Harbin v. St Joseph County Jail, No. 3:2015cv00319 - Document 4 (N.D. Ind. 2015)
Court Description: OPINION & ORDER DISMISSING CASE pursuant to 28 USC 1915A. Signed by Judge Joseph S Van Bokkelen on 7/30/2015. (cc: Pla Harbin-order & judgment)(rmn)
Download PDF
<![CDATA[
Harbin v. St Joseph County Jail Doc. 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA ERIK HARBIN, Plaintiff, v. ST. JOSEPH COUNTY JAIL, Defendant. ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) Case No. 3:15-CV-319-JVB OPINION AND ORDER Erik Harbin, a pro se prisoner, filed a complaint suing the St. Joseph County Jail because he slipped and fell on June 7, 2015, in a puddle of water that had accumulated on the floor due to improper maintenance. “A document filed pro se is to be liberally construed, and a pro se complaint, however inartfully pleaded, must be held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.” Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (quotation marks and citations omitted). Nevertheless, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the court must review the merits of a prisoner complaint and dismiss it if the action is frivolous or malicious, fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, or seeks monetary relief against a defendant who is immune from such relief. “In order to state a claim under § 1983 a plaintiff must allege: (1) that defendants deprived him of a federal constitutional right; and (2) that the defendants acted under color of state law.” Savory v. Lyons, 469 F.3d 667, 670 (7th Cir. 2006). At the time of these events, Harbin was a pre-trail detainee at the jail. “Although the Eighth Amendment applies only to convicted persons, pretrial detainees . . . are entitled to the same basic protections under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. Accordingly, [courts] apply the same legal standards to deliberate indifference claims brought under either the Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment.” Minix v. Canarecci, 597 F.3d 824, 831 (7th Cir. 2010). A Dockets.Justia.com violation of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishments clause consists of two elements: (1) objectively, whether the injury is sufficiently serious to deprive the prisoner of the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities, and (2) subjectively, whether the prison official’s actual state of mind was one of “deliberate indifference” to the deprivation. Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994). However, “not every deviation from ideally safe conditions constitutes a violation of the constitution.” French v. Owens, 777 F.2d 1250, 1257 (7th Cir. 1985) (quotation marks and citations omitted.) Conditions of confinement must be severe to support an Eighth Amendment claim; “the prison officials’ act or omission must result in the denial of ‘the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities.’” Farmer [v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 834 (1994)] (quoting Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981)). See also, Lunsford v. Bennett, 17 F.3d 1574, 1579 (7th Cir. 1994) (the Eighth Amendment only protects prisoners from conditions that “exceed contemporary bounds of decency of a mature, civilized society.”); Jackson [v. Duckworth,] 955 F.2d [21,] 22 [(7th Cir. 1992)]. Morissette v. Peters, 45 F.3d 1119, 1123 (7th Cir. 1995) (parallel citations omitted). “An objectively sufficiently serious risk, is one that society considers so grave that to expose any unwilling individual to it would offend contemporary standards of decency.” Christopher v. Buss, 384 F.3d 879, 882 (7th Cir. 2004) (quotation marks and citations omitted). However, a slippery floor does not constitute such a risk. “[W]hile the standing-water problem was a potentially hazardous condition, slippery floors constitute a daily risk faced by members of the public at large. Federal courts from other circuits have therefore consistently held that slippery prison floors do not violate the Eighth Amendment.” Reynolds v. Powell, 370 F.3d 1028, 1031 (10th Cir. 2004) (collecting cases). Therefore this complaint does not state a claim. Though it is usually necessary to permit a plaintiff the opportunity to file an amended complaint when a case is dismissed sua sponte, see Luevano v. Wal-Mart, 722 F.3d 1014 (7th 2 Cir. 2013), that is unnecessary where the amendment would be futile. Hukic v. Aurora Loan Servs., 588 F.3d 420, 432 (7th Cir. 2009) (“[C]ourts have broad discretion to deny leave to amend where . . . the amendment would be futile.”) Such is the case here. Though the St. Joseph County Jail is not a suable entity, see Smith v. Knox County Jail, 666 F.3d 1037, 1040 (7th Cir. 2012) (The jail is a building. It is not a suable entity.), that is irrelevant because even if Harbin had named a person or a suable entity, his slip and fall allegations would not state a claim because exposing him to the risk of slipping in a puddle at the jail did not violate his constitutional rights. Therefore it would be futile to amend this complaint to name a suable entity. For the foregoing reasons, this case is DISMISSED pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. SO ORDERED on July 30, 2015. s/ Joseph S. Van Bokkelen JOSEPH S. VAN BOKKELEN UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE 3
]]>
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You
should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google
Privacy Policy and
Terms of Service apply.
