Court Opinion

ID: 9375430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-27 19:00:57.970447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:58.832306
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 21-11264    Document: 18-1     Date Filed: 02/27/2023    Page: 1 of 13

                                                   [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                 United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 21-11264
                           Non-Argument Calendar
                           ____________________

        ROY CHAMBERS, JR.,
                                                      Plaintiff-Appellant,
        versus
        SHERIFF TIM POUNDS,
        et al.,
        THACKSON,
        Correctional Officer at Douglasville County Jail,
        MIRANDA,
        Sergeant at Douglasville County Jail (Unknown Last Name),
        JOHN DOE #1,
        Major at Douglasville County Jail,
        JOHN DOE #2,
        Lieutenant at Douglasville County Jail;
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        2                       Opinion of the Court                 21-11264

        All Defendants acting in individual and
        official capacity under the color of state law,

                                                       Defendants-Appellees.

                             ____________________

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Northern District of Georgia
                      D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-00112-CAP
                            ____________________

        Before JORDAN, LUCK, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.
        PER CURIAM:
               Roy Chambers, Jr., a Douglas County Jail pretrial detainee,
        sued jail officials for deliberate indifference under 42 U.S.C. section
        1983 for incidents involving an “Officer Thackson,” Chambers’s es-
        cort for state court appearances. The district court dismissed
        Chambers’s pro se complaint for failure to state a claim. Chambers
        appeals the dismissal. We affirm.
            FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
               Chambers was “walking on the sidewalk” when he was “hit
        by a car.” As a result, he suffered “major injuries,” including bro-
        ken legs, difficulty moving his feet, and damage to his head, neck,
        spine, ribs, and left arm. He also had a heart attack and kidney
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        21-11264               Opinion of the Court                         3

        failure in the jail and suffers from heart and kidney issues and sei-
        zures. According to Chambers, the state “court was aware,” from
        his medical records, that he “was still recovering from multiple sur-
        geries and needed assistance walking and keeping his balance.”
               In October 2019, on the last day of Chambers’s trial, Officer
        Thackson escorted Chambers “from the third floor courtroom to
        the holding cell at the bottom floor of the . . . [c]ounty [c]ourt-
        house.” Chambers was walking with “crutches prescribed to him
        by his doctor.” After they arrived at the holding cell, Officer Thack-
        son informed Chambers that Chambers couldn’t take the crutches
        into the cell, and Chambers told Officer Thackson about Cham-
        bers’s “serious injuries” and how Chambers couldn’t walk without
        the crutches. Officer Thackson “took Chambers[’s] crutches from
        him” anyway.
               The holding cell didn’t have a camera, so no one could mon-
        itor Chambers’s medical condition. “There was no one in the hold-
        ing cell with Chambers, and there was no one in the medical hold-
        ing cell, which would [have] been a better holding cell to put
        Chambers in because of his disabilities.” Chambers suffered seri-
        ous injuries and “had to be taken to the hospital.” “No one was
        able to hear Chambers scream for help because his body pain was
        sever[e]ly increasing and he was having a seizure.” Chambers
        “ended up passing out from the seizure in the holding cell, slam-
        ming his head on the floor, [and] reinjur[ing] his broken leg, spine,
        neck, hips, feet[,] and eyes.” Chambers was found “unresponsive”
        in the cell.
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        4                           Opinion of the Court                        21-11264

               In March 2020, Officer Thackson arranged Chambers’s
        transfer from the jail to the courthouse on a bus that didn’t comply
        with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Chambers was in a
        wheelchair. He “had to crawl out of his wheelchair while hand-
        cuffed and shackled and crawl up the stairs of the bus using his butt,
        legs, back[,] and arms” and “had to crawl off the bus the same way.”
        “Chambers was seriously injured” by this ordeal. 1
              Chambers sued for deliberate indifference under section
        1983 and filed an amended complaint before any of the defendants
        responded. 2 In his amended complaint, Chambers brought claims
        against Officer Thackson and Douglas County Sheriff Tim
        Pounds. 3 Chambers claimed that Officer Thackson denied him his

        1
             Chambers also complained that, in March 2020, Officer Thackson
        “slam[med] [him] repeatedly up and down on the floor” while Chambers was
        sitting in a wheelchair. The district court dismissed these claims as a de mini-
        mis use of force. Chambers doesn’t mention these claims on appeal, so he
        forfeits any argument against their dismissal. See United States v. Campbell,
        26 F.4th 860, 873 (11th Cir. 2022) (en banc) (explaining that the “failure to raise
        an issue in an initial brief on direct appeal” operates as “a forfeiture of the is-
        sue”).
        2
           Chambers also sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C.
        sections 12101 to 12213, but he doesn’t appeal the dismissal of those claims.
        In his amended complaint, he added claims of intentional infliction of emo-
        tional distress and a violation of the Declaration of Human Rights, but those
        claims also aren’t raised on appeal See Campbell, 26 F.4th at 873.
        3
         Chambers’s amended complaint makes no mention of the additional parties
        named in his original complaint.
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        21-11264               Opinion of the Court                         5

        crutches and put him in a holding cell that didn’t comply with the
        Americans with Disabilities Act and that Chambers suffered serious
        injuries and “had to be taken to the hospital.” He also claimed that
        he “was seriously injured” when he “had to crawl” onto and off a
        bus “using his butt, legs, back[,] and arms.” Chambers alleged that
        Officer Thackson “violated his constitutional rights.”
               The magistrate judge screened Chambers’s complaint under
        the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act and recommended dismissal for
        failure to state a claim. The section 1983 deliberate indifference
        claims failed, the magistrate judge explained, because Chambers’s
        confinement in the holding cell without his crutches and his trans-
        portation on the bus amounted to negligence only.
               Chambers objected to the magistrate judge’s recommenda-
        tion. He argued that Officer Thackson knew—from Chambers’s
        medical records, “clearly seen disabilities,” and comments to the
        officer—that Chambers “need[ed] his p[re]scribed crutches with
        him at all times,” and because Officer Thackson knew of Cham-
        bers’s serious medical need for the crutches when he took them
        away, Officer Thackson was deliberately indifferent. And he was
        deliberately indifferent, Chambers continued, because he “failed to
        check and see if [Chambers] was safe in the holding cell . . . by him-
        self, with no crutches, no emergency call button, [and] no video
        cameras.” Chambers “screamed for help,” he said, “but no one was
        able to hear him.” Officer Thackson was also deliberately indiffer-
        ent, Chambers asserted, because Officer Thackson knew that
        Chambers “could not walk up and down the stairs” of the bus and
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                 21-11264

        “forc[ed] [him] to crawl up and down the stairs . . . while hand-
        cuffed and shackled.”
               The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s recom-
        mendation over Chambers’s objections. The district court agreed
        that the alleged misconduct was negligence, and not deliberate in-
        difference.
                            STANDARD OF REVIEW
                We review de novo the district court’s dismissal of a com-
        plaint for failure to state a claim. Saunders v. Duke, 766 F.3d 1262,
        1266 (11th Cir. 2014). We construe pro se complaints liberally, id.,
        but they must “conform to procedural rules,” Loren v. Sasser, 309
        F.3d 1296, 1304 (11th Cir. 2002). “We accept the factual allegations
        in the complaint as true and view them in the light most favorable
        to [the plaintiff].” Saunders, 766 F.3d at 1266. The complaint’s
        “[f]actual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above
        the speculative level.” Id. (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550
        U.S. 544, 555 (2007)).
                                   DISCUSSION
               Chambers contends that the defendants were deliberately
        indifferent in denying him medical care and a safe environment be-
        cause they “knowingly disregarded the excessive risk to [his] health
        and safety and knew that their disregard would cause [him] serious
        pain and injury.”
            To state a claim for deliberate indifference under the Eighth
        Amendment, an inmate must show: “(1) a substantial risk of
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        21-11264               Opinion of the Court                         7

        serious harm; (2) the defendants’ deliberate indifference to that
        risk; and (3) a causal connection between the defendants’ conduct
        and the [constitutional] violation.” Brooks v. Powell, 800 F.3d
        1295, 1301 (11th Cir. 2015). The first element requires the plaintiff
        to establish that, objectively, there was a “strong likelihood,” and
        not just a “mere possibility,” of injury. Id. (quoting Brown v.
        Hughes, 894 F.2d 1533, 1537 (11th Cir. 1990)). To meet the second
        element, the plaintiff must show: (1) the defendants’ subjective
        knowledge of the risk and (2) their disregard of the risk (3) “by con-
        duct that is more than mere negligence.” Melton v. Abston, 841
        F.3d 1207, 1223 (11th Cir. 2016).
                As an initial matter, we note that “an amended complaint
        supersedes the initial complaint and becomes the operative plead-
        ing in the case.” Lowery v. Ala. Power Co., 483 F.3d 1184, 1220
        (11th Cir. 2007). “Once an amended pleading is interposed, the
        original pleading no longer performs any function in the case.” 6
        Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Pro-
        cedure § 1476 (3d ed. 2016). And under Federal Rule of Civil Pro-
        cedure 15, a plaintiff has a right to amend a complaint once as a
        matter of course if no responsive pleading has been filed. Coventry
        First, LLC v. McCarty, 605 F.3d 865, 869 (11th Cir. 2010). Cham-
        bers’s amended complaint is, therefore, the operative complaint in
        this action, so our review will focus only on the allegations in that
        pleading that Chambers raises on appeal.
              In his amended complaint, Chambers named two parties as
        defendants, but he didn’t attribute any acts or omissions to anyone
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        8                         Opinion of the Court                     21-11264

        except Officer Thackson. Thus, the complaint could support only
        Officer Thackson’s individual liability, if anyone’s. And Chambers
        didn’t allege a policy or custom, as necessary to hold the defendants
        liable in their official capacities. See Jones v. Cannon, 174 F.3d
        1271, 1292 (11th Cir. 1999) (showing that an official capacity claim
        requires that a policy or custom be “the moving force behind” the
        alleged constitutional violation).
               As to the October 2019 incident, Chambers claimed that he
        reminded Officer Thackson of his “serious injuries” and that he
        couldn’t walk without his crutches. But Chambers didn’t specify
        what Officer Thackson knew about his injuries, other than that he
        suffered from them. Thus, he failed to show that Officer Thackson
        was subjectively aware that removing his crutches entailed a sub-
        stantial risk of serious harm.4
               Chambers also failed to establish that Officer Thackson’s al-
        leged misconduct amounted to more than mere negligence. Tak-
        ing away Chambers’s crutches would leave him without a way to
        move around, obviously, but Chambers was in a holding cell, so he
        couldn’t move around. See Davis v. Hall, 992 F.2d 151, 153 (8th
        Cir. 1993) (finding no deliberate indifference when prison officials
        denied the plaintiff access to his crutches). Nor did the cell’s lack

        4
          On appeal, Chambers says that he told Officer Thackson “what would hap-
        pen to his body if he tried to walk without his crutches”—namely, that “the
        pain in his body would trigger his seizures,” potentially causing him to black
        out. But these allegations don’t appear in the amended complaint.
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        21-11264                  Opinion of the Court                              9

        of an emergency call button and monitoring equipment rise to the
        level of deliberate indifference. See Hale v. Tallapoosa Cnty., 50
        F.3d 1579, 1580–82 (11th Cir. 1995) (finding no deliberate indiffer-
        ence when a jailer “fail[ed] to check on” a small, overcrowded cell
        between 9:30 P.M. and the end of his shift at midnight, the plaintiff
        was “punched and kicked . . . repeatedly without provocation” by
        two other inmates in the cell during that time, and the plaintiff’s
        “yell[s] for help during the beating . . . received no response from”
        the jailer).
               As to the March 2020 incident, Chambers made no allega-
        tions regarding Officer Thackson’s conduct whatsoever. In his
        amended complaint, he claimed only that, while under Officer
        Thackson’s supervision, he “had to crawl out of his wheelchair
        while handcuffed and shackled and crawl up the stairs of the bus
        using his butt, legs, back[,] and arms” and “had to crawl off the bus
        the same way.” Chambers didn’t allege Officer Thackson’s subjec-
        tive knowledge that climbing onto and off the bus in that way
        would entail a substantial risk of serious harm. Nor did he claim
        that he requested a wheelchair-compliant bus, that he asked Officer
        Thackson for assistance in getting onto or off the bus, or that any
        force was applied to require Chambers to crawl onto the bus or
        remove him from his chair.5 Chambers even acknowledged that

        5
           In his original complaint and his brief on appeal, Chambers claims that Of-
        ficer Thackson forced him to leave his wheelchair and crawl onto and off the
        bus. But this allegation of force is absent from the operative complaint.
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                 21-11264

        he specifically asked Officer Thackson to let him travel back to the
        jail on the same bus with the last group of inmates and that, after
        Officer Thackson initially refused, he was allowed to do so. And
        it’s not immediately obvious from Chambers’s conclusory allega-
        tions that a crawl so brief, if also arduous and recurring, likely
        would result in additional injury.
               Even if we infer Officer Thackson’s subjective knowledge
        from the amended complaint, Chambers’s crawling onto and off
        the bus stairs didn’t meet the “high bar” for deliberate indifference.
        Swain, 961 F.3d at 1285–86 (“As applied in the prison context, the
        deliberate-indifference standard sets an appropriately high bar. . . .
        Ordinary malpractice or simple negligence won’t do; instead, the
        plaintiff must show subjective recklessness as used in the criminal
        law.” (quotation omitted)). Indeed, the facts of this case are similar
        to those of Turner v. Mull, where the court found “no constitu-
        tional violation” when a mobility-impaired plaintiff “was trans-
        ported . . . in a non-wheelchair-accessible van” that he could enter
        only “by crawling into it.” 784 F.3d 485, 487–88, 491 (8th Cir. 2015).
        This case also stands in contrast to Pearson v. Prison Health Ser-
        vice, 850 F.3d 526, 537 (3d Cir. 2017) (holding that a plaintiff who
        claimed that he was “forced” to crawl to his wheelchair created “a
        genuine dispute as to whether [the defendant] acted with deliberate
        indifference”), which is cited by the dissenting opinion. Unlike the
        plaintiff in Pearson, Chambers’s amended complaint didn’t allege
        that Officer Thackson forced him to crawl into and out of his
        wheelchair.
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        21-11264              Opinion of the Court                      11

               Because Chambers insufficiently alleged that the October
        2019 and March 2020 incidents amounted to deliberate indiffer-
        ence, the district court didn’t err in dismissing his complaint for
        failure to state a claim.
              AFFIRMED.
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        21-11264 Jordan, J., Concurring in part and Dissenting in part      1

        JORDAN, Circuit Judge, Concurring in part and Dissenting in part.
              I concur in all of the court’s opinion with one exception.
        That exception is the affirmance of the dismissal of Mr. Chambers’
        Eighth Amendment claim against Officer Thackson based on the
        March 2020 bus incident. As to that claim I respectfully dissent.
               Mr. Chambers—who needed crutches, and who had told Of-
        ficer Thackson five or six months earlier about his medical situa-
        tion—alleged that Officer Thackson forced him to get out of his
        wheelchair and crawl on and off the stairs of the prison bus “on his
        butt, legs, and arms while handcuffed and shackled.” He also al-
        leged that he suffered serious injuries from having to do this.
                The court affirms the dismissal of this claim on two grounds.
        First, the court says that Mr. Chambers did not allege Officer
        Thackson’s subjective knowledge that forcing him to climb on and
        off the bus in that way would entail a substantial risk of harm, and
        that it’s not immediately obvious that a crawl so brief would likely
        result in additional injury. Second, the court concludes that even
        if we were to infer Officer Thackson’s subjective knowledge, mak-
        ing Mr. Chambers crawl off and on the bus did not amount to de-
        liberate indifference. At the Rule 12(b)(6) stage, I disagree.
              Mr. Chambers was in a wheelchair, and people who need a
        wheelchair have ambulatory problems of some sort. Those prob-
        lems are exacerbated when the person who requires the wheelchair
        is handcuffed and shackled. It is plausible that Officer Thackson,
        who of course knew that Mr. Chambers was in a wheelchair, and
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        2   Jordan, J., Concurring in part and Dissenting in part 21-11264

        who previously had been made aware of his medical situation,
        would understand that forcing him to crawl off and on the bus on
        his behind, legs, and arms would likely cause significant injury. Cf.
        Pearson v. Prison Health Service, 850 F.3d 526, 537 (3d Cir. 2017)
        (“Pearson's claim that he was forced to crawl to the wheelchair cre-
        ates a genuine dispute as to whether Nurse Rhodes acted with de-
        liberate indifference. Viewing the record in Pearson's favor, as we
        must, Nurse Rhodes forced a patient, who had been screaming in
        pain for several hours, to crawl to a wheelchair despite indicating
        that he was unable to walk. We do not believe that additional evi-
        dence is required for a reasonable jury to conclude that this con-
        duct violates a professional standard of care or that such conduct
        entails the obduracy and wantonness that is proscribed by the
        Eighth Amendment.”). Rather than rely on Turner v. Mull, 784
        F.3d 485, 487-88, 491 (8th Cir. 2015), I would look for guidance to
        the Eighth Circuit’s earlier decision in Cummings v. Roberts, 628
        F.2d 1065, 1068 (8th Cir. 1980) (allegation that prison officials failed
        to give bedridden defendant a wheelchair, thereby forcing him to
        “crawl on the floor,” was sufficient to state an Eighth Amendment
        claim for cruel and unusual punishment).