Tennin v. Torres

Background

Todd Tennin sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute, alleging that corrections officers and nurses violated the Eighth Amendment by depriving him of food and medical care while he was on hunger strikes at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Oak Park Heights. The defendants moved for summary judgment, which asks whether the evidence requires a trial or instead requires judgment as a matter of law.

Minnesota Department of Corrections policy required staff to offer three meals daily, provide water, and monitor an inmate’s food intake and health during a hunger strike. Tennin spent time in the Transitional Care Unit and later in the Administrative Control Unit. The record showed that he often refused meals, nutritional supplements called Ensure, and medical assessments. Staff also sometimes declined to enter his cell or sally port—a secured space outside the cell—when feces or urine created what they considered safety and biohazard risks. Staff offered cleaning supplies, and on some occasions moved Tennin to a clean cell or cleaned the sally port.

Exhaustion of administrative remedies

The Prison Litigation Reform Act requires prisoners to complete available prison grievance procedures before bringing a federal lawsuit about prison conditions. The Minnesota Department of Corrections procedure required an informal attempt to resolve the issue, a formal grievance, and, if necessary, an appeal.

The report concludes that Tennin appealed the grievances involving the corrections officers but did not appeal his grievances involving the nursing staff. It therefore concludes that the claims against the nurses were not exhausted and must be dismissed. The report treats the claim against Lieutenant Fergen as exhausted because Tennin appealed the events of September 20, 2022, even though it was unclear whether he specifically named Fergen in the appeal.

Eighth Amendment and qualified immunity

The report analyzes whether the defendants were deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need or substantial risk to Tennin’s health and safety. It assumes, for purposes of analysis, that Tennin’s hunger strike could qualify as a serious medical need, but finds no evidence that the defendants deliberately disregarded that need.

The report relies on evidence that Tennin was medically stable, was not in acute distress, had a weight within a healthy body-mass-index range during the relevant period, and was not shown to have suffered lasting harmful health consequences. It also finds that he sometimes declined food, Ensure, and medical assessments even when his cell was clean. According to the report, when food or care was not provided in an unclean cell, the immediate obstacle was created by Tennin’s placement of feces or urine in the cell or sally port and his refusal to clean it.

The report concludes that no reasonable factfinder could determine that the defendants were deliberately indifferent under these circumstances. Because it reaches that conclusion, it does not decide whether the asserted constitutional right was clearly established for purposes of qualified immunity.

Recommendation and effect

Magistrate Judge Shannon G. Elkins recommends that the defendants’ motion for summary judgment be granted. The document is a report and recommendation, not a final order or judgment of the district court. The notice states that a party may file specific written objections within 14 days after being served with the report, and that the report is not directly appealable to the Court of Appeals.