Opinion ID: 4566453
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Deputies’ Appeal

Text: 1. Two background legal principles are central to the Deputies’ appeal. The first is the defense of qualified immunity to a constitutional claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. “Qualified immunity shields a government official from money damages (and litigation) unless the official’s conduct violated a ‘clearly established’ legal rule.” Beck v. Hamblen County, 969 F.3d 592, 599 (6th Cir. 2020) (citing Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009)). This immunity requires a plaintiff to identify a legal rule that is “‘particularized’ to the facts of the case,” such that the government defendants had “fair and clear warning” that their conduct violated the law. White v. Pauly, 137 S. Ct. 548, 552 (2017) (per curiam) (citation omitted); accord Arrington-Bey v. City of Bedford Heights, 858 F.3d 988, 992–93 (6th Cir. 2017). The second is the so-called “collateral-order doctrine,” which gives circuit courts appellate jurisdiction over some otherwise non-final orders. Ordinarily, we have jurisdiction only over appeals from a district court’s “final decisions”—those that completely resolve a case. 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We would not normally treat a decision denying summary judgment, like the decision in this case, as a “final” one. See Brown v. Chapman, 814 F.3d 436, 444 (6th Cir. 2016). After all, these types of decisions mandate further proceedings, including a trial. But the Supreme Court 9 No. 19-2266, Stojcevski v. Macomb County, et al. has long treated some “collateral orders”—those that resolve an issue collateral to the merits of the case—as sufficiently final and thus immediately appealable. See id. at 443. How do these two legal principles interrelate? The Supreme Court has held that a district court’s decision denying qualified immunity to a government official falls within the limited category of immediately appealable collateral orders. See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985). The Court reasoned that qualified immunity provides an “immunity from suit rather than a mere defense to liability” and that government officials would effectively lose this immunity if they had to wait until a suit’s end to vindicate the immunity on appeal. Id. at 526. Yet the Court also held that we do not have unlimited jurisdiction over any interlocutory appeal touching on qualified immunity. Instead, appellate jurisdiction extends over a qualified-immunity order “only ‘to the extent that it turns on an issue of law[.]’” Brown, 814 F.3d at 444 (quoting Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 530). If, by contrast, the qualified-immunity order decides only “a question of ‘evidence sufficiency,’ i.e., which facts a party may, or may not, be able to prove at trial,” the court lacks immediate jurisdiction to review the order. Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765, 772 (2014) (quoting Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 313 (1995)). Our binding caselaw has interpreted this dichotomy to give us appellate jurisdiction only over certain legal arguments arising from a district court’s qualified-immunity order. On the one hand, when taking the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, we may review an argument that the defendant’s conduct did not “violate[] a constitutional right” or that the claimed right was not “clearly established” when the defendant acted. DiLuzio v. Village of Yorkville, 796 F.3d 604, 609 (6th Cir. 2015). On the other hand, we may not review an argument that “merely quibble[s] with the district court’s reading of the factual record[.]” Brown, 814 F.3d at 446 (citation omitted). “[F]act questions, including questions of evidentiary sufficiency, are out of our 10 No. 19-2266, Stojcevski v. Macomb County, et al. hands” in this interlocutory posture. Bullock v. City of Detroit, 814 F. App’x 945, 949 (6th Cir. 2020) (citation omitted); see also Williams v. Mehra, 186 F.3d 685, 690 (6th Cir. 1999) (en banc). 2. Under this framework, we lack jurisdiction over the Deputies’ appeal because they dispute a factual question, not a legal one. We start with the relevant Eighth Amendment law. “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 prevail on this deliberate-indifference claim, Stojcevski’s estate must show: (1) that Stojcevski had an objectively serious medical need; (2) that the Deputies were subjectively aware of this need; and (3) that the Deputies responded unreasonably to it. See Rhinehart v. Scutt, 894 F.3d 721, 737–38 (6th Cir. 2018); Darrah v. Krisher, 865 F.3d 361, 367–68 (6th Cir. 2017); see also Beck, 969 F.3d at 600. Because § 1983 does not permit Stojcevski’s estate to impose vicarious liability on one Deputy for the actions of others, the estate must satisfy these requirements for each of the Deputies. See Smith v. County of Lenawee, 505 F. App’x 526, 532 (6th Cir. 2012); see also Beck, 969 F.3d at 600. And because the Deputies have invoked qualified immunity, the estate must prove that their specific conduct violated clearly established legal rules. See Arrington-Bey, 858 F.3d at 992. When applying these general principles to this appeal, the parties all but agree on what qualifies as the clearly established law. Indeed, the Deputies do not challenge the first two requirements of the estate’s deliberate-indifference claim. To begin with, they have conceded that it is clearly established that Stojcevski’s condition (a drug withdrawal that led to his death) amounted to an objectively serious medical need for Eighth Amendment purposes. Oral Arg. 1:07–1:21; see, e.g., Preyor v. City of Ferndale, 248 F. App’x 636, 642 (6th Cir. 2007); see also French v. Daviess County, 376 F. App’x 519, 522 (6th Cir. 2010). In addition, the Deputies have conceded that the video footage of Stojcevski’s cell, among other things, offers enough evidence 11 No. 19-2266, Stojcevski v. Macomb County, et al. to create a fact question over whether they each subjectively knew that Stojcevski’s condition required medical care. Oral Arg. 1:22–1:54; cf. Preyor, 248 F. App’x at 643–44. This appeal thus concerns only the third part of the deliberate-indifference inquiry: Did the Deputies respond unreasonably to Stojcevski’s serious medical need and, by doing so, violate clearly established Eighth Amendment law? See Rhinehart, 894 F.3d at 738. On appeal, the Deputies assert a general defense applicable to all seven of them, rather than any defendant-specific defenses. They argue that they acted reasonably because they were deferring to the medical staff’s opinions about the proper care for Stojcevski. On June 17, for example, Deputy Harrison called for medical assistance when he noticed that Stojcevski was lying on the ground shaking, and the nurses medically cleared him. On June 18, Deputy Cooney also called for assistance when he found Stojcevski unresponsive and slightly shaking in his cell, and the nurses again medically cleared him. And Deputy Talos recalled that the nursing staff told him at some point that Stojcevski was detoxing and that his general behavior was normal. The other four Deputies had no independent memory of Stojcevski and so could not recall any specific assistance that they requested. But they likewise discussed their general practice of requesting medical aid when they have concerns for an inmate’s health and of relying on the medical staff for an inmate’s proper medical care. What is the relevant law for this type of defense? Here, too, the parties do not disagree about the clearly established legal principles governing this third legal requirement of a deliberateindifference claim. For its part, Stojcevski’s estate recognizes our unpublished caselaw holding generally “that a non-medically trained officer does not act with deliberate indifference to an inmate’s medical needs when he ‘reasonably deferred to the medical professionals’ opinions.’” McGaw v. Sevier County, 715 F. App’x 495, 498 (6th Cir. 2017) (quoting Johnson v. Doughty, 12 No. 19-2266, Stojcevski v. Macomb County, et al. 433 F.3d 1001, 1010 (7th Cir. 2006)); see also, e.g., Smith, 505 F. App’x at 532. For their part, the Deputies concede that, even under this McGaw line of unpublished cases, corrections officers have a duty to reengage medical staff if an inmate’s “condition ha[s] significantly worsened” since the inmate received medical care. Preyor, 248 F. App’x at 644; Oral Arg. 28:44–29:16. As one of our unpublished cases summarizes things, “an officer who seeks out the opinion of a doctor is generally entitled to rely on a reasonably specific medical opinion for a reasonable period of time after it is issued, absent circumstances such as the onset of new and alarming symptoms[.]” Barberick v. Hilmer, 727 F. App’x 160, 163–64 (6th Cir. 2018) (per curiam). Not disputing the law, the Deputies instead dispute the “basic facts” about what actually happened. They claim that Stojcevski’s condition did not significantly worsen in the mental-health unit and so did not trigger any duty to re-alert the nursing staff. Williams, 186 F.3d at 690; see Preyor, 248 F. App’x at 644. They argue that Stojcevski’s conduct during the earlier days that he was housed in the mental-health unit was not much different from his conduct during the later days that he was housed in that unit closer to his June 27 death. The district court, by contrast, pointed to video evidence of deterioration, including what it described as “alarming changes” in Stojcevski’s condition. Stojcevski, 2019 WL 4744432, at  n.22; see also id. at . Stojcevski, among other things, had not eaten for several days, had not taken even a sip of water for over two days, and had been lying on the floor for over 50 hours. This factual debate about Stojcevski’s condition is the crux of the parties’ disagreement on appeal. The debate shows that the Deputies’ appeal does not ask us to clarify what qualifies as the governing Eighth Amendment law for the estate’s claim or to consider whether that governing law was clearly established (and so we do not decide on the proper legal rules for their appeal). See DiLuzio, 796 F.3d at 609. Rather, the 13 No. 19-2266, Stojcevski v. Macomb County, et al. Deputies’ appeal “merely quibble[s] with the district court’s reading of the factual record[.]” Brown, 814 F.3d at 446 (citation omitted). In this respect, the Deputies’ arguments about the historical facts are not much different from the defendants’ arguments about the historical facts in the Supreme Court’s Johnson decision. There, the plaintiff sued five police officers for allegedly beating him in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s ban on excessive force. 515 U.S. at 307. Three officers moved for summary judgment on the ground that they had not been present during the alleged altercation. Id. The district court found that enough circumstantial evidence suggested that they had, in fact, been present to create a triable issue about this historical fact. Id. at 308. After the officers appealed that ruling, the Supreme Court held that the appellate court lacked jurisdiction over the district court’s conclusion “that the summary judgment record in this case raised a genuine issue of fact concerning [the officers’] involvement in the alleged beating[.]” Id. at 313. Simply change the critical fact (from whether the police officers were present at the scene to whether the inmate’s condition had deteriorated) and this case is Johnson all over again. See also Brown, 814 F.3d at 445–46. We thus conclude that we lack jurisdiction over the Deputies’ interlocutory appeal.