Court Opinion

ID: 9881165
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-29 20:01:18.408764+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:59:20.317518
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-11599     Document: 28-1       Date Filed: 09/29/2023   Page: 1 of 13

                                                      [DO NOT PUBLISH]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

                            ____________________

                                   No. 22-11599
                            Non-Argument Calendar
                            ____________________

        CURTIS HUNTER,
                                                         Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
        versus
        RIVERBEND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, et al.,

                                                               Defendants,

        LIEUTENANT MORRIS,
        In his/her individual and oﬃcial capacity,
        TAMMY BAILEY,
        THE GEO GROUP INC,
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        2                         Opinion of the Court                      22-11599

                                                            Defendants-Appellees.

                                ____________________

                    Appeal from the United States District Court
                        for the Middle District of Georgia
                       D.C. Docket No. 5:19-cv-00491-MTT
                             ____________________

        Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and EDMONDSON, Circuit Judges.
        PER CURIAM:
               Curtis Hunter, proceeding pro se, 1 appeals the district court’s
        ﬁnal judgment in favor of defendants in his civil action brought un-
        der 42 U.S.C. § 1983. On appeal, Hunter challenges the district
        court’s orders (1) dismissing Hunter’s claims against Dr. Steven
        Niergarth; (2) extending the time to ﬁle dispositive motions;
        (3) denying Hunter’s motions to compel and to stay discovery; and
        (4) granting summary judgment in favor of The GEO Group, Inc.
        (“GEO”) and Lieutenant Marcus Morris on Hunter’s Eighth
        Amendment failure-to-protect and conditions-of-conﬁnement
        claims. 2 No reversible error has been shown; we aﬃrm.

        1 We read liberally appellate briefs filed by pro se litigants.See Timson v.
        Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008). We also construe liberally pro se
        pleadings. See Tannenbaum v. United States, 148 F.3d 1262, 1263 (11th Cir.
        1998).
        2 Construed liberally, Hunter’s appellate brief raises no substantive challenge

        to the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of GEO and
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        22-11599                 Opinion of the Court                             3

                                             I.
               Brieﬂy stated, this civil action arises out of a physical alter-
        cation among inmates on 10 December 2017, while Hunter was in-
        carcerated at Riverbend Correctional Facility (“Riverbend”): a
        prison owned and operated by GEO. An initial ﬁght broke out be-
        tween members of two diﬀerent gangs, after which the instigating
        inmate was placed in restraints. Following the initial incident, Lieu-
        tenant Morris ordered inmates secured in their dormitory units.
               Shortly thereafter, a second ﬁght erupted between members
        of the two gangs. Hunter was not a member of either gang. Nev-
        ertheless, Hunter says he intervened in the ﬁght to try to calm the
        situation. During the incident, Hunter slipped on a wet area of the
        tiled ﬂoor, fell, and injured his right knee.
             Hunter was ﬁrst examined by the medical staﬀ at Riverbend
        and was later referred to a private orthopedist, Dr. Niergarth.
        Hunter visited Dr. Niergarth three times between January and
        March 2018. Hunter was released from custody on 18 May 2018.
               In December 2019, Hunter ﬁled this civil action under 42
        U.S.C. § 1983. Pertinent to this appeal, Hunter’s amended com-
        plaint asserted a claim against Dr. Niergarth for deliberate indiﬀer-
        ence to a serious medical need, in violation of the Eighth Amend-
        ment. Hunter also asserted Eighth Amendment claims (1) against

        Tammy Bailey on Hunter’s Eighth Amendment claim for deliberate indiffer-
        ence to a serious medical need. That claim is thus not properly before us on
        appeal.
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        4                          Opinion of the Court                   22-11599

        GEO 3 and Lieutenant Morris for failure to protect him from bodily
        harm and (2) against GEO for hazardous conditions of conﬁne-
        ment.
               In December 2020, the district court granted Dr. Niergarth’s
        motion to dismiss, concluding that Hunter had failed to state a
        plausible claim for relief under the Eighth Amendment.
               On 7 April 2022, the district court granted GEO and Lieu-
        tenant Morris’s motion for summary judgment. In the same order,
        the district court denied Hunter’s outstanding motions to compel
        and to stay discovery.
                                                 II.
                A.      Dismissal of Claims against Dr. Niergarth
                We review de novo a district court’s dismissal for failure to
        state a claim, accepting all properly alleged facts as true and con-
        struing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiﬀ. See Butler
        v. Sheriﬀ of Palm Beach Cty., 685 F.3d 1261, 1265 (11th Cir. 2012).
                “To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain
        suﬃcient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief
        that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)
        (quotation omitted). To state a plausible claim for relief, plaintiﬀs
        must go beyond merely pleading the “sheer possibility” of unlawful
        activity by a defendant; plaintiﬀs must oﬀer “factual content that

        3 Hunter’s amended complaint named Riverbend as a defendant.       GEO was
        later substituted as the proper party.
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        22-11599               Opinion of the Court                          5

        allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defend-
        ant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id.
               To state an Eighth Amendment claim for deliberate indiﬀer-
        ence to a serious medical need, a plaintiﬀ must allege facts suﬃcient
        to demonstrate two things: (1) “an objectively serious medical
        need” and (2) “that prison oﬃcials acted with deliberate indiﬀer-
        ence to that need.” See Keohane v. Fla. Dep’t of Corr. Sec’y, 952 F.3d
        1257, 1266 (11th Cir. 2020). A prison oﬃcial acts with deliberate
        indiﬀerence when he “(1) had subjective knowledge of a risk of se-
        rious harm, (2) disregarded that risk, and (3) acted with more than
        gross negligence.” Wade v. McDade, 67 F.4th 1363, 1374 (11th Cir.
        2023) (emphasis omitted).
               The Eighth Amendment does not mandate that medical care
        for prisoners be “perfect, the best obtainable, or even very good.”
        See Hoﬀer v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 973 F.3d 1263, 1271 (11th Cir.
        2020). We have stressed that “medical treatment violates the
        Eighth Amendment only when it is so grossly incompetent, inade-
        quate, or excessive as to shock the conscience or to be intolerable
        to fundamental fairness.” See id. (brackets omitted).
               In his amended complaint, Hunter alleged these facts, which
        we accept as true and construe in Hunter’s favor. On 11 January
        2018, Dr. Niergarth took x-rays of Hunter’s knee, provided Hunter
        with a stabilizing knee brace, and directed Hunter to return in one
        month. On 9 February, Dr. Niergarth took more x-rays and or-
        dered an MRI on Hunter’s knee.
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        6                      Opinion of the Court                22-11599

                On 7 March, Dr. Niergarth discussed the MRI results with
        Hunter. Dr. Niergarth diagnosed Hunter with a tibial plateau frac-
        ture: an injury that could be ﬁxed only by total knee replacement.
        Dr. Niergarth, however, told Hunter that he was too young for a
        total knee replacement and that such a procedure would last only
        ten years. Hunter says Dr. Niergarth then had Hunter return the
        stabilizing brace, provided no other brace, crutches, or pain medi-
        cine, and failed to refer Hunter to another orthopedic surgeon for
        a second opinion.
               For purposes of this appeal, we accept that Hunter’s knee
        injury constitutes an objectively serious medical need. Hunter,
        however, has failed to allege facts showing plausibly that Dr. Nier-
        garth’s medical care was so grossly incompetent, inadequate, or
        conscience-shocking that it rose to the level of an Eighth Amend-
        ment violation. That Hunter disagrees with Dr. Niergarth’s medi-
        cal opinions about Hunter’s candidacy for a total knee replacement
        and about the continuing need for a stabilizing knee brace is insuf-
        ﬁcient to establish an Eighth Amendment violation. See Keohane,
        952 F.3d at 1266 (“[A] simple diﬀerence in medical opinion between
        the prison’s medical staﬀ and the inmate as to the latter’s diagnosis
        or course of treatment fails to support a claim of cruel and unusual
        punishment.” (brackets omitted)).
               The district court committed no error in dismissing -- for
        failure to state a claim -- Hunter’s deliberate-indiﬀerence claim
        against Dr. Niergarth.
              B.     Motions for Extension of Time
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        22-11599                Opinion of the Court                          7

               Hunter next contends that the district court abused its dis-
        cretion by twice granting GEO and Lieutenant Morris an extension
        of time to ﬁle a motion for summary judgment. We disagree.
               To the extent Hunter argues that the district court erred in
        granting an extension absent a showing of excusable neglect, that
        argument is without merit. We have said that “[a] timely motion
        to extend is reviewed for good cause, not excusable neglect, . . . and
        should be liberally granted absent a showing of bad faith or undue
        prejudice.” See Lizarazo v. Miami-Dade Corr. & Rehab. Dep’t, 878 F.3d
        1008, 1012 (11th Cir. 2017) (quotation and citation omitted, altera-
        tion adopted); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(b) (“When an act may or
        must be done within a speciﬁed time, the court may, for good
        cause, extend the time . . . if the court acts, or if a request is made,
        before the original time or its extension expires[.]”).
               GEO and Lieutenant Morris twice moved for a 14-day exten-
        sion of time to move for summary judgment. GEO and Lieutenant
        Morris asserted that they had worked diligently to prepare their
        summary-judgment motion. About the ﬁrst request, GEO and
        Lieutenant Morris also stated that an extension was necessary due
        to outstanding discovery issues and a pending hearing scheduled
        the day after the then-deadline for ﬁling dispositive motions.
               Because each extension request was made before the appli-
        cable deadline then-in-eﬀect for ﬁling dispositive motions, the re-
        quests were subject to good-cause review. The record supports a
        ﬁnding that good cause existed to grant the requested extensions.
        In addition, nothing evidences that the motions for extension were
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        8                      Opinion of the Court                  22-11599

        ﬁled in bad faith or resulted in undue delay or prejudice. The dis-
        trict court abused no discretion in granting GEO and Lieutenant
        Morris’s motions for extensions of time.
               C.     Motions to Compel Discovery and to Stay Discovery
               We next reject Hunter’s arguments challenging the district
        court’s denial of his motions to compel discovery and to stay dis-
        covery. We begin with some background.
               In June 2021, Hunter moved for sanctions based in part on
        GEO’s purported failure to produce speciﬁc prison surveillance
        videos. The district court conducted a hearing on Hunter’s sanc-
        tions motion and ordered GEO to ﬁle a veriﬁed statement address-
        ing the availability of the requested video evidence. GEO pro-
        duced a sworn aﬃdavit from an investigator at Riverbend conﬁrm-
        ing that GEO had provided all available videos to Hunter. On 24
        August 2021, the district court denied Hunter’s motion for sanc-
        tions. In doing so, the district court rejected Hunter’s assertion that
        GEO had been untruthful about the availability of the requested
        video evidence.
               One week later, Hunter ﬁled the motion to compel discov-
        ery at issue. In his motion, Hunter sought to compel the produc-
        tion of the same video evidence that was central to Hunter’s earlier
        sanctions motion. Given that the district court had already rejected
        Hunter’s arguments about GEO’s failure to produce additional
        video evidence, the district court committed no error in denying
        Hunter’s later-ﬁled motion to compel that same evidence.
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        22-11599               Opinion of the Court                        9

               Nor did the district court err in denying Hunter’s motion to
        stay discovery: a motion ﬁled two months after the close of discov-
        ery and two weeks after GEO and Lieutenant Morris moved for
        summary judgment.
               We reject Hunter’s contention that the district court vio-
        lated his due process rights (1) by ruling on his motion to compel
        and his motion to stay discovery several months after the motions
        were ﬁled, or (2) by ruling on Hunter’s motions on the same day
        the district court granted summary judgment in favor of Defend-
        ants. Hunter has failed to demonstrate that the timing or manner
        of the district court’s rulings deprived him of a constitutionally-
        protected interest or constituted constitutionally inadequate pro-
        cess. See Worthy v. Phenix City, Ala., 930 F.3d 1206, 1223 (11th Cir.
        2019).
              D.     Summary Judgment
               Hunter next challenges the district court’s grant of sum-
        mary judgment in favor of GEO and Lieutenant Morris on
        Hunter’s Eighth Amendment conditions-of-conﬁnement and fail-
        ure-to-protect claims.
               We review de novo the district court’s grant of summary
        judgment. See Holloman v. Mail-Well Corp., 443 F.3d 832, 836 (11th
        Cir. 2006). “Summary judgment is appropriate when the evidence,
        viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, presents
        no genuine issue of material fact and compels judgment as a matter
        of law in favor of the moving party.” Id. at 836-37.
                            1. Conditions of Conﬁnement
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        10                     Opinion of the Court                  22-11599

                To establish an Eighth Amendment violation, a prisoner
        must satisfy both an objective and a subjective component. See
        Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). In a conditions-of-con-
        ﬁnement context, a prisoner satisﬁes the objective component by
        showing an “extreme” condition that posed an “unreasonable risk
        of serious damage to his future health or safety.” See Swain v. Junior,
        958 F.3d 1081, 1088 (11th Cir. 2020) (quotations omitted). “[T]o
        satisfy the ‘subjective component,’ the prisoner must show that the
        prison oﬃcial acted with deliberate indiﬀerence.” Id. at 1088-89.
        “A prison oﬃcial acts with deliberate indiﬀerence when he knows
        of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety.” Id.
        at 1089 (quotations omitted). “[T]he oﬃcial must both be aware of
        facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial
        risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference.”
        Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837. Deliberate indiﬀerence requires a defend-
        ant to have “acted with more than gross negligence.” See Wade, 67
        F.4th at 1374 (emphasis in original).
               Hunter has failed to present evidence suﬃcient to satisfy ei-
        ther the objective or subjective component of his conditions-of-
        conﬁnement claim against GEO. Hunter argues chieﬂy that GEO
        knew about the condensation on the ﬂoor and failed to remedy it.
        But Hunter has not shown that the alleged condensation on the
        ﬂoor rose to the level of an “extreme” condition that posed an “ob-
        jectively intolerable risk of harm.” See Swain, 958 F.3d at 1088.
              Nor has Hunter presented evidence that would support a
        reasonable inference -- or evidence demonstrating that prison
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        22-11599               Opinion of the Court                        11

        oﬃcials in fact drew the inference -- that the complained-of condi-
        tion posed a substantial risk of serious harm. To the extent prison
        oﬃcials knew about the alleged condensation on the ﬂoor or about
        a possible risk of a slip-and-fall, the alleged failure to remedy the
        situation is something more akin to negligence. Hunter has thus
        failed to demonstrate a suﬃciently culpable state of mind to trigger
        Eighth Amendment liability.
                                 2. Failure to Protect
               Hunter also contends that GEO and Lieutenant Morris ex-
        hibited deliberate indiﬀerence for his safety by failing to respond
        adequately to the 10 December 2017 altercation and by failing to
        implement appropriate policies and procedures for addressing in-
        mate gang violence.
               “To survive summary judgment on a deliberate indiﬀerence
        failure-to-protect claim, a plaintiﬀ must produce suﬃcient evidence
        of (1) a substantial risk of serious harm; (2) the defendant’s delib-
        erate indiﬀerence to that risk; and (3) causation.” Mosley v. Zachery,
        966 F.3d 1265, 1270 (11th Cir. 2020) (quotation and brackets omit-
        ted). “[A] prison oﬃcial violates the Eighth Amendment in [a fail-
        ure-to-protect] context only when a substantial risk of harm, of
        which the oﬃcial is subjectively aware, exists and the oﬃcial does
        not respond reasonably to the risk.” Id. at 1276.
                About Hunter’s claim against Lieutenant Morris, Hunter has
        failed to present evidence suﬃcient to show that Lieutenant Morris
        was subjectively aware of a substantial risk of harm to Hunter aris-
        ing from the 10 December 2017 incident. Hunter was not a
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        12                      Opinion of the Court                    22-11599

        member of either of the gangs involved in the initial altercation.
        Nor has Hunter shown that he was targeted for gang violence. The
        record supports the district court’s determination that Lieutenant
        Morris’s eﬀorts to control the situation were reasonable and
        demonstrated no deliberate indiﬀerence to a known risk.
               Moreover, Hunter cannot show that his knee injury was
        caused by Lieutenant Morris’s purported deliberate indiﬀerence.
        Instead, Hunter participated voluntarily in the altercation and --
        while attempting to kick a fellow inmate -- slipped and fell on an
        area of the ﬂoor that Hunter says was known to collect condensa-
        tion. In other words, Hunter’s injuries were caused by his own con-
        duct, not by Lieutenant Morris’s response (or lack thereof ) to the
        situation.
               The district court also concluded reasonably that GEO was
        entitled to summary judgment on Hunter’s failure-to-protect
        claim. To prevail on an Eighth Amendment claim against a private
        company performing a state function -- like GEO -- a plaintiﬀ must
        show that the company “advanced a policy or custom of deliberate
        indiﬀerence that led to the violation of [the plaintiﬀ’s] constitu-
        tional right.” See Ireland v. Prummell, 53 F.4th 1274, 1289 (11th Cir.
        2022) (quotations and emphasis omitted). “[T]o demonstrate a pol-
        icy or custom, it is ‘generally necessary to show a persistent and
        wide-spread practice.’” McDowell v. Brown, 392 F.3d 1283, 1289
        (11th Cir. 2004); see also Ireland, 53 F.4th at 1290 (“[P]roof of a single
        incident of unconstitutional activity is not suﬃcient to demon-
        strate a policy or custom for purposes of § 1983 liability.”).
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        22-11599              Opinion of the Court                       13

               Hunter has identiﬁed no persistent or widespread “policy or
        custom” that led to his injury. To the extent Hunter contends that
        the prison was routinely understaﬀed, we have said that prison un-
        derstaﬃng does not rise to the level of an Eighth Amendment vio-
        lation absent evidence of a “deliberate intent to inadequately staﬀ”
        the facility. See McDowell, 392 F.3d at 1291.
               We aﬃrm the district court’s grant of summary judgment
        in favor of defendants.
              AFFIRMED.