Cooper v. Allison
- Beth Freeman
- 5:20-cv-04658
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 6
In Cooper v. Allison, Judge Freeman dismissed Cooper’s amended civil-rights complaint for failure to state a claim, without leave to amend.
Kenneth Allan Cooper’s civil-rights case against K. Allison, Ralph Diaz, Ron Davis, and other prison or corrections officials was dismissed; the opinion states that Cooper litigated without a lawyer.
What happened
Kenneth Allan Cooper, a state prisoner, sued prison and corrections officials under a federal civil-rights law, claiming officials failed to protect him from an inmate attack that caused a head injury. The court had allowed him to amend his complaint.
Cooper’s amended complaint again did not allege facts showing that the attack was connected to his custody-status change or that the named officials knew about and disregarded a specific risk to him. It also did not show that the officials were individually involved in causing the alleged constitutional violation.
In Cooper v. Allison, Judge Beth Labson Freeman dismissed the amended complaint for failure to state a claim and dismissed it without leave to amend because Cooper had already received an opportunity to correct the deficiencies.
The detailed version
- Cooper v. Allison · No. 5:20-cv-04658
- Beth Freeman
- June 4, 2021
Background
Kenneth Allan Cooper, a state prisoner housed at San Quentin State Prison, filed a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against prison and corrections officials. He alleged that officials failed to protect him in violation of the Eighth Amendment after another inmate, Cucok, attacked him on July 25, 2018, causing a head injury.
Cooper connected the attack to a change in custody designations that integrated special-needs and general-population prisoners in non-designated programming facilities. The court dismissed his original complaint but gave him an opportunity to amend. It specifically allowed him to try to state a failure-to-protect claim against Malikian and Broomfield and found the allegations against Allison and Diaz insufficient.
Court’s analysis
To state an Eighth Amendment failure-to-protect claim, a prisoner must allege both an objectively serious risk and that a prison official knew about and deliberately disregarded that risk. For a claim under § 1983, the plaintiff must also connect each defendant’s actions or omissions to the alleged constitutional violation.
The amended complaint did not address the deficiencies identified in the earlier order. Cooper did not attempt to state a claim against Malikian or Broomfield as instructed. Instead, he again named Allison and Diaz and added Davis. The complaint did not allege that Cucok knew Cooper, targeted him because of his former custody status, or attacked him because of the integration of the prisoner groups. The incident materials instead indicated that Cucok was being escorted for orientation into the non-designated program and may have attacked randomly.
The court also found no facts showing that Allison, Diaz, or Davis were individually aware of Cooper’s particular circumstances or played a role in causing the assault. The court therefore concluded that Cooper failed to state an Eighth Amendment claim against them.
Disposition
The court dismissed the amended complaint for failure to state a claim for which relief could be granted. It dismissed the complaint without leave to amend because Cooper had already been given one opportunity to amend and the deficiencies remained. The order was signed by Judge Beth Labson Freeman on June 4, 2021.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.