Opinion ID: 1310506
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Insufficient Evidence to Impose Liability Against Sheriff

Text: The Sheriff also challenges whether he can be held liable for damages under Monell. The jury found the Sheriff liable based on the policy/practice of severely under-staffing correctional officers, and the Sheriff believes the evidence is legally insufficient to sustain this verdict. The Sheriff argues that under-staffing cannot be a basis for liability under § 1983, that there is no causal link between under-staffing and Smith's death, and that the Sheriff has limited control of the budget so any fault lies with Cook County. We begin with what appears to be the Sheriff's strongest argument: the absence of any causal link between its policies and Smith's death. Monell recognized that the premise behind a § 1983 action against a government body is the allegation that official policy is responsible for the deprivation of rights. Monell, 436 U.S. at 690, 98 S.Ct. 2018 (emphasis added). In applying the different theories of liability recognized under Monell, we have always required plaintiffs to show that their injuries were caused by the policies or practices complained of. See Klebanowski v. Sheahan, 540 F.3d 633, 637 (7th Cir.2008). This is an explicit requirement of § 1983 and an uncontroversial application of basic tort law. But in cases such as this, where individual defendants are commingled with governmental bodies, and the plaintiff alleges a litany of policy failures that interact to create some constitutional harm, it is sometimes easier to obscure the causal links between different actors. The individual officers in this case (the Sheriff's deputies) were found liable because they displayed deliberate indifference to Smith's medical needs, yet the Sheriff was also found liable for its policy of severely under-staffing the prison. The only way to reconcile these two verdicts is to find that both the officers' deliberate indifference and the policy of under-staffing caused Smith's death. We find the latter unsupported by the evidence presented at trial. A number of inmates testified that they either complained or witnessed others complain to the officers about Smith's condition. At that point, the officers should have taken the steps necessary to investigate and ensure that Smith received medical attention. The theory that under-staffing may have also caused Smith's death, on the other hand, is too remote to support a verdict against the Sheriff. A governmental body's policies must be the moving force behind the constitutional violation before we can impose liability under Monell. Woodward, 368 F.3d at 927. In § 1983 actions, the Supreme Court has been especially concerned with the broad application of causation principles in a way that would render municipalities vicariously liable for their officers' actions. Bd. of County Com'rs of Bryan County v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 405, 117 S.Ct. 1382, 137 L.Ed.2d 626 (1997) (Where a plaintiff claims that the municipality has not directly inflicted an injury, but nonetheless has caused an employee to do so, rigorous standards of culpability and causation must be applied to ensure that the municipality is not held liable solely for the actions of its employee.); see also City of Springfield v. Kibbe, 480 U.S. 257, 267-68, 107 S.Ct. 1114, 94 L.Ed.2d 293 (1987) (O'Connor, J., dissenting). That is why some courts distinguish between the acts that caused the injury and those that were merely contributing factors. See Rodriguez v. Sec'y for Dep't of Corr., 508 F.3d 611, 625 (11th Cir.2007). We need not make such a distinction here because the evidence presented at trial does not even establish that under-staffing was a contributing factor. Because the jury held the individual officers liable, it must have found that the officers deliberately ignored Smith's condition. But the evidence does not demonstrate that their actions had anything to do with under-staffing. No one testified or even argued that the officers would have acted differently if more of them were on duty. How many officers would the Sheriff need to hire to ensure that no one deliberately ignores a complaint or medical request? We do not know. One possible theory that the plaintiff proposes is that the Sheriff's policy of under-staffing prevented the CMTs from retrieving the medical request forms submitted on Smith's behalf. Generally, inmates place their request forms in lockboxes, which are located within the tiers. The officers on duty must first grant the CMTs access into the tiers, after which the CMTs must use their own keys to retrieve the forms from the lockboxes. In other words, when the officers are under-staffed, they may not be available to grant CMTs access to the tiers, and, by extension, the lockboxes. That is what the plaintiff suggests may have happened here. But the only evidence supporting this conclusion was testimony that CMTs have complained previously of being unable to access the tiers to retrieve the medical requests. Assuming the jury believed the witnesses who claimed to have submitted request forms on Smith's behalf, the plaintiff presented no evidence as to why those forms were not retrieved. No one testified that they could not have access to the tiers on the days Smith or the other inmates submitted requests. Some CMTs reported not having keys to the medical request lockboxes, and others did not turn in their daily encounter forms, so there was no way of knowing if they picked up the request forms. The plaintiff even argues (albeit to establish a widespread practice of CMTs failing to retrieve request forms) that one of the CMTs on duty on April 29, 2004, did not have a key to the lockbox and could not have opened it anyways. The relevant question for the causation requirement is whether the Sheriff's policy of under-staffing was the reason the CMTs could not access the forms on those days that Smith and the other inmates claimed to have submitted their requests. We see no evidence to suggest that it was. Nothing occurs in a vacuum, and we have no doubt that additional factors, other than the officers' malfeasance, may be at play. Perhaps if the officers received better training, or if the jail was less crowded, they might not have ignored Smith's condition. All of this may be true, but it does not satisfy the causation requirement here. To hold otherwise would significantly expand Monell and lead us down the road to vicarious liability. So when individual officers are aware of, and make the conscious decision not to respond to, reports of an inmate's poor health, we cannot infer, without more evidence, that under-staffing was the moving force behind the resulting injury.