Adams v. Corecivic of Tenn., LLC

1

CHRISTOPHER ADAMS, #328180, Plaintiff, v. CORECIVIC OF TENNESSEE, LLC, et al., Defendants.

No. 3:23-cv-00823

United States District Court, M.D. Tennessee, Nashville Division

January 23, 2024

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

ALETA A. TRAUGER UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Christopher Adams, an inmate of the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center (TTCC) proceeding pro se, has filed a verified civil rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Doc. No. 1, “the Complaint”) and paid the filing fee.

The case is before the court for initial review under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 28 U.S.C. § 1915A.

I. INITIAL REVIEW

A. Legal Standard

The court must conduct an initial review and dismiss the Complaint (or any portion thereof) if it is facially frivolous or malicious, if it fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, or if it seeks monetary relief against a defendant who is immune from such relief. 28 U.S.C § 1915A. Review for whether the Complaint states a claim upon which relief may be granted asks whether it contains “sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,” such that it would survive a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Hill v. Lappin, 630 F.3d 468, 470-71 (6th Cir. 2010) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)). Although pro se pleadings must be liberally construed, Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007), the plaintiff must still “plead[] factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged,” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678, “view[ing] the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff[.]” Tackett v. M & G Polymers, USA, LLC, 561 F.3d 478, 488 (6th Cir. 2009).

The plaintiff filed this action under § 1983, which authorizes a federal suit against any person who, “under color of state law, deprives [another] person of rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution or conferred by federal statute.” Wurzelbacher v. Jones-Kelley, 675 F.3d 580, 583 (6th Cir. 2012) (citations omitted); 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

B. Allegations and Claims

The plaintiff has been incarcerated at TTCC since October 2021. (Doc. No. 1 at 12.) He sues the following defendants in charge of operating (or overseeing the operation of) TTCC: CoreCivic of Tennessee, LLC (“CoreCivic”); CoreCivic's CEO, Damon Hininger; CoreCivic's Vice President of Operations Administration, Steve Conry; TTCC Warden Vincent Vantell; TTCC Classification Coordinator Tari Crawford; Trousdale County, Tennessee; the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC); and the Commissioner of TDOC, Frank Strada. (Id. at 7-10.)

Across fifty pages, the Complaint alleges in painstaking detail the dangerousness of the living conditions at TTCC due to rampant violence between inmates. It claims that the problem is caused by CoreCivic's intentional understaffing of the facility to increase its profit margin. The Complaint asserts that this cause and its effects are well known to the defendants; to other state officials including the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury, who published a report in 2020 confirming the results of a 2017 audit that identified significant problems at CoreCivic-managed facilities and largely attributed them to understaffing; and to this court and the news-consuming public. (See id. at 3-7 & n.8 (citing over 30 news articles published between 2016 and 2023).) The core claim of the Complaint is summarized as follows:

Since beginning its operations of the TTCC CoreCivic has continued to fail in its constitutional duty to provide reasonable safety to the inmates in its care thereby exhibiting deliberate indifference to the same. All of the problems that plague the TTCC are attributable to understaffing. The TTCC is unable to provide inmate services that promote positive behavior such as, recreation, education, programming, religious services, adequate grievance procedures, adequate legal and leisure library access, adequate mail service, etc. because of understaffing. The lack of correctional services due to the understaffing results in the idleness of inmates, which in turn, has led to excessive violence resulting in constant lockdowns further exacerbating the violence. For 2023, the TTCC has been on lockdown, or what is the equivalent of lockdown, for over 125 days further adding fuel to the fire, and therefore, Plaintiff's plight. As such, CoreCivic's understaffing policy creates a dangerous and volatile environment based on the totality of the conditions resulting from it.

(Id. at 4-6.)

As far as the impact of these conditions on Plaintiff, he alleges that his unit houses 512 inmates divided into four “open-bay barracks style” pods of 128 inmates. (Id. at 13.) Guards are not posted inside the pods; only one or two guards are assigned to the entire unit, and “they rarely do security walk-thrus in Plaintiff's pod.” (Id. at 14.) When TTCC is audited or inspected, CoreCivic employs temporary officers who are usually gone after the audit or inspection is concluded. (Id.) CoreCivic has continued to staff TTCC with one or two guards per unit despite the high incidence of violence, including the recent deaths of several inmates. (Id. at 15.) Fights between inmates in the pods are allowed to carry on without a response from the guards, and guards routinely let inmates into pods where they do not reside. (Id. at 23-24, 27.) The plaintiff's unit (Whiskey Unit) is for “minimum-restricted custody” inmates, “but correction officials knowingly house more dangerous, volatile medium custody inmates therein” (id. at 32), exacerbating the risk to inmate safety in a unit that is already understaffed by guards and at times completely unguarded. (Id. at 15, 32.) The plaintiff thus lives in fear for his personal safety. (Id. at 27.)

As highlighted in the summary above, the plaintiff and other TTCC inmates are rarely allowed to have recreation or to attend educational classes, the library, rehabilitative programs, or religious services because of understaffing and the attendant violence requiring prison lockdowns. (Id. at 31.) The Complaint was received in this court 219 days into 2023, and TTCC had been on lockdown for 125 of those days. (Id.) The plaintiff alleges that these issues “demonstrate that CoreCivic and its employees adopt and enforce a corporate policy of understaffing to maximize profits,” leading to “assaults, deaths, murders, rapes, and extortion.” (Id. at 39.) He claims that the defendants' policies and actions/inaction related to staffing issues amount to deliberate indifference to his safety in violation of the Eighth Amendment (id. at 39-46), resulting in “constant anxiety, tension, and uncertainty for Plaintiff as to when the volatile environment is going to explode.” (Id. at 41.)

The Complaint seeks declaratory and injunctive relief largely directed toward remedying the dangerous conditions at TTCC that it claims, in Count 1, violate the plaintiff's Eighth Amendment rights. (Id. at 50-51.) It also seeks an award of punitive damages against CoreCivic. (Id. at 50.) Finally, in Count 2, the Complaint claims a right to declaratory and injunctive relief against TDOC and Trousdale County under Tenn. Code Ann. § 1-3-121 and Art. 1, § 32 of the Tennessee Constitution. (Id. at 46-49.)

C. Analysis

Violence among prison inmates has proven to be an intractable problem, as “[p]risons are by definition places where violent people are housed involuntarily.” McGhee v. Foltz, 852 F.2d 876, 880 (6th Cir. 1988). An inmate who “has suffered or is threatened with suffering actual harm” as a result of such violent conditions of confinement may establish a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, Wilson v. Yaklich, 148 F.3d 596, 601 (6th Cir. 1998), upon “evidence showing that a substantial risk of inmate attacks was longstanding, pervasive, well-documented, or expressly noted by prison officials in the past,” and that the defendants had reason to know of the risk yet failed to respond reasonably to address it. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 842-45 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Bishop v. Hackel, 636 F.3d 757, 766 (6th Cir. 2011) (“[A] prison inmate first must show that the failure to protect from risk of harm is objectively ‘sufficiently serious,'” and “also must show that prison officials acted with ‘deliberate indifference' to inmate health or safety.”). For a corporate defendant such as CoreCivic--which is a state actor by virtue of performing the traditional state function of operating a prison, Street v. Corr. Corp. of Am., 102 F.3d 810, 814 (6th Cir. 1996)--liability under § 1983 must be grounded in a causal relationship between the execution of a corporate policy or custom and the substantial risk the plaintiff faces. See, e.g., O'Brien v. Michigan Dep't of Corr., 592 Fed.Appx. 338, 341 (6th Cir. 2014).

As a threshold matter, because the plaintiff does not allege that he has suffered any physical injury or been personally threatened with the same, the court must examine his standing to challenge the misconduct alleged here. To establish standing to sue, the plaintiff must present an injury-in-fact--that is, a “concrete, particularized and actual or imminent” injury--that is “fairly traceable to the challenged action[] and redressable by a favorable ruling.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int'l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 409 (2013) (quoting Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 130 S.Ct. 2743, 2752 (2010)). At the pleading stage, the plaintiff must make clear allegations demonstrating each of the above elements. Buchholz v. Meyer Njus Tanick, PA, 946 F.3d 855, 861 (6th Cir. 2020) (citing Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S.Ct. 1540,...