Patterson v. Kelley, No. 16-3891 (8th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseThe Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of plaintiff's motion for appointed counsel and adverse grant of summary judgment on plaintiff's failure to protect claims against various corrections officials after he sustained injuries when a fellow inmate attacked him. The court held that the district court had the discretion to appoint plaintiff counsel on this record, and it did not abuse this discretion in declining to do so. The court also held that insofar as plaintiff alleged that defendants failed to protect him from a specific threat posed by the inmate, his own inability to anticipate the surprise attack and his decision not to report his altercation with the inmate the previous afternoon defeated liability. Finally, assuming that plaintiff satisfied the objective component of his failure-to-protect claim, the record was devoid of evidence suggesting that any of defendants were subjectively aware of, or deliberately indifferent to, a substantial risk of harm to inmate safety.
Court Description: Gruender, Author, with Arnold and Grasz, Circuit Judges] Prisoner case - Prisoner Civil Rights. In action alleging defendants failed to protect plaintiff from an attack by a fellow inmate, the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying plaintiff's motion for appointment of counsel; insofar as plaintiff alleges that defendants failed to protect him from a specific threat posed by the inmate who attacked him, plaintiff's own inability to anticipate the surprise attack and his own decision not to report an altercation with that inmate on the previous day defeat liability; with respect to plaintiff's claim that defendants failed to protect him from a general risk of harm, the record fails to show that any of the defendants were subjectively aware of, or deliberately indifferent to, a substantial risk of harm to inmate safety; as a result the district court did not err in granting defendants summary judgment as plaintiff failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the defendants were deliberately indifferent to a general risk of harm to inmates in the barracks in question. Judge Grasz, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
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