Opinion ID: 3013461
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Supervisory Appellants

Text: Supervisory appellants Parker, Phelps, Williams, and Taylor contend that appellee failed to present evidence sufficient to demonstrate personal involvement in or actual knowledge by them of the alleged constitutional torts allegedly committed by appellants Way and Green, and 20 therefore that they are entitled to qualified immunity. See Rode v. Dellarciprete, 845 F.2d 1195, 1207 (3d Cir. 1988) (A defendant in a civil rights action must have personal involvement in the alleged wrongs; liability cannot be predicated solely on the operation of respondeat superior . . . . Personal involvement can be shown through allegations of personal direction or of actual knowledge and acquiescence . . . .). In Rode, a civilian employee of the Pennsylvania State Police joined Governor Thornburgh and State Attorney General Zimmerman as defendants in a S 1983 retaliation suit against her superiors. This Court affirmed the District Court’s determination that grievances filed with state officials’ offices were insufficient to prove actual knowledge and acquiescence by the state officials. See id. at 1208 (In a large state employing many thousands of employees, a contrary holding would subject the Governor to potential liability in any case in which an aggrieved employee merely transmitted a complaint to the Governor’s office of administration . . . .). Appellants suggest that the deposition and interrogatory answers of a single prisoner are not sufficient to establish a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the supervisory appellants had actual knowledge of and acquiesced in the commission of the alleged constitutional torts. Although appellants couch this argument as one relating to qualified immunity, this is the sort of evidence weighing that we cannot entertain given our limited jurisdiction on this appeal. See Johnson, 515 U.S. at 313. In the present case, the District Court concluded that there is sufficient evidence that appellee either wrote or spoke to each supervisory defendant regarding both his exposure to ETS and the retaliatory harassment by appellant Way. We lack jurisdiction to evaluate the sufficiency of this evidence. See id. Alternatively, appellants contend that Rode requires us to rule as a matter of law that such correspondences or conversations do not constitute sufficient evidence of actual knowledge and acquiescence. We, conclude however, that Rode is factually distinguishable from the present case. The Governor and the Attorney General in that case were much farther removed from the state officials committing the 21 alleged constitutional torts than the supervisory appellants in this case. Here, only Taylor holds a state-wide office. Moreover, a governor heads the entire executive branch of a state’s government; Taylor is charged with oversight of a specific state entity responsible for housing prisoners. The scope of his responsibilities are much more narrow than that of a governor or state attorney general, and logically demand more particularized scrutiny of individual complaints. Similarly, the other supervisory appellants have even narrower responsibilities as links in a chain of command within a single prison. We cannot say as a matter of law that the supervisory appellants did not have actual knowledge when appellee has produced evidence that they did.