Harper v. Tran ( 1996 )

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
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No. 95-20310
Summary Calendar
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WILLIAM HARPER,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
K V TRAN, DR., ET AL.,
Defendants-Appellees.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Texas
(CA-H-93-2291)
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January 8, 1996
Before JOLLY, JONES, and STEWART, Circuit Judges.
By EDITH H. JONES, Circuit Judge:*
Petitioner William Harper (Harper), a Texas prisoner,
appeals the district court’s dismissal of his pro se and in forma
pauperis complaint, purportedly pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (§
1983), that prison officials were deliberately indifferent to his
serious medical needs when assigning him work requirements.
Because the district court did not abuse its discretion when it
dismissed Harper’s complaint as frivolous, this court affirms.
*
Pursuant to Local Rule 47.5, the court has determined
that this opinion should not be published and is not precedent
except under the limited circumstances set forth in Local Rule
47.5.4.
I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
Harper entered prison with various medical conditions
that restricted his ability to perform certain work assignments.
After two separate medical evaluations of Harper, Dr. Tran, a
prison physician, detailed his medical profile, indicating that
Harper’s activities should be limited to accommodate his third-
class hypertension; third-class degenerative disc disease; and
second-class vision. Although Harper complained that these
afflictions caused him significant pain, Dr. Tran was unable to
prescribe medicine for this pain because of the potential for
dangerous allergic reactions or cross actions with Harper’s
hypertension medicine.
Harper further complained that his pain mandated that he
be reassigned from his duties as an orderly in the administrative
segregation wing of the prison to a less strenuous assignment. As
an orderly, Harper’s duties included climbing flights of stairs to
deliver food to inmates; mopping and sweeping floors; and
transporting barrels of wet laundry. Harper requested a work
reassignment from his supervisor, Captain Booth, and from Dr. Tran.
Although Dr. Tran was not charged with determining work
assignments, Captain Booth gave Harper a work release. However,
Captain Simpson, supervisor of all inmate orderlies, did not
reassign Harper immediately. Meanwhile, Harper remained convinced
that continued work as an orderly endangered his health, so he
informed Warden Peterson of his problems through grievance forms.
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Harper was eventually reassigned to less strenuous duty in the
officers’ dining room at the prison.
Harper’s complaint alleges that as a result of his
grueling work as an orderly, he suffers from excruciating,
recurring pain, has a severely limited range of motion, and has
difficulty completing even the most effortless work assignment. To
compensate him for his allegedly aggravated afflictions, Harper
seeks monetary damages of $665,000 from each defendant.
II. DISCUSSION
This court will vacate a district court’s dismissal of a
claim as frivolous under § 1915(d) only if the court abused its
discretion. Eason v. Thaler, 14 F.3d 8, 9 (5th Cir. 1994). An in
forma pauperis complaint may be dismissed as frivolous under §
1915(d) if it lacks an arguable basis in law or fact. Booker v.
Koonce, 2 F.3d 114, 115 (5th Cir. 1993).
While “the treatment a prisoner receives in prison and
the conditions under which he is confined are subject to scrutiny
under the Eighth Amendment,” Farmer v. Brennan, ___ U.S. ___, 114
S. Ct. 1970, 1976 (1994), two requirements must be satisfied before
a constitutional violation can be established. Initially, the
treatment or condition “must be so serious as to deprive prisoners
of the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities, as when it
denies the prisoner some basic human need.” Wood v. Edwards, 51
F.3d 577, 581 (5th Cir. 1995). Secondly, the prison official must
have been “deliberately indifferent to inmate health or safety.”
Id. The Supreme Court has recently instructed that the appropriate
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definition of deliberate indifference under the Eighth Amendment is
akin to the standard of “subjective recklessness as used in the
criminal law.” Farmer, ___ U.S. at ___, 114 S. Ct. at 1980.
Specifically,
a prison official cannot be found liable under
the Eighth Amendment . . . unless the official
knows of and disregards an excessive risk to
inmate health or safety; the official must
both be aware of facts from which the
inference could be drawn that a substantial
risk of serious harm exists, and he must also
draw the inference.
Farmer, 114 S. Ct. at 1979.
The facts alleged by Harper do not demonstrate deliberate
indifference to his medical condition in his work assignments.
Rather, as the district court correctly observed, even assuming his
allegations are true, Harper’s claims prove that his work
assignments were at worst, negligent. After all, careful review of
the record establishes that prison officials did not compel Harper
to complete his work assignments in a manner that would violate his
medical conditions. If his work assignments somehow led to that
unfortunate result, it was not because a prison official
consciously disregarded a threat to Harper’s health or safety. As
a result, Harper’s complaint is meritless because mere negligence
will not suffice to support a claim of deliberate indifference.
See Mendoza v. Lynaugh, 989 F.2d 191, 193 (5th Cir. 1993); Jackson
v. Cain, 864 F.2d 1235, 1246 (5th Cir. 1989). A negligent
assignment of work that is not cruel and unusual per se is simply
not unconstitutional. Jackson, 864 F.2d at 1246.
III. CONCLUSION
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Because the district court did not abuse its discretion
when it dismissed Harper’s complaint as frivolous, its judgment is
AFFIRMED.
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