Opinion ID: 773932
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Robert Liggett, Executive Director of YDC

Text: 43 As the Executive Director of YDC, Liggett has ultimate responsibility for the overall operation of YDC. His duties include managing YDC's daily operation, supervising and training the staff, and formulating and implementing all operational policies, regulations, and practices. The plaintiffs concede that Liggett did not have actual knowledge of Whetzel's abuse of the plaintiffs, nor of the specific risk that Whetzel posed to the plaintiffs, until after the fact. Instead, the plaintiffs level a claim of supervisor liability against Liggett, contending that the policies and procedures that Liggett implemented and approved created an unreasonably unsafe environment at YDC that allowed Whetzel to commit his abuse over an extended period, and that Liggett knew that his policies were deficient in this way. 44 The plaintiffs' allegations of Liggett's policymaking inadequacies fall into three categories: (1) the failure to follow accepted standards for the basic structure and staffing of juvenile residential facilities; (2) the failure to properly train staff to recognize child abuse; and (3) the promulgation of de facto policies and the failure to implement other policies, ultimately leading to the stifling of complaints of abuse and incompetent investigations of the complaints that were made. The plaintiffs' expert, John Cocoros (a consultant with extensive experience in the field of residential facilities for delinquent youths), opined in a written report prepared for the plaintiffs that these deficiencies created a situation in which YDC failed to have basic precepts of institutional management without which no administrator can claim to operate a facility which provides safety and security for its staff and residents, thus unnecessarily placing juveniles at high risk for abuse at the hands of staff  and creating an environment in which eventual abuse was virtually predictable. 45 Regarding the first area of allegedly deficient policymaking by Liggett, the plaintiffs point to five inadequacies with the basic structure of YDC: (1) YDC did not require that a female staff member be present at all times in the female units, in contravention of the American Correctional Association's Standards for Juvenile Training Schools No. 3-JTS-3A-07; (2) there was poor or nonexistent supervision of the staff at night (when Whetzel committed many of his abuses); (3) YDC had no observation or surveillance system (thus ensuring that Whetzel could take female residents to areas where they would be unobserved); (4) YDC permitted private, unsupervised interactions between male staff and female residents; and (5) YDC permitted unsupervised trips off-grounds by female residents solely accompanied by male staff. 46 With respect to the failure of staff training, the plaintiffs contend that, despite rules that required and staff training that emphasized that all allegations of abuse be reported, Liggett allowed staff members to decide on their own whether to report an allegation. Because the allegations against Whetzel were reported to different staff members, many of whom did not report those allegations to Liggett, no one person knew the extent of the allegations against Whetzel. In their brief, the plaintiffs list seven different employees who were aware of different allegations against Whetzel but who did not report these allegations to Liggett. See Pls.' Br. at 24 n.8. The plaintiffs argue that Liggett's failure to have any sort of review procedure in place to determine whether the notification policy was being followed, along with his failure to discipline these employees after this information came out or to train them properly in the first place, were serious policy deficiencies that, according to Cocoros, led to the creation of a staff subculture in which a staff member's abuses could go unaddressed. 47 Finally, the plaintiffs assert that Liggett's policies failed to provide the juveniles under his care with multiple and easily accessible opportunities for them to report abuse. They contend that any reports of abuse that were made were incompetently investigated under Liggett's overall supervision. According to the plaintiffs, Liggett's policies allowed his staff to respond to initial allegations with threats (Robinson, Whetzel) and confrontation (Earnhart). When a report did reach Liggett, he is alleged either to have failed to initiate an investigation (as with Jocheded Good's allegation), 9 or to have initiated inadequate investigations (as with the two Tate allegations, both of which were determined by YDC to be unfounded although the Pennsylvania state police determined them to be true in its investigation). 48 Because we are reviewing the District Court's grant of summary judgment, we take the above allegations to be true and we must now consider whether they are legally sufficient to support a claim of deliberate indifference past the summary judgment stage. More specifically, the relevant issue is whether the above-described policymaking inadequacies raise a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the four-part test for deliberate indifference from Sample is met. As we noted above, Sample provides two methods of meeting this test: (i) showing that the supervisor failed to adequately respond to a pattern of past occurrences of injuries like the plaintiffs', or (ii) showing that the risk of constitutionally cognizable harm was so great and so obvious that the risk and the failure of supervisory officials to respond will alone support finding that the four-part test is met. Sample v. Diecks, 885 F.2d 1099, 1118 (3d Cir. 1989). 49 We conclude that the plaintiffs have not met their burden of showing the existence of a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Liggett exhibited deliberate indifference in his policymaking. Considering the first method of meeting the Sample test, the plaintiffs have not shown that Liggett was aware of a pattern of sexual assaults being committed by YDC employees. See id. At most, they have alleged that Liggett was aware of Good's allegation and that he was aware of two allegations regarding Tate. Such knowledge cannot benefit Beers-Capitol in her claim against Liggett because the behavior described in the allegations occurred after her abuse, and a successful deliberate indifference claim requires showing that the defendant knew of the risk to the plaintiff before the plaintiff's injury occurred. See Lewis v. Richards, 107 F.3d 549, 553 (7th Cir. 1997) (holding that a plaintiff cannot make out a deliberate indifference claim against prison officials for a prison attack when the plaintiff presented evidence that the defendants knew of the attack afterwards but presented no evidence that defendants knew of the risk to the defendant before the attack). Because Whetzel's abuse of Beers-Capitol occurred approximately eight months before Whetzel's abuse of Tate, some evidence of the defendants' awareness of Whetzel's activities is available to Tate but not Beers-Capitol. 50 Tate could argue that Liggett knew of Good's allegation and her first allegation before her final abuse had occurred, but we do not believe that two allegations constitute a pattern of past occurrences as contemplated by Sample. Furthermore, even if two instances is a pattern, this is not a pattern of known injuries, but a pattern of known allegations, which is quite different; they are known to be injuries now, but it is what Liggett knew at the time, not what he knows now, that is material. 51 The plaintiffs concentrate their argument on the second method of meeting the Sample test--the existence of so great and so obvious a risk, which is alleged to have arisen as a result of deficient policies and practices that were in place before the attacks on Beers-Capitol. To make their argument, the plaintiffs point to Cocoros's conclusion that YDC's administration showed reckless disregard for the safety of residents. This conclusion is suffused with legal considerations, and it is our province to determine whether the factual conclusions in Cocoros's report support the legal conclusion of deliberate indifference. The report shows that YDC did not implement a number of policies that were standard or recommended in the juvenile detention field, and that YDC's policies and procedures could have been better. We note in passing that the report, if accurate, is an indictment of the administration of the YDC by Liggett and the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare. Most importantly, the plaintiffs argue forcefully that Liggett's policymaking created an institutional mindset that allowed Whetzel's abuse to go on for as long as it did. 52 The deliberate indifference standard as set out in Farmer is a high one, however--requiring actual knowledge or awareness on the part of the defendant--and the plaintiffs' evidence here is not sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the above policies and practices created a risk of harm to the plaintiffs that was so great and so obvious that Liggett must have known of the excessive risk but was indifferent to it. Although Cocoros's report does seem to raise a genuine issue as to Liggett's negligence, it is not evidence from which it can be inferred that Liggett knowingly and unreasonably disregarded an objectively intolerable risk of harm. Farmer, 511 U.S. at 846; see also Steele v. Choi, 82 F.3d 175, 179 (7th Cir. 1996) (holding that evidence that a minimally competent doctor would have treated the plaintiff prisoner correctly while the defendant doctor did not is insufficient under Farmer to survive the defendant's motion for summary judgment in a deliberate indifference case). 53 As we have explained, using circumstantial evidence to prove deliberate indifference requires more than evidence that the defendants should have recognized the excessive risk and responded to it; it requires evidence that the defendant must have recognized the excessive risk and ignored it. The plaintiff's evidence may raise an issue of material fact as to the former but it does not for the latter. We therefore will affirm the District Court's grant of summary judgment for Liggett.