Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Monday, January 30, 2023

 

Page 1

 

District Court Suit by California Inmate Who Protests Smoking by Cellmate Is Restored

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

An action by a California state prisoner against the prison’s health care grievance officer based on the decision not to move him to a single-occupant cell despite his complaint that his cellmate is a smoker, thus endangering his health, has been resuscitated by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California on Jan. 13, 2022, ordered a dismissal with prejudice based on the failure of inmate Alvin Henry Dalton to state a claim. White reasoned that defendant M. Votari was not the proximate cause of Dalton being subjected to second-hand smoke, emitted in violation of the prison’s ill-enforced no-smoking rule.

He explained:

“Votari’s alleged denial of Plaintiffs request to move to single cell may have been a ‘but-for’ cause of Plaintiff living in a cell with someone who smokes, but it was not a proximate cause. Votari did not ‘force’ Plaintiff to live in unhealthy conditions: he simply decided that Plaintiff could not live by himself. This came in the context of a prison whose rules prohibited smoking. Even if the smoking rules were not adhered to by his cellmate, or in this instance enforced by the correctional officers. Votari cannot be reasonably expected to make his grievance decision based on the assumption that inmate housing rules would neither be followed nor enforced.”

Lack of Power

White continued:

“Plaintiff alleges that correctional officers had the power to enforce compliance with those rules, and that Votari was a grievance reviewer, not a correctional officer. Plaintiff’s cellmate himself and the correctional officers were the proximate cause of Plaintiffs exposure to second-hand smoke because they had the power to stop it: Votari did not. While Votari presumably had the power to move Plaintiff to a single cell, that would not guarantee Plaintiff’s escape from second-hand smoke if the rules against smoking were not enforced by correctional officers or adhered to by other inmates.”

The judge added that White could not reasonably have supposed that those officers would, in the future, ignore the no-smoking stricture,

Ninth Circuit Opinion

Reversal came Thursday in a memorandum opinion by Circuit Judges Susan P. Graber, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, and Richard A. Paez. They said:

“The district court concluded that Dalton failed to allege facts sufficient to show that defendant proximately caused his injury of continuing to be housed with a cellmate who smoked cigarettes….However, Dalton sufficiently alleged that defendant’s act of denying his request for single-cell status played a substantial part in causing his injury of continued exposure to cigarette smoke….We therefore vacate the judgment.”

The case is Dalton v. Votati, 22-15173.

 

Copyright 2023, Metropolitan News Company