In Gordon v. County of Orange, published April 30, 2018, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed summary judgment granted to defendants in a 42 U.S.C. section 1983 lawsuit arising from the death of a pretrial detainee in county jail. The decedent was arrested on heroin-related charges. The intake nurse allegedly failed to use an assessment sheet for opiate withdrawal symptoms. Various defendants allegedly failed to properly observe the decedent. The district court granted the individual defendants summary judgment on the ground that a section 1983 claim for inadequate medical care required the plaintiff to prove the defendants were subjectively deliberately indifferent, and there was insufficient evidence of that. It also granted the county summary judgment, finding no custom or practice that violated the constitution.
The 9th Circuit ruled that the district court applied the improper standard. Previously, the 9th Circuit had used a subjective deliberate indifference standard for inadequate medical care claims both for prisoners held after trial (under the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment standard) and before trial (under the Fourteenth Amendment's substantive due process standard). But recent Supreme Court and 9th Circuit law suggested a different standard should apply to pretrial detainees. The 9th Circuit therefore concluded that an objective deliberate indifference standard applies to pretrial detainees. To prove a pretrial detainee claim for inadequate medical care, the plaintiff must prove (i) the defendant made an intentional decision with respect to the conditions under which the plaintiff was confined; (ii) those conditions put the plaintiff at substantial risk of suffering serious harm; (iii) the defendant did not take reasonable available measures to abate that risk, even though a reasonable official in the circumstances would have appreciated the high degree of risk involved—making the consequences of the defendant’s conduct obvious; and (iv) by not taking such measures, the defendant caused the plaintiff’s injuries. Because the district court applied the incorrect standard, the summary judgment in favor of both the individual defendants and the county was reversed.
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