Rogers v. Cline

MICHAEL W. ROGERS, Plaintiff, v. SAM CLINE, et al., Defendants.

No. 19-3145-JAR-ADM

United States District Court, D. Kansas

August 20, 2021

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

JULIE A. ROBINSON, CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Plaintiff Michael W. Rogers, a prisoner proceeding pro se and in forma pauperis, alleged civil rights claims against Defendants Sam Cline, Warden of the El Dorado Correctional Facility (“EDCF”); EDCF Unit Team Manager Richard English and Special Agent Brett Sissell in their individual capacities.^[1] On April 27, 2021, the Honorable J. Thomas Marten issued a Memorandum and Order ruling on Defendants' Motion to Dismiss/Motion for Summary Judgment (“April 27 Order”).^[2] The April 27 Order granted summary judgment in favor of Defendant Sissal and denied summary judgment as to Defendants Cline and English under the doctrine of qualified immunity.

This case was eventually reassigned to the undersigned due to Judge Marten's retirement. Before the Court is Defendants Cline and English's Motion to Reconsider (Doc. 52) the April 27 Order denying summary judgment to Cline and English based on qualified immunity. The motion is fully briefed, and the Court is prepared to rule. As described more fully below the Court grants the motion to reconsider as to Defendant Cline only. The motion is denied as to Defendant English.

I. Standards

D. Kan. Rule 7.3(b) governs motions to reconsider non-dispositive orders, while Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) and 60 govern motions to reconsider dispositive orders.^[3] A party may seek reconsideration on the following grounds: (1) an intervening change in controlling law; (2) the availability of new evidence; or (3) the need to correct clear error or prevent manifest injustice.^[4]While a motion to reconsider is available where the court has “misapprehended a party's position, the facts or applicable law, or where the party produces new evidence that it could not have obtained earlier through the exercise of due diligence, ” such a motion is “not a second opportunity for the losing party to make its strongest case, to rehash arguments or to dress up arguments that previously failed.”^[5] Whether to grant a motion for reconsideration is left to the court's discretion.^[6]

Defendants also invoke Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b), which provides that “any order or other decision, however designated, that adjudicates fewer than all the claims . . . may be revised at any time before the entry of a judgment adjudicating all the claims.” When considering an “interlocutory” motion under Rule 54(b), ‘“the district court is not bound by the strict standards for altering or amending a judgment encompassed in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 59(e) and 60(b),' which govern a district court's reconsideration of its final judgments.”^[7] Such a motion is left to the court's discretion.^[8]

II. The April 27 Order

In his April 27 Order, Judge Marten considered Defendants' motion to dismiss, or in the alternative for summary judgment, as to Plaintiff's remaining claims that Defendants Cline, English, and Sissal were responsible for Plaintiff's release into the general population at EDCF, where he was attacked and stabbed multiple times by inmates affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood gang on July 19, 2019, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Judge Marten treated the motion as one for summary judgment because he relied on matters outside the pleadings. He then applied the burden-shifting framework applicable to summary judgment motions that raise the issue of qualified immunity. Under that framework, the plaintiff must first show that (1) the defendant violated his constitutional or statutory rights; and (2) the right was clearly established at the time of the alleged unlawful activity.^[9] The court may decide the appropriate order to consider these issues.^[10] Only if the plaintiff clears these hurdles does the burden shift back to the movant defendant to make the traditional showing that there are no genuine issues of material fact and that he is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.^[11] In determining whether the plaintiff has demonstrated a violation of his constitutional rights and whether the right was clearly established at the time, the court must view the facts and draw reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment.^[12]

As to the claims against Cline and English, Judge Marten determined that the summary judgment record, when viewed in the light most favorable to Plaintiff, demonstrated: (1) Plaintiff's injuries were sufficiently serious to implicate his Eighth Amendment rights; (2) Cline and English were subjectively aware of an obvious risk to Plaintiff's safety if he was placed in a housing situation with Aryan Brotherhood gang members, were aware of the history of violence between Plaintiff and that group, and were aware of specific threats of violence by members of that group made to Plaintiff if he was returned to the general population; (3) Cline and English had actual knowledge of threats to Plaintiff sufficient to support liability; (4) Cline's and English's responses to these known threats were not reasonable; (5) Plaintiff's constitutional right to reasonable protection from attacks by inmates was clearly established; and (5) genuine issues of material fact precluded summary judgment in favor of Cline and English.

III. Discussion

Defendants ask this Court to reconsider the April 27 Order on the basis that it misapprehended the facts, law, and Defendants' position. First, Defendants challenge the court's failure to deem uncontroverted that Plaintiff requested placement in the EDCF general population just prior to his attack, and that if he had requested placement in restrictive housing, the request would have been granted. Had the court properly found these facts uncontroverted, Defendants urge, it would have concluded that Defendants were not deliberately indifferent. Second, Defendants challenge the court's finding that Cline had specific knowledge of the risk to Plaintiff if he was transferred to the EDCF general population. Finally, Defendants challenge the court's determination that Plaintiff's constitutional right to reasonable protection from attacks by inmates was clearly established because the court defined the right too generally. The Court addresses each argument in turn.

A. Evidence Regarding Plaintiff's Waiver of Protective Custody

Under the first prong of the qualified immunity test, Plaintiff was required to show that each defendant violated the Eighth Amendment duty to protect Plaintiff from violence at the hands of other prisoners. A violation of this duty requires two showings:

First, the alleged deprivation must be “sufficiently serious” under an objective standard. In cases involving a failure to prevent harm, this means that the prisoner must show that the conditions of his incarceration present an objective “substantial risk of serious harm.”

Second, the prisoner must show that prison officials had subjective knowledge of the risk of harm. In other words, an official “must both be aware of the facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists, and he must also draw the inference.” This knowledge may be proved “in the usual ways, including inference from circumstantial evidence, and a fact-finder may conclude that a prison official knew of a substantial risk from the very fact that the risk was obvious.”^[13]

According to the facts set forth in the April 27 Order, Plaintiff was transferred to Kansas Department of Corrections (“KDOC”) custody in January 2017 from Florida because he testified against certain individuals in gang and drug-related cases. He was eventually housed at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility (“HCF”) as a maximum security prisoner in the general population. Plaintiff was threatened by an inmate who had also been transferred from Florida and had spread information to gangs within the KDOC-the Aryan Brotherhood and the Crips-about Plaintiff's cooperation in Florida. After reporting these threats to KDOC officials, Plaintiff was segregated and then transferred to the EDCF and placed in the general population. Two days after his transfer to EDCF, Plaintiff was attacked by two inmates, causing significant injuries. Plaintiff told KDOC officials that he did not know the attackers, but that he was certain the orders came from three specific individuals and had been sanctioned by the Kansas Aryan Brotherhood gang. A KDOC Administrative Segregation Report supports Plaintiff's claim that the perpetrators of his attack were “members of the STG, White/Supremacy/Hate Group.”^[14]

After this attack, Plaintiff was granted “Low/Medium Custody by Exception” status and transferred to the Norton Correction Facility (“NCF”) on August 22, 2017. In January 2018, due to disciplinary infractions at NCF, Plaintiff lost his status as a low/medium custody by exception inmate and was transferred back to EDCF on February 6, 2018. Soon after he returned to EDCF, Plaintiff reported threats by members of the Aryan Brotherhood group.

The parties dispute several facts about what happened after these threats in early 2018. It is undisputed that between April 2018 and June 25, 2019, EDCF cellhouse E1 was called the “Managed Movement Unit” (“MMU”), an experimental housing unit that provided an alternative to protective custody for those prisoners who qualified for protective custody, allowing for some additional privileges similar to the general population. Plaintiff was housed in the MMU from May 23, 2018 until August 22, 2018, when he was placed in segregation for nine days due to a disciplinary infraction. He was returned to the MMU until December 6 2018, when he received another disciplinary report, at which...