Opinion ID: 2981765
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Deputy Jailers

Text: The Deputy Jailers assert that the jail’s policy triggered a discretionary function because the manner in which the supervision of detainees was to be performed was left to the discretion of each individual employee. We disagree with the Deputy Jailers’ view and will affirm the judgment of the district court. No. 12-5314 Hedgepath v. Pelphrey, et al. Page 9 The distinction between cases like Haney and Sloas, which focus on the discretionary duty to anticipate prospective harm, and cases like Yanero and Jones, which focus on the ministerial duty to follow instructions, is critical to the analysis in this case. Ultimately, this is not a case where the Deputy Jailers had to adjust to an unpredictable scenario that they were charged to deal with at their discretion. Cf. Haney, 311 S.W.3d at 243; Sloas, 201 S.W.3d at 479–80. Instead, this case involves a relatively straightforward policy with unambiguous instructions. In the same way that a police officer’s use of judgment when driving a car to the scene of an emergency did not render the act discretionary, Jones, 150 S.W.3d at 50, the Deputy Jailers’ use of judgment to ascertain consciousness here is similarly not discretionary. Dictum from the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision in Haney, where a camp counselor’s duty to keep children safe during a night hike was held to be a discretionary function, is particularly instructive: if the camp had imposed a requirement on the counselor to perform specific actions to keep students safe, then that mandate likely would have transformed the counselor’s duty into a ministerial one. Haney, 311 S.W.3d at 243. Here, we have the type of mandate absent in Haney: the Deputy Jailers were required to ensure the safety of intoxicated detainees by checking on them every twenty minutes to make sure they were conscious.2 See 501 Ky. Admin. Regs. 3:060 § 2(3); see also (R. 141-1, at PID# 1936) (Pursuant to jail policy, jail staff “will immediately initiate the Medical Emergency Response Plan” if one of the listed conditions, including “[u]nconsciousness,” is present.). 2 To the extent that the Deputy Jailers assert that the policy does not apply to them, question the timing of when Reed became unconscious, or dispute the District Court’s findings on the terms of the jail’s policy on unconscious inmates, these are factual issues that cannot be resolved at this stage of the litigation. No. 12-5314 Hedgepath v. Pelphrey, et al. Page 10 In an attempt to distinguish cases like Haney and Sloas, the Deputy Jailers cite to Jerauld v. Kroger, where jail authorities were placed on notice that Jerauld might do something to hurt himself while in police custody, but the jail authorities were still entitled to qualified immunity. 353 S.W.3d 636, 638–39 (Ky. Ct. App. 2011). In that case, Jerauld was initially placed on suicide watch, but jail employees re-evaluated him and decided that he could be taken off suicide watch. Id. Two days later, Jerauld attempted suicide. Id. The Kentucky Court of Appeals held that the employees’ actions were discretionary because they had to make judgments about Jerauld’s condition and evaluate whether he was actually at risk for suicide. Id. at 641–42. Although the employees were ultimately wrong, the discretionary nature of their duties entitled them to qualified immunity. Id. Appellants’ citation to Jerauld is inapposite because that case involved discretionary medical evaluations and nothing more. Here, however, the Deputy Jailers’ duty was not to make a subjective medical determination, but instead required them to undertake a simple, straightforward assignment: check to see if Reed was conscious or unconscious. Although the Deputy Jailers are correct that their duty necessarily involved some exercise in judgment, it is an insufficient amount to characterize their duty as discretionary because whether an individual is unconscious—as opposed to sleeping or dead—is an objective factual question that can be resolved by, for example, attempting to wake the individual. The execution of this duty did not require the type of “personal deliberation, decision, and judgment” needed to render it discretionary. Yanero, 65 S.W.3d at 522. In sum, the Deputy Jailers were given a simple instruction: check on the status of all detainees placed in observation cells every twenty minutes to make sure they are not unconscious. This is “an essentially objective and binary directive,” Haney, 311 S.W.3d at 242, and does not “require any significant judgment, statutory interpretation, No. 12-5314 Hedgepath v. Pelphrey, et al. Page 11 or policy-making decisions,” Collins, 10 S.W.3d at 126. Therefore, the duty is ministerial, and the Deputy Jailers are not entitled to qualified immunity.