Frey v. Centurion Health, Inc. ( 2023 )

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO JACOB SPENCER FREY, Case No. 1:23-cv-00141-AKB Plaintiff, INITIAL REVIEW ORDER BY v. SCREENING JUDGE CENTURION HEALTH, INC.; CENTURION OF IDAHO, INC; DR. MURRAY YOUNG; DR. REBEKAH HAGGARD; TONYA MCMILLIAN; PATRICK JONES; JACQUE DOLAN; SUMMER ELDREDGE, N.P.; WILLIAM ROGERS, N.P.; SELAH WORLEY, N.P.; ROBIN LARIVE, P.A.; NATHAN THUESON; HILLARY KOEHLER; CENTURION JOHN AND JANE DOES 1- 5; RONA SIEGERT; TYRELL DAVIS; LT. JAMIE AYUSO; MATTHEW MILLER; SHEIKH DEEN; and IDOC JOHN AND JANE DOES 1-5, Defendants. The Clerk of Court conditionally filed Plaintiff’s Complaint as a result of Plaintiff’s status as an inmate. The Court now reviews the Complaint, filed through counsel, to determine whether the Complaint or any of the claims contained therein should be summarily dismissed under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. Having reviewed the record, and otherwise being fully informed, the Court enters the following Order. 1. Pleading Standards and Screening Requirement A complaint must contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). Under modern pleading standards, Rule 8 requires a complaint to “contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). The Iqbal/Twombly “facial plausibility” standard is met when a complaint contains “factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id. (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). “[D]etailed factual allegations” are not required, but a plaintiff must offer “more than . . . unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation[s].” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). If the facts pleaded are “merely consistent with a defendant’s liability,” or if there is an “obvious alternative explanation” that would not result in liability, the complaint has not stated a claim for relief that is plausible on its face. Id. at 678, 682 (internal quotation marks omitted). Bare allegations that amount to a mere restatement of the elements of a cause of action, without adequate factual support, are not enough. The Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”)1 requires the Court to review complaints filed by prisoners seeking relief against a governmental entity, or an officer or employee of a governmental entity, to determine whether summary dismissal is appropriate. 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. The Court must dismiss any claims that do not have adequate factual support or are frivolous or malicious. The Court also must dismiss claims that fail to state a claim upon which relief may be granted or that seek monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such relief. Id. These last two categories—together with claims that fall outside a federal court’s narrow grant of 1 Pub. L. No. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, et seq. jurisdiction—encompass those claims that might, or might not, have factual support but nevertheless are barred by a well-established legal rule. The Court liberally construes the pleadings to determine whether a case should be dismissed for a failure to plead sufficient facts to support a cognizable legal theory or for the absence of a cognizable legal theory. The critical inquiry is whether a constitutional claim, however inartfully pleaded, has an arguable factual and legal basis. See Jackson v. Arizona, 885 F.2d 639, 640 (9th Cir. 1989) (discussing Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6)), superseded by statute on other grounds as stated in Lopez v. Smith, 203 F.3d 1122, 1130 (9th Cir. 2000) (stating that Rule 12(b)(6) authority to dismiss claims was expanded by the PLRA, giving courts power to dismiss deficient claims, sua sponte, before or after opportunity to amend). 2. Factual Allegations Plaintiff is a prisoner in the custody of the Idaho Department of Correction (“IDOC”), currently incarcerated at Idaho State Correctional Institution. Plaintiff asserts claims of inadequate medical treatment, under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, with respect to treatment Plaintiff received for his diabetes and broken ankle. The claims encompass times during which Plaintiff was confined in two different prisons. Plaintiff sues the Centurion Health, Inc., the private entity providing Idaho inmates with medical treatment under contract with the IDOC, as well as Centurion’s Idaho subsidiary. Plaintiff also names as defendants numerous Centurion and IDOC employees. 3. Discussion A. Standard of Law for Plaintiff’s Claims Plaintiff brings claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the civil rights statute. To state a plausible civil rights claim, a plaintiff must allege a violation of rights protected by the Constitution or created by federal statute proximately caused by conduct of a person acting under color of state law. Crumpton v. Gates, 947 F.2d 1418, 1420 (9th Cir. 1991). Prison officials and prison medical providers generally are not liable for damages in their individual capacities under § 1983 unless they personally participated in the alleged constitutional violations. Taylor v. List, 880 F.2d 1040, 1045 (9th Cir. 1989); see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 677 (“[E]ach Government official, his or her title notwithstanding, is only liable for his or her own misconduct.”). Section 1983 does not allow for recovery against an employer or principal simply because an employee or agent committed misconduct. Taylor, 880 F.2d at 1045. However, “[a] defendant may be held liable as a supervisor under § 1983 ‘if there exists . . . a sufficient causal connection between the supervisor’s wrongful conduct and the constitutional violation.’” Starr v. Baca, 652 F.3d 1202, 1207 (9th Cir. 2011) (quoting Hansen v. Black, 885 F.2d 642, 646 (9th Cir. 1989)). A plaintiff can establish this causal connection by alleging that a defendant (1) set in motion a series of acts by others that violated the Constitution, or knowingly refused to terminate a series of such acts, which the supervisor “knew or reasonably should have known would cause others to inflict a constitutional injury”; (2) knowingly failed to act or acted improperly “in the training, supervision, or control of his subordinates”; (3) acquiesced in the constitutional deprivation; or (4) engaged in “conduct that showed a reckless or callous indifference to the rights of others.” Id. at 1205-09 (internal quotation marks omitted). To bring a § 1983 claim against a local governmental entity or a private entity performing a government function—such as Centurion—a plaintiff must allege that the execution of an official policy or unofficial custom inflicted the injury of which the plaintiff complains, as required by Monell v. Dep’t of Social Servs. of New York, 436 U.S. 658, 694 (1978). See also Tsao v. Desert Palace, Inc., 698 F.3d 1128, 1139 (9th Cir. 2012) (applying Monell to private entities performing a government function). Under Monell, the requisite elements of a § 1983 claim against such an entity are the following: (1) the plaintiff was deprived of a constitutional right; (2) the entity had a policy or custom; (3) the policy or custom amounted to deliberate indifference to plaintiff’s constitutional right; and (4) the policy or custom was the moving force behind the constitutional violation. Mabe v. San Bernardino Cnty., 237 F.3d 1101, 1110-11 (9th Cir. 2001). An unwritten policy or custom must be so “persistent and widespread” that it constitutes a “permanent and well settled” practice. Monell, 436 U.S. at 691 (quoting Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 167-168 (1970)). “Liability for improper custom may not be predicated on isolated or sporadic incidents; it must be founded upon practices of sufficient duration, frequency and consistency that the conduct has become a traditional method of carrying out policy.” Trevino v. Gates, 99 F.3d 911, 918 (9th Cir. 1996). A claim that a supervisor or training official failed to adequately train subordinates ordinarily requires that, “in light of the duties assigned to specific officers or employees[,] the need for more or different training [was] so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the [supervisor or training official] can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need.” City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 390 (1989). That is, to maintain a failure-to-train claim, a plaintiff must allege facts showing a “pattern of violations” that amounts to deliberate indifference. Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51, 72 (2011). Likewise, “a failure to supervise that is sufficiently inadequate may amount to deliberate indifference” that supports a § 1983 claim, but there generally must be a pattern of violations sufficient to render the need for further supervision obvious. Dougherty v. City of Covina, 654 F.3d 892, 900 (9th Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). That is, if a supervisory or training official had “knowledge of the unconstitutional conditions” through such a pattern of violations—including knowledge of the “culpable actions of his subordinates”—yet failed to act to remedy those conditions, that official can be said to have acquiesced “in the unconstitutional conduct of his subordinates” such that a causal connection between the supervisor and the constitutional violation is plausible. Starr, 652 F.3d at 1208. The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, protects prisoners against cruel and unusual punishment and guarantees prisoners the right to minimally adequate conditions of confinement. To state a claim under the Eighth Amendment, prisoners must plausibly allege that they are “incarcerated under conditions posing a substantial risk of serious harm,” or that they have been deprived of “the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities” as a result of the defendants’ actions. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). An Eighth Amendment claim requires the plaintiff to satisfy both (1) an objective standard, “that the deprivation was serious enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” and (2) a subjective standard, that the defendant acted with “deliberate indifference.” Snow v. McDaniel, 681 F.3d 978, 985 (9th Cir. 2012), overruled in part on other grounds by Peralta v. Dillard, 744 F.3d 1076 (9th Cir. 2014) (en banc). The Eighth Amendment includes the right to adequate medical and mental health treatment in prison. Prison officials or prison medical providers can be held liable if their “acts or omissions [were] sufficiently harmful to evidence deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.” Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106 (1976). Regarding the objective standard for prisoners’ medical care claims, “society does not expect that prisoners will have unqualified access to health care.” Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 9 (1992). Therefore, “deliberate indifference to medical needs amounts to an Eighth Amendment violation only if those needs are ‘serious.’” Id. The Ninth Circuit has defined a “serious medical need” in the following ways: failure to treat a prisoner’s condition [that] could result in further significant injury or the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain[;] . . . [t]he existence of an injury that a reasonable doctor or patient would find important and worthy of comment or treatment; the presence of a medical condition that significantly affects an individual’s daily activities; or the existence of chronic and substantial pain . . . . McGuckin v. Smith, 974 F.2d 1050, 1059-60 (9th Cir. 1992) (internal citations omitted), overruled on other grounds, WMX Techs., Inc. v. Miller, 104 F.3d 1133 (9th Cir. 1997) (en banc). As to the subjective standard, “deliberate indifference entails something more than mere negligence, [but] is satisfied by something less than acts or omissions for the very purpose of causing harm or with knowledge that harm will result.” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 835. A prison official or prison medical provider acts with deliberate indifference “only if the [prison official or provider] knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health and safety.” Gibson v. Cnty. of Washoe, 290 F.3d 1175, 1187 (9th Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks omitted), overruled on other grounds by Castro v. Cnty. of Los Angeles, 833 F.3d 1060 (9th Cir. 2016) (en banc). “Under this standard, the prison official must not only ‘be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of serious harm exists,’ but that person ‘must also draw the inference.’” Toguchi v. Chung, 391 F.3d 1051, 1057 (9th Cir. 2004) (quoting Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837). In the medical context, deliberate indifference can be “manifested by prison doctors in their response to the prisoner’s needs or by prison guards in intentionally denying or delaying access to medical care or intentionally interfering with the treatment once prescribed.” Estelle, 429 U.S. at 104-05 (footnotes omitted). Medical malpractice or negligence does not support a cause of action under the Eighth Amendment, Broughton v. Cutter Labs., 622 F.2d 458, 460 (9th Cir. 1980) (per curiam), and a delay in medical treatment does not violate the Eighth Amendment unless that delay causes further harm, McGuckin, 974 F.2d at 1060. Additionally, there is no constitutional right to an outside medical provider of one’s own choice. See Roberts v. Spalding, 783 F.2d 867, 870 (9th Cir. 1986) (“A prison inmate has no independent constitutional right to outside medical care additional and supplemental to the medical care provided by the prison staff within the institution.”). “If a [prison official] should have been aware of the risk, but was not, then the [official] has not violated the Eighth Amendment, no matter how severe the risk.” Gibson, 290 F.3d at 1188. Moreover, even prison officials or medical providers who did know of a substantial risk to an inmate’s health will not be liable under § 1983 “if they responded reasonably to the risk, even if the harm ultimately was not averted.” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 844. If medical personnel have been “consistently responsive to [the inmate’s] medical needs,” and the plaintiff has not shown that the medical personnel had “subjective knowledge and conscious disregard of a substantial risk of serious injury,” there has been no Eighth Amendment violation. Toguchi, 391 F.3d at 1061. “There is not one proper way to practice medicine in a prison, but rather a range of acceptable courses based on prevailing standards in the field.” Jackson v. Kotter, 541 F.3d 688, 697 (7th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, mere differences in judgment as to appropriate medical diagnosis and treatment between an inmate and prison medical providers—or, for that matter, among medical providers—are not enough to establish a deliberate indifference claim. Sanchez v. Vild, 891 F.2d 240, 242 (9th Cir. 1989). “[T]o prevail on a claim involving choices between alternative courses of treatment, a prisoner must show that the chosen course of treatment ‘was medically unacceptable under the circumstances,’ and was chosen ‘in conscious disregard of an excessive risk’ to the prisoner’s health.” Toguchi, 391 F.3d at 1058 (alteration omitted) (quoting Jackson v. McIntosh, 90 F.3d 330, 332 (9th Cir. 1996)). Stated another way, a plaintiff must prove that medical providers chose one treatment over the plaintiff’s preferred treatment “even though they knew [the plaintiff’s preferred treatment] to be medically necessary based on [the plaintiff’s] records and prevailing medical standards.” Norsworthy v. Beard, 87 F. Supp. 3d 1104, 1117 (N.D. Cal. 2015). To violate the Eighth Amendment, the choice of treatment must have been “so inadequate that it demonstrated an absence of professional judgment, that is, that no minimally competent professional would have so responded under those circumstances.” Collignon v. Milwaukee Cnty., 163 F.3d 982, 989 (7th Cir. 1998); see also Lamb v. Norwood, 899 F.3d 1159, 1162 (10th Cir. 2018) (“[P]rison officials do not act with deliberate indifference when they provide medical treatment even if it is subpar or different from what the inmate wants.”). Accordingly, prison medical providers do not act with deliberate indifference solely by disagreeing with an outside doctor’s treatment recommendation or by choosing a different treatment than that requested by an inmate. However, if the prison provider’s chosen treatment proves ineffective, a continued refusal to try other treatments can constitute deliberate indifference. In Snow, for example, the Ninth Circuit held that a genuine factual issue existed as to whether providers violated the Eighth Amendment by denying double hip replacement surgery to an inmate whose hips had degenerated so badly that he could not walk and who was in constant, severe pain. 681 F.3d at 988. Evidence suggested that providers had “ignored outside expert advice, relying solely on their own medical judgment for three years before eventually approving surgery.” Id. This was sufficient to raise an inference of deliberate indifference, even though a “medication-only course of treatment may have been medically acceptable for a certain period of time.” Id. At some point, ignoring a “long term” recommendation of an outside provider may become “medically unacceptable.” Id. Non-medical prison personnel generally are entitled to rely on the opinions of medical professionals with respect to the medical treatment of an inmate. However, if “a reasonable person would likely determine [the medical treatment] to be inferior,” the fact that an official is not medically trained will not shield that official from liability for deliberate indifference. Snow, 681 F.3d at 986 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also McGee v. Adams, 721 F.3d 474, 483 (7th Cir. 2013) (stating that non-medical personnel may rely on medical opinions of health care professionals unless “they have a reason to believe (or actual knowledge) that prison doctors or their assistants are mistreating (or not treating) a prisoner”) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Eighth Amendment requires that prison medical providers exercise informed medical judgment. Thus, if a medical treatment is denied because of a blanket policy—rather than an individualized determination of the appropriate treatment for the particular inmate—a factfinder may infer deliberate indifference. See Rosati v. Igbinoso, 791 F.3d 1037, 1039-40 (9th Cir. 2015); Allard v. Gomez, 9 F. App’x 793, 795 (9th Cir. 2001) (unpublished). If, however, prison medical providers make an individualized assessment and choose a treatment that, in their informed judgment, is medically appropriate, a plaintiff generally cannot establish deliberate indifference. See Lamb, 899 F.3d at 1162; Supre v. Ricketts, 792 F.2d 958, 963 (10th Cir. 1986). In such a case, a plaintiff must show that the defendants intentionally interfered with appropriate medical diagnosis and treatment—for example, by “creat[ing] a pretextual report to support denial” of a requested treatment. Norsworthy, 87 F. Supp. 3d at 1117. B. Discussion Plaintiff’s Complaint, liberally construed, appears to state colorable § 1983 claims against all Defendants. Therefore, the Court will permit Plaintiff to proceed past initial review. Defendants may still file a motion to dismiss or motion for summary judgment if the facts and law support such a motion.* Because (1) prisoner filings must be afforded a liberal construction, (2) governmental officials often possess the evidence prisoners need to support their claims, and (3) many defenses are supported by governmental records, an early motion for summary judgment—rather than a motion to dismiss—is often a more appropriate vehicle for asserting procedural defenses such as non-exhaustion or entitlement to qualified immunity. ORDER IT IS ORDERED that Plaintiff may proceed on all claims in his Complaint at this time. Plaintiff must effect service of process on Defendants as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. KE DATED: August 29, 2023 oie. DnankaS Prarbpe$ Ysy Amanda K. Brailsford “RicTg U.S. District Court Judge The standards for a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6) are the same standards that the Court has used to screen the Complaint under § 1915A. Therefore, motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim are disfavored in cases subject to § 1915A and may be filed only in extraordinary circumstances. INITIAL REVIEW ORDER BY SCREENING JUDGE - 11