Court Opinion

ID: 9893973
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-31 14:00:38.131624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:55.040718
License: Public Domain

22-1657
     Christopher Nazario v. Nicole Thibeault

                                UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                    FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

                                               SUMMARY ORDER

     RULINGS BY SUMMARY ORDER DO NOT HAVE PRECEDENTIAL EFFECT. CITATION TO A
     SUMMARY ORDER FILED ON OR AFTER JANUARY 1, 2007, IS PERMITTED AND IS GOVERNED BY
     FEDERAL RULE OF APPELLATE PROCEDURE 32.1 AND THIS COURT=S LOCAL RULE 32.1.1.
     WHEN CITING A SUMMARY ORDER IN A DOCUMENT FILED WITH THIS COURT, A PARTY MUST
     CITE EITHER THE FEDERAL APPENDIX OR AN ELECTRONIC DATABASE (WITH THE NOTATION
     “SUMMARY ORDER”). A PARTY CITING A SUMMARY ORDER MUST SERVE A COPY OF IT ON
     ANY PARTY NOT REPRESENTED BY COUNSEL.

 1           At a stated term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held at the
 2   Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, in the City of New York, on the
 3   31st day of October, two thousand twenty-three.
 4
 5   Present:
 6               DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON,
 7                     Chief Judge,
 8               BETH ROBINSON,
 9               MARIA ARAÚJO KAHN,
10                     Circuit Judges.
11   _____________________________________
12
13   CHRISTOPHER NAZARIO,
14
15                             Plaintiff-Appellee,
16
17   V.
18
19                                                                            22-1657
20   NICOLE THIBEAULT,
21
22                     Defendant-Appellant.
23   _____________________________________
24
25   For Defendant-Appellant:                        LISAMARIA T. PROSCINO, Assistant Attorney General
26                                                   (Janelle R. Medeiros, Assistant Attorney General, on
27                                                   the brief), on behalf of William Tong, Attorney General
28                                                   of the State of Connecticut.
29
30   For Plaintiff-Appellee:                         ATHUL K. ACHARYA, Public Accountability, Portland,
31                                                   OR.
32

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 1          Appeal from an order of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut (Bryant, J.).

 2          UPON DUE CONSIDERATION, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND

 3   DECREED that the order of the district court is AFFIRMED and the matter REMANDED for

 4   further proceedings consistent with this Order.

 5          Defendant-Appellant Nicole Thibeault, former Deputy Warden at Osborn Correctional

 6   Institution (“Osborn”), appeals from a June 30, 2022 order of the United States District Court for

 7   the District of Connecticut (Bryant, J.) denying her summary judgment based on qualified

 8   immunity.    Thibeault sought immunity from Plaintiff-Appellee Christopher Nazario’s claims

 9   under federal law for violation of his Eighth Amendment rights in connection with pandemic-

10   related measures instituted at Osborn in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. We assume

11   the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history of the case, and the issues

12   on appeal.

13   I.     Jurisdiction

14          This Court generally lacks jurisdiction to review the denial of a motion for summary

15   judgment because it is not an immediately appealable final judgment under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

16   See Walczyk v. Rio, 496 F.3d 139, 153 (2d Cir. 2007); Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 309 (1995).

17   However, an exception to this general rule lies under the collateral order doctrine when the

18   summary judgment motion is based on a qualified immunity claim and presents a “purely legal

19   question.” Walczyk, 496 F.3d at 153 (quoting Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530 (1985)).

20          Where, as here, a district court denies qualified immunity, a defendant may not

21   immediately appeal questions of “evidence sufficiency, i.e., which facts a party may, or may not,

22   be able to prove at trial” because such a determination is not a “final decision” within the meaning

23   of the applicable statute.     Johnson, 515 U.S. at 313 (internal quotation marks omitted).

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 1   However, the presence of disputed issues of fact does not preclude this Court’s review. “[A]s

 2   long as the defendant can support an immunity defense on stipulated facts, facts accepted for

 3   purposes of the appeal, or the plaintiff's version of the facts that the district judge deemed available

 4   for jury resolution, an interlocutory appeal is available to assert that an immunity defense is

 5   established as a matter of law.” Salim v. Proulx, 93 F.3d 86, 90 (2d Cir. 1996). We review the

 6   district court’s denial of summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds de novo, see Golodner

 7   v. Berliner, 770 F.3d 196, 201 (2d Cir. 2014), viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to

 8   the nonmoving party, see Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. 650, 655–56 (2014).

 9           Here, Thibeault contends that, even under Nazario’s version of the facts, Thibeault is

10   entitled to qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage. As set out below, we disagree.

11   We affirm substantially for the same reasons stated in the district court’s opinion.

12   II.     Qualified Immunity

13           Qualified immunity is intended to protect officials “from liability for civil damages insofar

14   as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a

15   reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). We

16   apply “a two-step sequence for resolving government officials’ qualified immunity claims.”

17   Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009). This Court must consider whether: “(1) . . . the

18   official violated a statutory or constitutional right, and (2) . . . the right was clearly established at

19   the time of the challenged conduct.” Ricciuti v. Gyzenis, 834 F.3d 162, 167 (2d Cir. 2016)

20   (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735 (2011)). Both

21   steps must be satisfied to establish qualified immunity, and this Court may “exercise [its] sound

22   discretion in deciding which [step] . . . should be addressed first.” Edrei v. Maguire, 892 F.3d

23   525, 532–33 (2d Cir. 2018) (quoting Pearson, 555 U.S. at 236).

                                                        3
 1          We begin with the second prong of the test. For a constitutional right to be clearly

 2   established, it must be “clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation

 3   he confronted.” Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202 (2001). In Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97,

 4   106 (1976), the Supreme Court held that deliberate indifference to a prisoner’s “serious medical

 5   needs” constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in contravention of the Eighth Amendment.

 6   Likewise, it concluded in Helling v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25, 33 (1993), that prison officials may

 7   not “be deliberately indifferent to the exposure of inmates to a serious, communicable disease”

 8   based on the lack of present symptoms. See also Jolly v. Coughlin, 76 F.3d 468, 477 (2d Cir.

 9   1996) (recognizing “correctional officials have an affirmative obligation to protect inmates from

10   infectious disease”); Lareau v. Manson, 651 F.2d 96, 109 (2d Cir. 1981) (holding that the failure

11   to adequately screen newly arrived inmates for communicable diseases would violate the Eighth

12   Amendment “since it represents an ‘(omission) sufficiently harmful to evidence deliberate

13   indifference to serious medical needs’” (quoting Estelle, 429 U.S. at 106)).     Thibeault argues that

14   a reasonable official in her position would not have understood that her conduct in the pandemic’s

15   early stages violated this right, but we agree with the district court that open material issues of fact

16   preclude this conclusion on the present record.

17          On the first prong, we reach a similar determination as to whether Thibeault’s conduct in

18   fact violated Nazario’s constitutional rights. To violate the Eighth Amendment, “a prisoner must

19   allege acts or omissions sufficiently harmful to evidence deliberate indifference to serious medical

20   needs.” Estelle, 429 U.S. at 106. This inquiry involves both an objective and subjective prong.

21   See Matzell v. Annucci, 64 F.4th 425, 435 (2d Cir. 2023). The objective requirement states that

22   the alleged deprivation must be “sufficiently serious.” Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834

23   (1994). “[T]he prisoner must prove that his medical need was ‘a condition of urgency, one that

                                                        4
 1   may produce death, degeneration, or extreme pain.’” Johnson v. Wright, 412 F.3d 398, 403 (2d

 2   Cir. 2005) (quoting Hemmings v. Gorczyk, 134 F.3d 104, 108 (2d Cir. 1998)). The subjective

 3   prong states that the prison official must act with a “sufficiently culpable state of mind.” Wilson

 4   v. Seiter, 501 U.S. 294, 298 (1991). The plaintiff must prove that the official “had subjective

 5   knowledge of a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate and disregarded it.” Tangreti v.

 6   Bachmann, 983 F.3d 609, 616 (2d Cir. 2020).

 7          Thibeault argues that she is entitled to qualified immunity because she followed the advice

 8   of medical professionals in responding to Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic. This

 9   argument misapprehends Nazario’s claims. Here, we rely on Nazario’s version of the facts that

10   the district court deemed available for jury resolution. Nazario claims, among other things, that

11   Thibeault knew there were inmates in E-Block exhibiting Covid-19 symptoms and disregarded

12   medical advice by transferring him there. Therefore, we assume that the district court correctly

13   concluded that a reasonable jury could find that Osborn failed to follow Department of Correction

14   (“DOC”) Covid-19 policies, including policies regarding the quarantine of inmates with Covid-19

15   housed in E-Block; that Thibeault knew of Covid-19 positive and/or symptomatic inmates in E-

16   Block and disregarded the risk associated with Nazario’s transfer there; and that Thibeault failed

17   to provide Nazario with personal protective equipment (“PPE”) knowing that Nazario was at

18   heightened risk of contracting Covid-19 because he lacked the necessary PPE to perform his

19   laundry job.

20          To be sure, we have considered the most favorable version of the facts, from Nazario’s

21   perspective, that the district court deemed available, as we must for purposes of assessing

22   Thibeault’s entitlement to qualified immunity at this stage.        We express no view on the

23   sufficiency of the evidence, on the likely resolution of factual disputes between the parties, or on

                                                      5
1    the question of whether Thibeault may be entitled to qualified immunity at a later date. See Ortiz

2    v. Jordan, 562 U.S. 180, 184 (2011) (noting that the qualified immunity defense “remains available

3    to the defending officials at trial” when it is “evaluated in light of the character and quality of the

 4   evidence received in court”). This order does not foreclose Thibeault from raising timely legal

5    challenges regarding the sufficiency of the evidence or qualified immunity at a later stage before

6    the district court or on appeal from a final judgment. In sum, we determine only that Thibeault is

 7   not entitled to qualified immunity at this time.

 8          We have considered Thibeault’s remaining arguments and find them to be without merit.

 9   Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

10                                                          FOR THE COURT:
11                                                          Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, Clerk
12
13

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