SIMS v. 4666 1201 (2019)

SUMMARY ORDER

Plaintiff-Appellant Leon E. Sims (“Sims”) appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Torres, J.) granting Defendants-Appellees’ (“Defendants”) motion to dismiss Sims’s claim of deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.¹ We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts, the procedural history of the case, and the issues on appeal, to which we refer only as necessary to explain our decision to affirm the District Court’s ruling.

The following facts are taken from Sims’s third amended complaint (the “complaint”) and the Court accepts them as true for purposes of this appeal. Crawford v. Cuomo, 796 F.3d 252, 255 (2d Cir. 2015). Beginning in September 2013, Sims was a pretrial detainee held at the Anna M. Kross Center (“AMKC”) on Rikers Island (“Rikers”). Sims alleges that he “suffered from mental illness and required the regular and consistent administration of prescription psychiatric medication to keep his symptoms under control.” Joint App’x at 50. From September 2013 through October 2015, Sims contends the New York City Department of Correction (“DOC”) staff either failed to administer his prescribed medication to him, “or administered it to him but failed to ensure he would take it.” Id. at 51. Sims acknowledges that he would “avoid taking medication,” explaining that he was in a “paranoid state” and did not “trust[ ] the guards around him.” Id. He further alleges that DOC staff “failed to provide any therapy or counselling,” even though such treatment was “medically necessary given his diagnoses.” Id.

On three occasions, between September and December 2013, DOC transferred Sims to Bellevue Hospital on an emergency basis for psychiatric care. Id. Sims alleges that, upon returning to Rikers at the end of each of these temporary transfers, DOC staff held him in an “intake” area for three to four days, during which time “necessary psychiatric medications ․ were not administered and he was held in a communal room which held more detainees than beds, forcing [him] to sleep on the ground.” Id. Finally, Sims alleges that, following an October 2015 court appearance with regard to criminal charges pending against him, a judge on the Supreme Court, Criminal Term of New York County ordered that he be returned directly to Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center (“Kirby Hospital”), rather than to Rikers. Sims alleges, however, that DOC instead returned him to Rikers, where he remained for “almost three weeks” without “adequate monitoring, medication and treatment.” Id. at 53.² Sims currently resides at Kirby Hospital, where, he alleges, he is “given adequate treatment for his mental health condition.” Id.

We review “de novo the grant of a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, accepting all factual allegations as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff.” Montero v. City of Yonkers, 890 F.3d 386, 394 (2d Cir. 2018) (citation omitted).

To sustain a claim for deliberate indifference to serious medical needs, a plaintiff must satisfy, first, “an ‘objective prong’ showing that the challenged conditions were sufficiently serious to constitute objective deprivations of the right to due process,” and second, a subjective prong “showing that the [defendants] acted with at least deliberate indifference to the challenged conditions.” Darnell v. Pineiro, 849 F.3d 17, 29 (2d Cir. 2017).³

The District Court determined that Sims’s complaint did not sufficiently allege that Defendants deliberately deprived Sims of medical care due to their intentional or reckless conduct. On appeal, Sims contests that conclusion and further argues that he did not have adequate notice that the District Court’s grounds for dismissal of his claim would be his failure to plead an underlying constitutional violation for purposes of alleging the City’s liability under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs. of City of N.Y., 436 U.S. 658, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). See Segal v. City of New York, 459 F.3d 207, 219 (2d Cir. 2006) (explaining that Monell extends liability to a municipal organization when “that organization’s failure to train, or the policies or customs that it has sanctioned, led to an independent constitutional violation”).

For substantially the same reasons as are set forth by the District Court, we conclude that Sims did not adequately allege a constitutional claim of deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The District Court determined that Sims failed to allege that Defendants were deliberately indifferent to providing Sims his medication—which they regularly provided him, Sims agrees—because they cannot “force the prescribed medications down his throat when he refused to take them.” Joint App’x at 216 (brackets omitted). We agree. Sims also alleges that while being processed back into Rikers after his treatment at Bellevue Hospital, he was not administered his medications for a few days at a time and that defendants “willfully ignored [his] mental health needs” in October 2015 by returning him to Rikers, as opposed to taking him Kirby Hospital as directed. Joint App’x at 53. But we cannot say that these allegations alone reflect an “objectively serious deprivation.” Joint App’x at 216. Although a delay in providing necessary medical care may in some cases constitute unconstitutional deliberate indifference, such a classification is reserved for when “officials deliberately delayed care as a form of punishment; ignored a ‘life-threatening and fast-degenerating’ condition for three days; or delayed major surgery for over two years.” Joint App’x at 217 (quoting Demata v. N.Y. State Corr. Dep’t of Health Servs., 198 F.3d 233 (2d Cir. 1999)(unpublished table decision)); see also Hathaway v. Coughlin, 841 F.2d 48, 50-51 (2d Cir. 1988) (officials delayed arranging corrective hip surgery for over two years); Archer v. Dutcher, 733 F.2d 14, 16-17 (2d Cir. 1984) (officials deliberately delayed care as form of punishment for violations of discipline code or other invalid reasons).

Sims’s argument that he did not have adequate notice of the grounds of dismissal at the District Court is also without merit. His opposition papers to Defendants’ motion to dismiss, in fact, include several pages in which he argues that he properly alleged a constitutional violation. Finally, “[b]ecause the District Court properly found no underlying constitutional violation, its decision not to address the municipal defendants’ liability under Monell was entirely correct.” Segal, 459 F.3d at 219. For the same reason, we need not determine whether Sims’s complaint sufficiently alleges Monell liability.

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We have considered Sims’s remaining arguments and conclude that they are without merit. Accordingly, the judgment of the District Court is AFFIRMED.

FOOTNOTES

1.   Sims’s complaint brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983; the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 42 U.S.C. § 12101 et seq.; and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq. The District Court dismissed Sims’s complaint in its entirety. On appeal, Sims seeks to revive only his Section 1983 claim for deliberate indifference to his medical needs.

2.   Sims also alleges that on three separate incidents in November of 2013, “various [DOC] officers were involved in the excessive application of force to [him], despite knowing [his] psychiatric condition.” Joint App’x at 52. On appeal, he does not pursue the dismissal of this claim.

3.   Although Darnell involved a challenge to conditions of confinement, we have applied that decision’s holding to medical deliberate-indifference claims. See Bruno v. City of Schenectady, 727 F. App'x 717, 720 (2d Cir. 2018).