Harrison v. Culliver, et al., No. 11-14864 (11th Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff, an inmate at the W.C. Holman Correctional Facility, was assaulted in the "back hallway" with a knife by another inmate who cut plaintiff's throat and nearly killed him. Plaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against prison officials, seeking damages for the injuries he received. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying plaintiff's requests for leave to conduct additional discovery where the only evidence plaintiff was unable to obtain related to the purchasing of craft materials and the policies for disposing of used hobby craft blades. The court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to defendants on plaintiff's claim that defendants were deliberately indifferent to the substantial risk of serious harm plaintiff faced at the time of the assault. Although the evidence demonstrated that the warden was on notice that inmate-on-inmate assaults occurred in the back hallway, the evidence of inmate-on-inmate assault involving weapons did not indicate that inmates were exposed to something even approaching the constant threat of violence and Holman's policies for monitoring the back hallway did not create a substantial risk of serious harm. The record failed to demonstrate that any lapse in oversight of cutting instruments created a substantial risk of excessive inmate-on-inmate violence. Even if the conditions at Holman created an excessive risk of inmate-on-inmate violence, defendants were not deliberately indifferent to the risk.
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