Ewers v. City Of New York

Background

Altura St. Michael Ewers sued the City of New York, the New York City Department of Correction officers Alexis Goodridge, Nathalie Mendoza, Michael Haywood, and Captain Robert Diaz, Corizon Health, Inc., unnamed correction officers, and unnamed medical providers. He brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute, alleging that defendants failed to protect him from an assault by fellow inmate Charles Hamilton at Rikers Island and were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs. He also brought a municipal-liability claim against the City and state-law claims for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent training and supervision.

On November 23, 2014, Hamilton punched Ewers in the face in the mess hall. Goodridge yelled at Hamilton to stop and ran toward the fight. Mendoza and Haywood were not working at the time, and Diaz was not in the mess hall. Ewers was taken to medical care about 30 minutes after the incident, transferred to Bellevue Hospital that evening, hospitalized there for three days, and treated repeatedly at the Rikers Island medical clinic after returning. He was also taken to an ophthalmologist the day after complaining about his eye.

Ewers claimed that he had previously filed written grievances and made oral complaints about Hamilton’s threats. The Department of Correction found no record of written grievances, and Ewers did not identify any officer who received or knew about such grievances. His testimony about oral complaints was also uncertain, except for testimony from another inmate that Ewers complained to Haywood on one occasion. Ewers did not file a response to defendants’ statement of material facts, although the court considered some of his evidence in deference to his status as a self-represented litigant.

Rulings on the Federal Claims

The court first dismissed the claims against the unnamed defendants because Ewers had not identified them despite having sufficient time to do so.

For the failure-to-protect claim concerning events before the assault, the court held that Ewers had not shown the required personal involvement by Diaz, Goodridge, or Mendoza. Ewers did not claim that he complained to Diaz or Goodridge, and his testimony about complaining to Mendoza was based only on an assumption. As to Haywood, the court assumed for purposes of the motion that Ewers had made one oral complaint. It nevertheless held that a single verbal threat, without evidence of a prior physical altercation or other facts showing an unreasonable risk of serious harm, was legally insufficient to support the claim. The court granted summary judgment to defendants on this part of the failure-to-protect claim.

For the failure-to-protect claim concerning the assault itself, the court held that only Goodridge could be considered because Mendoza and Haywood were not working and Diaz was not present in the mess hall. The court found that Goodridge yelled at Hamilton to stop and arrived within seconds to break up the fight. Because Goodridge responded quickly, the court held that he did not recklessly fail to act with reasonable care and granted summary judgment to the correction-officer defendants on this claim.

The court also granted summary judgment on the deliberate-indifference-to-medical-needs claim. Although the court treated the injury as potentially serious, it focused on whether defendants deliberately disregarded Ewers’s medical needs. The medical records showed treatment within 30 minutes, a three-day Bellevue hospitalization, nine clinic visits during the following month, prescribed pain medication and a muscle relaxer, and an ophthalmology visit on December 9, 2014. The court found that Ewers’s assertions of inadequate treatment were contradicted by the records and unsupported by evidence sufficient to create a genuine dispute for trial.

The court granted summary judgment to the City on Ewers’s municipal-liability claim. A municipality may be liable under § 1983 only when its own policy or practice causes a constitutional violation. Because the court found no underlying constitutional violation by the individual officers, it rejected the claim against the City as well.

State-Law Claims and Disposition

After disposing of all federal claims, the court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction—the court’s authority to hear related state-law claims—involving negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent training and supervision.

The court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment in its entirety, directed the Clerk to enter judgment for defendants, terminated the motion, and closed the case.