisoner’s safety can, by itself, establish actual knowledge for purposes of 

an Eighth Amendment claim. Gevas v. McLaughlin, 798 F.3d 475, 481 (7th Cir. 2015).

Consider, for example, what happened in Gevas. David Gevas told prison guards that 

another inmate had repeatedly threatened to stab him, and he specified that he was 

threatened because he had been labeled a snitch. See id. at 481. We held that this was 

enough to defeat summary judgment because “a jury reasonably could infer” that the 

prison officials, based on the information they had available, knew Gevas “faced a 

serious risk of substantial harm.” Id.

Likewise, in LaBrec, Matthew LaBrec told prison officials that he did not feel safe 

around his cellmate. See 948 F.3d at 840. He explained that his cellmate had been 

“acting very unstable” and “displaying very erratic behavior,” which “identified the 

basis for [his] belief” that his cellmate posed an objectively serious threat. Id. at 840, 844. 

That allegation, plus a later “specific description of the abnormal behavior” and other 

corroborating evidence about his cellmate’s disciplinary record, made LaBrec’s report 

plausible enough “to allow a jury to infer that those circumstances evidence[d] a real 

threat of harm.” Id. at 844, 846. Summary judgment was therefore inappropriate. See id.

at 846–47.

Even construing the evidence in the light most favorable to Zirko, there is not 

enough in the record to show that Officer Shaw had actual knowledge of a specific 

threat against Zirko that was repeated, imminent, or plausible. Unlike the situations in 

Gevas and LaBrec, where both plaintiffs provided context for their complaints, the record 

shows that Officer Shaw only knew one thing in late 2015: Palaggi had threatened to 
No. 21-1389 Page 4 

beat Zirko within an inch of his life. Zirko’s report was specific in that he named 

Palaggi as the person making the threat. But without more information, Officer Shaw 

had no way of knowing why Palaggi would have made such a threat. Nothing in the 

record suggests that Zirko told Officer Shaw about his brief stint of legal work for 

Palaggi, which could have provided essential context for making the reported threat 

more plausible and believable.

Nor does the record show that Officer Shaw had any awareness that Palaggi 

repeated his threats in the weeks leading up to the altercation on January 10. Had Zirko 

reported that more threats followed the first, or had he even repeated his concern on 

more than one occasion, that could have bolstered the credibility of his initial claim. 

Instead, as time went by—indeed, at least a month—after Zirko spoke to Officer Shaw, 

any threat conveyed by his one-off report became less imminent and less plausible.

Everyone agrees that Zirko’s injuries are tragic. But a reasonable jury could not 

conclude that, with such limited information available to him, Officer Shaw was 

deliberately indifferent to an objective risk to Zirko’s health or safety. On this record, 

the law requires that we AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary judgment for 

Officer Shaw.