Opinion ID: 552781
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Did Defendants Satisfy Their Standards of Care?

Text: 47 Our determination that a professional judgment standard applies to professionals and that a deliberate indifference standard applies to nonprofessionals does not resolve, of course, Shaw's claim that the district court improperly granted summary judgment to all defendants. To assess the propriety of summary judgment, we must measure the various defendants' conduct against the substantive requirements of the two standards. We begin with a consideration of the fourteen professional defendants. 48 As the district court correctly noted, [l]iability under Sec. 1983 cannot be imposed vicarously or under traditional grounds of respondeat superior. Shaw v. Strackhouse, No. 88-0780, slip op. at 7, 1989 WL 138876 (E.D.Pa. Nov. 13, 1989) (citing Rizzo v. Goode, 423 U.S. 362, 371, 96 S.Ct. 598, 604, 46 L.Ed.2d 561 (1976)). All professional members of the Embreeville staff are not, ipso facto, liable solely because one or more of their colleagues failed to exercise professional judgment on Shaw's behalf. Only those defendants whose inactions or actions personally caused Shaw's injury may be held liable under Sec. 1983. In more concrete terms, liability may only be imposed on those defendants who had the power and the responsibility to protect Shaw's safety after February 3, but who failed to do so. 49 That said, we find problematic the district court's conclusion that Shaw produced no evidence ... which ties any of the defendants directly to the cause of Ricky Shaw's injuries. Shaw, slip op. at 10 (emphasis added). As the district court notes, Shaw has not proven that any of the defendants personally inflicted his injuries. Nor has Shaw proven that the defendants attempted to cover-up evidence of injuries inflicted by a third party. But neither of these proofs are necessary elements of a cause of action under Sec. 1983. 50 Having subjected Shaw to their custody, the Embreeville staff assumed an affirmative duty to protect Shaw from threats to his safety, including harm from third parties or even from Shaw himself. DeShaney, 109 S.Ct. at 1005 (citing Youngberg, 457 U.S. at 317, 102 S.Ct. at 2458). Given this affirmative duty, Shaw need not show that defendants inflicted or covered up his injuries. To survive summary judgment, Shaw need only raise a genuine issue of material fact regarding the causal connection between an individual defendant's actions and Shaw's injury. See Duchesne v. Sugarman, 566 F.2d 817, 830-31 (2d Cir.1977). 51 Admittedly, Shaw casts a broad net over potentially responsible parties. Not all fourteen professional defendants had the authority or the responsibility to see that Shaw received enhanced protection after February 3. After reviewing the record in some detail, we think, however, that Shaw has produced sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment with respect to his claims that seven of the professional defendants failed to exercise professional judgment prior to the second assault. These defendants are Superintendent Strackhouse, Assistant Superintendent Enochs, Dr. Williams, Program Coordinator Boyd, Unit Manager Eversole, Senior Resident Supervisor E. Smith, and Residential Services Supervisor Shankweiler. As to these seven defendants, summary judgment was inappropriate and will be reversed. The record fails to raise a genuine issue of material fact as regards the exercise of professional judgment by the remaining seven professional defendants. As to these seven defendants, summary judgment was appropriate and will be affirmed. 52 Dr. Williams examined Shaw on February 3 and originally concluded that his injury may have been related to sexual abuse. At no time, however, did Williams examine Shaw for signs of sexual assault (such as semen in the anus) or conduct other appropriate screening procedures. Nor did Williams order any changes in Shaw's security regime--something he clearly had the power, although, he contends, not the responsibility, to do. Williams did inform the Administrative Officer on Duty (AOD) of Shaw's injury. The AOD initiated an investigation of the incident. Neither Williams nor any other staff member informed the Pennsylvania State Police of the February 3 incident, however, although the policy manual to which Embreeville is subject generally directs institutional officials promptly to report incidents involving assault or sexual abuse. See An Investigative Manual for Use in Client Abuse Investigations at State Centers and M.R. Units, 14, 23-25. 53 As the investigation commenced, several of the defendants conferred openly about the possibility that Shaw had been sexually assaulted. Unit Manager Eversole and Supervisor Shankweiler had such a conversation on the night of February 3. The conversation ended with Eversole, who by her own admission was responsible for the clients ... in [Shaw's] building 24 hours a day, promising to consult the following morning with Assistant Director Enochs, whose responsibilities included overseeing security operations. The record also reflects that other supervisory personnel, including Program Coordinator Boyd and Supervisor E. Smith, were made aware of Shaw's injury. Both had the power to increase Shaw's supervision. In fact, the record reflects that Smith had the primary responsibility for calling a team meeting of all employees to discuss Shaw's injury and options to ensure his future safety. No such meeting was ever held. Indeed, despite all the discussion at the supervisory level, the record contains abundant evidence that direct care employees were never instructed to increase Shaw's monitoring or to take additional precautions to enhance his security. 54 By February 14, the investigation had still failed to determine the cause of Shaw's injury or the persons responsible. The information adduced suggested, however, that the responsible person was probably a member of the Embreeville staff or someone else with regular access to Shaw. Indeed, the investigator had narrowed the list of likely perpetrators to three employees. Thus, the possibility of another attack was apparent. Still no further precautions or protective measures were undertaken on Shaw's behalf. Shaw was not transferred to another institution, moved to another ward, or even provided with increased supervision or monitoring. Nor was Shaw isolated from those specific individuals who had been identified by the abuse investigator as possible perpetrators of the February 3 incident. Assistant Director Enochs stated that at this point she finally suggested that Shaw's injury be reported to the police. Enochs claims she was overruled, however, presumably by Director Strackhouse, who as a regular policy was kept aware of such investigations. 55 In short, all seven of these defendants were aware that Shaw probably had been attacked, that the perpetrator still had frequent and unsupervised access to him, and that another attack was possible. The record suggests also that all seven had the power and may have shared in the responsibility to protect Shaw from further injury. Still nothing was done. 56 As established by the affidavits of Shaw's expert witnesses, exercise of any one of the options to increase Shaw's safety--or perhaps even a reasoned failure not to exercise them--might have constituted an exercise of professional judgment. Shaw's expert witnesses opined, however, that the total inaction of those in a position to protect Shaw constituted a failure to exercise professional judgment on Shaw's behalf. Dr. Richard Tislow, one of Shaw's experts, stated in his affidavit that, after the first injury, Dr. Williams had an obligation to conduct the appropriate medical tests to determine whether a sexual assault had occurred and to provide additional protection for Shaw pending identification of the perpetrators. According to Michael Dillon, another of Shaw's expert witnesses, it was the responsibility of the professionals at Embreeville to do more than simply investigate Shaw's first injury. Because an assault may have been committed, Dillon stated that the professionals had a fundamental obligation to inform the police immediately, and should have taken additional measures to protect Shaw. 57 Importantly, the defendants have not offered any expert evidence to refute the assessment by Shaw's experts that the defendants' conduct after February 3 was inconsistent with the exercise of professional judgment. Nor do we find merit in the trial court's ruling and defendant's assertion that Shaw's experts' testimony should be excluded. The conclusions of Shaw's experts that he was excessively restrained were properly excluded as unsupported by the facts of record. As to Shaw's claim regarding the February 15 incident, however, the record reflects an adequate, indeed virtually uncontested, factual basis upon which Shaw's experts could form their opinion. It is abundantly clear that, apart from initiating an investigation into the February 3 incident, defendants did nothing to bolster Shaw's ongoing security. 58 In short, the record evidence, including the admissible expert testimony presented by Shaw, raises serious questions, in our view, about the performance of these seven defendants between February 3 and 15. Certainly a jury could reasonably find that the defendants' actions, and particularly their failure to increase Shaw's security or transfer him to another location after February 3, constituted a failure to exercise professional judgment. 59 This is not to say that all, or indeed any, of the seven will ultimately be liable to Shaw. We reverse the summary judgment in favor of these seven at this time precisely because, although there is sufficient evidence to implicate each, the record does not point unambiguously to a particular individual or individuals. But such uncertainty at this stage is to be expected. Identification of a responsible party or parties within a complex, overlapping chain of command is often a difficult task. Numerous variables must be factored into the analysis: the amount of information known to various defendants; the scope of their duties and authority; their training and expertise; the allocation of decisionmaking power within the organization; reporting and review relationships; established and formal decisionmaking procedures; and informal custom and practice. All of this can be sorted-out on remand. But, given the complexity of this analysis, Shaw should not be penalized at the summary judgment stage for failing to identify precisely which defendant or defendants dropped the ball. 60 We have held that summary judgment was clearly inappropriate as regards seven of the fourteen professional defendants subject to a professional judgment standard. As discussed previously, the plaintiff carries a greater burden when trying to show deliberate indifference than when trying to establish a failure to exercise professional judgment. It is difficult to define with precision, however, the degree of aggravating conduct beyond failure to exercise professional judgment necessary to constitute deliberate indifference. Caselaw under Sec. 1983 is clear, however, that conduct amounting to a failure to protect rises to the level of deliberate indifference precisely in those circumstances when the defendant specifically knew or should have known of the harm to the plaintiff before it was manifested. See Freedman v. City of Allentown, 853 F.2d 1111, 1115 (3d Cir.1988). The crux of Shaw's February 15 claim, and as borne out by the record, is that the February 3 attack imparted to all defendants, including the ten non-professionals, the specific knowledge that he was at risk of future assaults by the same (albeit unidentified) source. Thus, as an initial matter Shaw's claim against the nonprofessional staff members appears plausible. 61 Upon further examination, however, it is clear that Shaw's claim against the nonprofessional defendants must fail. Someone at Embreeville should have seen to Shaw's safety. As we have discussed, one or more of the professional defendants may have violated their obligation to exercise professional judgment by failing to do so. We think the evidence adduced in the summary judgment record inadequate, however, to demonstrate that any of the nonprofessional employees were deliberately indifferent. Simply put, the record does not indicate that any of the ten nonprofessionals had the power or responsibility to see that Shaw received enhanced protection after February 3. Thus, even assuming that all ten knew that Shaw may have been sexually assaulted on February 3, their subsequent inaction was not causally related to Shaw's injury. Nor is there evidence that any of them took any specific action adverse to his safety. As to these ten defendants, the district court did not err in granting summary judgment.