Citation Numbers: 448 Mass. 412
Judges: Greaney
Filed Date: 2/23/2007
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 6/25/2022
The plaintiffs in these cases were members of the certified plaintiff class in Haverty v. Commissioner of Correction, 437 Mass. 737 (2002) (Haverty), an action for declaratory and injunctive relief, in which we held that inmates at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction (Cedar Junction) must be afforded the due process procedures set forth in the regulatory scheme governing the former departmental segregation unit (DSU), 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 421.00 (1994) (DSU regulations), before being segregated in restrictive conditions in the so-called East Wing of the prison for nondisciplinary reasons. Id. at 762-763. In separate actions filed in the Superior Court, the plaintiffs sought compensatory and punitive damages for the time they spent confined in the East Wing alleging that they had been deprived of the procedural safeguards to which they were entitled. The defendants raised, by means of motions to dismiss filed pursuant to Mass. R. Civ. P. 12 (b), 365 Mass. 754 (1974), the affirmative defenses of res judicata and qualified immunity. After hearing arguments on both motions, a judge in the Superior Court concluded that the plaintiffs’ claims for damages were not barred by their prior class action for declaratory and injunctive relief. The judge, however, allowed the defendants’ motions on the ground of qualified immunity, concluding that the defendants had not violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights” when they assigned prisoners to the East Wing in disregard of the DSU regulations. The parties filed cross appeals, and the appeals were consolidated in the Appeals Court. We transferred the cases here on our own motion and now affirm the judgments of dismissal.
1. A description of the background events precipitating these appeals is recited in full in Haverty. See id. at 741-747. We summarize the material facts. Litigation challenging conditions in the State correctional system, in which inmates were held in near solitary confinement in the DSU at Cedar Junction and at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk, for
In 1995, in response to escalating levels of gang-related incidents, and an increasingly violent prison population throughout the department, the commissioner decided to eliminate use of the DSU and to divide Cedar Junction (at that time the Commonwealth’s only maximum security prison) into two “wings,” the East Wing and the West Wing.
2. As the parties moving for dismissal on res judicata grounds,
This position accords with Federal law.
3. We turn now to the defendants’ claim of qualified immunity. “[Gjovemment officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded 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.” Rodriques v. Furtado, 410 Mass. 878, 882 (1991), quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). See Shedlock v. Department of Correction, 442 Mass. 844, 859 (2004). The standard is entirely objective. See Harlow v. Fitzgerald, supra at 815-816 (subjective standard incompatible with policy rationale of precluding insubstantial lawsuits from proceeding to trial); Clancy v. McCabe, 441 Mass. 311, 322-323 (2004), quoting Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 n.2 (1987) (objective standard promotes policy that “insubstantial claims against government officials be resolved prior to discovery and on summary judgment if possible”).
Analysis of the qualified immunity defense generally requires a two-part inquiry into whether, “[t]aken in the light most favorable to the party asserting the injury ... the facts alleged show the officer’s conduct violated a constitutional right,” and, if so, whether the right was clearly established so that “it would be clear to a reasonable officer that his conduct was unlawful in the situation he confronted.” Gutierrez v. Massachusetts Bay Transp. Auth., 437 Mass. 396, 403-404 (2002), quoting Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 201, 202 (2001). In light of our holding in Haverty, only the second inquiry is in issue here.
As far back as 1983, a reasonable prison official would have known that a prisoner could not lawfully be assigned to the DSU without abiding by mandatory language contained in regulations, then in effect, governing the placement of prisoners in the DSU. See Royce v. Commissioner of Correction, 390 Mass. 425, 427-428 (1983) (“Once an agency has seen fit to promulgate regulations, it must comply with those regulations,” citing regulations governing DSU placement then in effect, 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 421.01 et seq. [1978]). See also Kenney v. Commissioner of Correction, 393 Mass. 28, 34 (1984) (inmate may be transferred to DSU only in compliance with departmental
In 1995, in Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472 (1995), the Supreme Court of the United States abandoned its prior methodology for analyzing claims brought by State prisoners alleging that conditions of their confinement amounted to an
In 1996, on consideration of a motion for summary judgment filed by the plaintiff in Gilchrist v. Commissioner of Correction, 48 Mass. App. Ct. 60 (1999), a judge in the Superior Court issued a declaratory judgment stating that placement of prisoners in the so-called “Phase III” unit of the East Wing (a designated restrictive unit that, apparently, was the product of organizational changes preceding the 1995 reorganization at Cedar Junction), absent compliance with the DSU regulations, was unlawful. See id. at 62. The judge enjoined the commissioner and prison officials from placing the Gilchrist plaintiff in the Phase BJ unit without affording him those rights contained in the DSU regulations. See id. In 1999, the Appeals Court vacated the declaration and the injunction, concluding that there was a genuine issue whether conditions in the Phase IB unit were, in fact, the “substantial equivalent” of the DSU and remanded the case to the Superior Court for such a determination. Id. at 64-66 (“the factual material upon which the judge based her conclusion . . . while indicating that the restrictions imposed on the two groups of inmates may be equally harsh, does not present a sufficiently full picture of their living conditions to justify the award of summary judgment”). In another case decided by the Appeals Court earlier that year, DeLong v. Commissioner of Correction, 46 Mass. App. Ct. 353, 355, 357 (1999), the focus was on whether the plaintiffs “punitive segregation” in
Consideration of the above cases leads us to conclude that, at the time that the plaintiffs were held in segregated confinement in the East Wing, in 1996 and throughout October, 2002, it was “clearly established” that the law required department officials to afford inmates the procedural protections contained in the DSU regulations before placing them in segregated conditions that were substantially similar to those in the former DSU. It remained a legitimate factual question, however, whether the conditions in the East Wing, under which the plaintiffs were held, sufficiently mirrored those in the former DSU so as to make compliance with the DSU regulations mandatory, as a matter of “clearly established” State law, before prisoners were placed there.
In Haverty, we declared in unambiguous terms that compliance with DSU regulations is mandatory, under State law, before prison officials may transfer a prisoner to the East Wing. See id. at 762-763. If Justices on this court reasonably could differ as to whether conditions in the East Wing call DSU regulations into play, however, it cannot fairly be said that a reasonable official would have understood their applicability. In the wake of Haverty, when a different member of the Haverty plaintiff class, Kevin Dahl, sought monetary compensation, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2000), for his invalid confinement in the East Wing absent compliance with DSU regulations, the Appeals Court, in an unpublished memorandum of decision, concluded that qualified immunity was available to the defendants because the law, before our decision in Haverty, was not “clearly established.” See Dahl v. Commissioner of Correction, 61 Mass. App. Ct. 1118 (2004). This result was so obvious that the
4. The judgments of dismissal are affirmed.
So ordered.
The new regulations, which replaced regulations formerly applicable to the DSU, “establish rules whereby an inmate may be confined to a Departmental Segregation Unit [DSU] because his continued presence in a general institution population would be detrimental to the program of the institution.” 103 Code Mass. Regs. § 421.01 (1994). The provisions set forth substantive criteria that must be met before placement of any prisoner in a DSU, see 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 421.07, 421.09 (1994), and set forth procedural rights that must be afforded any prisoner so placed. See 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 421.10, 421.11 (1994) (right to written notice and representation by counsel at a hearing before DSU board; right to assistance in preparing for hearing, in some instances when counsel not obtained; right to tape recording of hearing). See also 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 421.18, 421.19 (1994) (right to review of status every ninety days; right to written monthly evaluations summarizing behavior and recommendations for release from DSU). In Haverty v. Commissioner of Correction, 437 Mass. 737 (2002) (Haverty), we noted that the regulations were specifically designed to “cabin the power of the prison officials to isolate any prisoner (including those in maximum security conditions) from other prisoners based solely on the subjective evaluation of the prisoner by the prison authorities.” Id. at 745 n.16.
When the commissioner then sought to repeal the DSU regulations, the single justice who had ongoing jurisdiction in the case of Hoffer vs. Fair, No. SJ-85-0071 (Sept. 26, 1995), allowed a motion by the plaintiffs in that case to enjoin the proposed repeal.
Separate from the East and West Wings at Cedar Junction is a department disciplinary unit (DDU), where prisoners may be confined for disciplinary reasons in conformance with 103 Code Mass. Regs. §§ 430.00 (1993). The DDU is not part of these cases, nor are other segregation units, in both the East and West Wings, where inmates may be housed pending the outcome of disciplinary hearings. See Haverty, supra at 739, 742-743 & n.ll. See also Hudson v. Commissioner of Correction, 431 Mass. 1, 4-5 (2000) (commissioner has broad discretion to transfer inmates, within prison system or within particular institution, for disciplinary reasons or as investigative tool).
The Haverty plaintiffs also argued that the conditions of confinement in the East Wing rose to the level described by the Supreme Court of the United States, in Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472 (1995), as an “atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life,” which, the Sandin Court recognized, might create a liberty interest under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Id. at 484 (setting forth new standard for determining whether there has been deprivation of liberty interest in State prison context). Our conclusion that the relief sought was warranted by the defendants’ unlawful disregard of required procedures set forth in the DSU regulations made unnecessary our consideration of the plaintiffs’ alternative argument based on constitutional principles set forth in the Sandin decision.
A judge in the Superior Court subsequently ordered that “good time credit” be awarded to compensate inmates who had been unlawfully confined in the East Wing. This order was struck down by this court in Haverty v. Commissioner of Correction, 440 Mass. 1, 7 (2003).
We note that the plaintiff Longval did attempt to intervene in the Haverty lawsuit, ostensibly to litigate an asserted damage claim. The motion appears to have been filed in the Superior Court ten months after the case was argued before this court and one month before the Haverty decision was released. It is hardly surprising that the motion was denied.
We have noted that Mass. R. Civ. P. 23, 365 Mass. 767 (1974), “ ‘was written in the light of the Federal rule,’ Baldassari v. Public Fin. Trust, 369
The matter of qualified immunity usually is decided on a motion for sum
We affirmed the denial of the defendants’ motion for summary judgment based on the ground of qualified immunity not, as suggested by the plaintiffs in their brief, “because the facts, taken in a light most favorable to Longval, were sufficient to show a violation of his clearly established rights,” but because a determination on the qualified immunity issue “would not bar a court from declaring that Longval’s rights under [State law] had been violated or from granting injunctive relief. It would only preclude the recovery of damages against the defendants.” Longval v. Commissioner of Correction, 404 Mass. 325, 332 (1989). In the instant appeals, of course, it is only damages being sought by the plaintiffs.
In August of 1996, a judge in the Superior Court found the defendants in contempt for having transferred the plaintiff in Gilchrist v. Commissioner of Correction, 48 Mass. App. Ct. 60 (1999), to a “restrictive confinement” in the “Phase HI” unit at Cedar Junction in defiance of her prior order enjoining the defendants from doing so without compliance with the DSU regulations. The contempt order was stayed pending appeal. See id. at 62. As stated above, the Appeals Court concluded that summary judgment had not properly entered on the plaintiff’s claims and, in remanding the case to the Superior Court, suggested that the contempt order be vacated. See id. at 66. Even assuming identical conditions in the Phase in unit and the East Wing, for purposes of this case, we can state with confidence that the applicability of DSU regulations to the East Wing was not a “clearly established” principle of law before, or after, any of the cases decided before Haverty. As we explained in Shedlock v. Department of Correction, 442 Mass. 844, 861 n.13 (2004), “the issue whether a statutory right is ‘clearly established’ for purposes of overcoming qualified immunity is not a matter of counting up the number of decisions that have gone each way and treating as ‘clearly established’ whichever position has garnered the greatest number of opinions in support.” Id. at 861 n.13.
We take note of the fact, as did the Superior Court judge in Haverty, that