Opinion ID: 200148
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Claims Against Sheriff Garvey and Hampshire County

Text: 39 Burrell originally claimed that Sheriff Garvey was liable for both a failure to supervise and for inadequate training. He later dropped the claim of inadequate training, conceding that there was no basis for this claim. Burrell's failure to supervise claim against Garvey is doomed by his inability to establish that prison officials under Garvey's supervision violated his Eighth Amendment rights. The causal chain is broken. Nieves v. McSweeney, 241 F.3d 46, 50 (1st Cir.2001); Evans v. Avery, 100 F.3d 1033, 1039 (1st Cir.1996); Willhauck v. Halpin, 953 F.2d 689, 714 (1st Cir.1991). 40 Burrell also claims municipal liability on the part of Hampshire County for having an unconstitutional custom or policy of failing to classify and segregate inmates. Municipal liability may be imposed under § 1983 when the enforcement of a municipal policy or custom was the moving force of a violation of federally protected rights. Bd. of the County Comm'rs v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 404, 117 S.Ct. 1382, 137 L.Ed.2d 626 (1997). A policy may be facially constitutional, but municipalities will still be liable if the policy can be shown to produce constitutional violations. City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 385-87, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989). To establish liability, we look at whether there was a direct causal link between the policy and the violation, id. at 385, 109 S.Ct. 1197, or if the policy actually caused the violation, id. at 391, 109 S.Ct. 1197; see also Fletcher v. Town of Clinton, 196 F.3d 41, 55 (1st Cir.1999) (direct causal link). 41 The district court correctly held that the Hampshire Jail's policy of not screening and then segregating potentially violent prisoners from non-violent prisoners is not itself a facial violation of the Eighth Amendment. Burrell v. Hampshire County, No. Civ.A. 99-30269-MAP, 2002 WL 596210, at  (D.Mass. Apr.10, 2002). Of course, as Calderón-Ortiz acknowledges, lack of a classification system may be part of an Eighth Amendment violation. 300 F.3d at 65-66. Burrell argues that Janes v. Hernandez, 215 F.3d 541 (5th Cir.2000), should be persuasive in identifying lack of a classification system as an Eighth Amendment violation. But the differences between the situations at issue here and in Janes, where a traffic offender was confined in a single large cell with a number of known violent offenders, id. at 542, lead to precisely the opposite conclusion. The Hampshire Jail policy, in which inmates were housed in individual cells that they were able to lock from inside at any time, simply does not pose the level of danger described in Janes. 42 Nor was the policy the actual cause of Burrell's injury. As a factual matter, Burrell's cell could be locked from the inside, and he could have requested protective custody or transfer to another cell block. Burrell, 2002 WL 596210, at . Moreover, Burrell does not present evidence from which a jury could conclude that the Hampshire Jail's policy poses a substantial risk of harm to inmates. Burrell did not present evidence of a pattern of harm to inmates going beyond his own assault. 43 Summary judgment was appropriately entered for defendants Garvey and Hampshire County. 44 For these reasons, the order of the district court granting summary judgment is affirmed.