Whitington v. Zavaras

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
June 1, 2011
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT
MICHAEL WHITINGTON,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v. No. 10-1299
(D.C. No. 1:06-CV-00759-LTB-CBS)
DON LAWSON; AL ESTEP; SGT. (D. Colo.)
HARDING; SGT. OLSEN; C/O
BARNS; LT. JOHN CORDOVA; LT.
ADELMAN; SGT. KAUFFMAN; LT.
LUCERO-CANNON; SGT. HUFF;
and ARISTEDES ZAVARAS,
Defendants-Appellees.
ORDER AND JUDGMENT *
Before MURPHY, HARTZ, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.
Michael Whitington, an inmate proceeding pro se, brought this civil-rights
action alleging that certain prison officials had violated his Eighth Amendment
*
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined
unanimously to grant the parties’ request for a decision on the briefs without oral
argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore
ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding
precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and
collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent
with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.
rights by forcing him to choose between spending funds in his prison account
either on costs incurred in accessing the courts or on hygiene items. Two
previous appellate decisions refined and clarified the issues in this case. In the
first we reversed the district court’s dismissal for failure to exhaust administrative
remedies, holding that Whitington had in fact exhausted his available remedies
and that his complaint did not contain unexhausted claims. Whitington v. Ortiz,
472 F.3d 804, 807-09 (10th Cir. 2007). In the second we dismissed certain
defendants for lack of service or lack of personal participation, reversed the
district court’s determination that Whitington’s complaint failed to state an
Eighth Amendment claim, and remanded for further proceedings against the
remaining defendants. Whitington v. Ortiz, 307 F. App’x 179, 197 (10th Cir.
2009).
On remand Whitington filed second and third amended complaints. 1
Ultimately the district court dismissed all claims with prejudice on various
grounds. On appeal Whitington challenges only the dismissals based on qualified
immunity. We affirm because at the time of the challenged conduct, the law was
not clearly established that the defendants’ conduct violated his constitutional
rights.
1
The third amended complaint is incorrectly denominated “Second Amended
Prisoner Complaint and Supplement.” R. at 151.
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BACKGROUND
Like its predecessors, the third amended complaint (TAC) contains two
purportedly separate claims that overlap so significantly as to constitute in
essence a single claim. The first alleges that the defendants’ “denial of hygiene
items to [Whitington] was cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Eighth
Amendment.” R. at 156. The second urges that “the CDOC’s indigent, inmate
pay, inmate banking, hygiene purchasing, legal copies and postage, and medical
cost policies force the plaintiff to ch[o]ose between accessing the courts,
accessing medical care or rec[ei]ving ample [sic] hygiene supplies each month.”
Id. at 164 (all-caps style omitted). 2 The gravamen of both claims is that (1)
Whitington was unable to pay for hygiene supplies because all his inmate pay and
any funds in his prison account were levied for mandatory deductions imposed by
the CDOC or spent for other constitutionally protected activities such as medical
copayments and the necessary costs of protected litigation, leaving him no funds
for hygiene supplies; and (2) the defendants refused to give him hygiene supplies
unless he paid for them, reasoning that because he had a prison job, he was not
2
Although Whitington also mentions medical care costs in his complaint, he
does not present a separate claim that he was denied medical care and does not
flesh out his assertion that he was forced to choose between medical care and the
payment of litigation expenses. His claim has always primarily concerned the
need to choose between hygiene items and litigation expenses, and that is how we
will analyze it for qualified-immunity purposes.
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“indigent” and was therefore not entitled to be supplied with such supplies free of
charge. 3
The TAC details numerous occasions on which Whitington requested
hygiene items from the defendants between June 2005 and April 2007 but was
told he would have to pay for them because he received inmate pay and therefore
did not qualify for indigent status, which would have permitted him to receive the
items without paying for them. It alleges that Whitington frequently did not have
sufficient remaining funds with which to purchase hygiene items, and therefore
went without. 4 It further asserts that his inability to purchase hygiene items
3
The TAC occasionally muddies the waters by alleging a denial of hygiene
items seemingly unconnected to Whitington’s dilemma of having to choose
between hygiene items and litigation or medical expenses. But as we understand
Whitington’s claim, it rests solely on the dilemma we have identified.
4
In his reply brief, Whitington makes assertions that seem to undermine the
entire factual basis for his claim. He states:
The Plaintiff has never requested or claimed a right to FREE hygiene
items. The CDOC deducts numerous [fees] from [inmates’] accounts
and/or allows them to create a negative balance for certain [fees,
including] hygiene items. The CDOC allows inmates to obtain
hygiene items with the use of a [miscellaneous] withdraw[al] form
regardless if the inmate has any money in his inmate account. This
policy allowed an inmate to creat[e] a negative balance for the
purchase of hygien[e] items. This policy and practice was in place
throughout the time period the Plaintiff claims in his suit. The
Plaintiff has submitted account statements from the CDOC that show
deductions he has been allowed to make for hygiene items that
created a negative balance.
Reply Br. at 1 (emphasis added).
(continued...)
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resulted in serious medical problems as well as his “substantial humiliation for
long periods of time.” Id. at 166 ¶ 96.
ANALYSIS
“This court reviews de novo a district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss
based on qualified immunity.” Weise v. Casper, 593 F.3d 1163, 1166 (10th Cir.),
cert. denied, 131 S. Ct. 7 (2010). “Well-pleaded factual allegations are taken as
true, but a court must also consider whether they plausibly give rise to an
entitlement to relief.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
“Qualified immunity protects governmental officials from liability for civil
damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or
constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Id.
4
(...continued)
If Whitington was permitted throughout the time period at issue to run a
negative account balance to pay for hygiene items, he can hardly claim that he
was denied the ability to acquire hygiene items. All he had to do was fill out a
withdrawal form and request them, adding their cost to the negative balance in his
prison account. The fact that such a debit would perpetuate a negative balance in
his account does not in itself constitute deliberate indifference by prison officials
to his need for hygiene. See Reynolds v. Wagner, 936 F. Supp. 1216, 1226 (E.D.
Pa. 1996) (policy that required inmates without funds to pay medical copayment
by accruing negative account balance that could be collected from them on
discharge from incarceration did not constitute deliberate indifference to their
serious medical needs) aff’d, 128 F.3d 166 (3d Cir. 1997). It may be that
Whitington has not expressed himself clearly on this point. In any event, we need
not consider it further, because the defendants are entitled to qualified immunity
on this claim for the reasons we describe.
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(internal quotation marks omitted). “The qualified immunity inquiry has two
prongs: whether a constitutional violation occurred, and whether the violated
right was ‘clearly established’ at the time of the violation.” Id. at 1166-67.
“[C]ourts are free to decide which prong to address first in light of the
circumstances of the particular case at hand.” Id. at 1167 (internal quotation
marks omitted). Like the district court, we conclude that this case turns on
whether the right asserted by Whitington was clearly established at the time the
defendants allegedly violated it.
We previously defined the right Whitington asserts as “an Eighth
Amendment claim for the prolonged denial of hygiene products as a result of the
pursuit of constitutionally protected litigation with its associated expenses.”
Whitington, 307 F. App’x at 189. Whitington now proffers a broader right,
arguing that he has shown that the defendants violated his “right to basic hygiene
items.” Aplt. Opening Br. at 7 (all-caps style omitted). To be sure, it is
well-established in this circuit that deprivation of hygiene items for an extended
period of time can implicate the Eighth Amendment. Penrod v. Zavaras, 94 F.3d
1399, 1405-06 (10th Cir. 1996) (per curiam). But Whitington has not alleged
facts showing that the defendants denied him basic hygiene items per se. Rather,
the TAC alleges that the defendants insisted that he use money that he needed to
pay for litigation to purchase required hygiene items, forcing him to choose
between two constitutionally protected activities. Thus, we conclude that our
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previous description of the alleged constitutional violation, rather than the
broader right now asserted by Whitington, supplies the basis for our analysis.
“Ordinarily, in order for the law to be clearly established, there must be a
Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit decision on point, or the clearly established
weight of authority from other courts must have found the law to be as the
plaintiff maintains.” Zia Trust Co. ex rel. Causey v. Montoya, 597 F.3d 1150,
1155 (10th Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks omitted). Although there does
not need to be a “prior case[ ] with precisely the same facts,” Pierce v. Gilchrist,
359 F.3d 1279, 1298 (10th Cir. 2004), “[o]ur inquiry . . . must be undertaken in
light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad general proposition,”
Bowling v. Rector, 584 F.3d 956, 964 (10th Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks
omitted). The pertinent question is “whether it would be clear to a reasonable
officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation.” Id. (internal quotation
marks omitted).
In our previous decision in this case, we observed that in dismissing
Whitington’s complaint for failure to state a claim, the district court had
“justifiably . . . relied on decisions from our court and other courts, which were
adverse to inmate plaintiffs bringing remarkably similar challenges to department
of corrections regulations and practices.” Whitington, 307 F. App’x at 188 (citing
cases). It is true that we qualified this statement, noting that “[e]ach of [these]
cases is distinguishable largely due to vague, inapposite or inadequate factual
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allegations in the complaints.” Id. It is also true, as Whitington points out, that
the cases from this circuit that we cited were unpublished, as are most cases
concerning this topic. Nevertheless, having pronounced that the district court
“justifiably” concluded that Whitington’s constitutional rights had not been
violated, it would be ironic, at the least, to say that it should have been clear to
the defendants that they were violating his rights. As the district court noted, if a
court was “justified” in relying on “remarkably similar” cases to define the scope
of constitutional conduct, notwithstanding the factual distinctions in those prior
cases, it would be difficult to say that the defendants could not also rely on them.
See R. at 384.
Moreover, we have uncovered no Supreme Court case directly in point.
And the only published Tenth Circuit case that offers support to Whitington’s
position, Penrod, 94 F.3d 1399, falls short of clearly establishing the right that he
asserts.
In Penrod the inmate alleged that prison officials retaliated against him in a
variety of ways for exercising his First Amendment right of access to the courts,
including “forc[ing] him to choose between hygiene items and pursuing
grievances and legal actions.” Id. at 1404. The inmate alleged, among other
things, that a prison official “refused Plaintiff hygiene items, telling Plaintiff that
if he wasn’t suing police officers . . . and spending so much money on legal
postage, that Plaintiff would be able to afford toothpaste and razors.” Id. at 1405.
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The official also told him that he “should not be suing people.” Id. We reversed
the district court’s grant of qualified immunity on this claim, reasoning that “the
jurisprudence prohibiting retaliatory acts against prisoners for reporting
grievances is well-established.” Id.Penrod involved a prisoner’s allegation that he was denied hygiene items
by an intentional and retaliatory decision by prison officials to punish him for
filing grievances and for seeking relief in court. Whitington’s claim, by contrast,
is not presented as a retaliation claim. Penrod did not establish a general rule that
a prison could never, even without a retaliatory motive, apply existing policies
that had the incidental effect of compelling an inmate to choose between hygiene
items and payment of litigation costs. As we have now recognized, see
Whitington, 307 F. App’x at 189, such policies may indeed violate the
constitutional rights of inmates, but our case law did not clearly establish that rule
during the time period relevant to Whitington’s complaint.
In sum, we conclude that at the pertinent time the law was not clearly
established that prison officials violated the Eighth Amendment by requiring an
inmate to use funds in his prison account to purchase hygiene products, even if he
did not have sufficient funds to purchase these products because of the payment
of expenses for constitutionally protected litigation. Hence, the district court
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properly granted qualified immunity on Whitington’s claims against the
defendants in their individual capacities.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED. We GRANT
Whitington’s application to proceed in forma pauperis and remind him that he is
obligated to continue making partial payments until the entire appellate filing fee
has been paid.
Entered for the Court
Harris L Hartz
Circuit Judge
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