HOUSTON – A federal court has granted the dismissal of claims brought by a pre-trial detainee against Harris County and various law enforcement officers and inmates, where the plaintiff had alleged he was assaulted while in custody and the defendants failed to prevent and intervene in the assault.
On Sept. 25, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas Judge Andrew S. Hanen ruled in favor of Harris County, its Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, Deputy John Does 1-10 and Inmate John Does 1-10, and dismissed the claims brought by plaintiff Jason Canales.
“Plaintiff was held in the Harris County Jail as a pre-trial detainee after a dispute with his girlfriend. While in custody, he alleges that several inmates ‘beat him up twice and stabbed him.’ He alleges that unnamed guards on duty that day (identified only as John Does 1-10) failed to intervene and protect him during the assault in violation of his constitutional rights. He further alleges that he was ‘only one of the numerous individual pre-trial and convicted inmates who have been detained in the Harris County Jail by Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.’ Canales identifies Sheriff Ed Gonzalez as the chief policymaker for Harris County and alleges that Gonzalez ‘continues to place pre-trial detainees and convicted inmates in conditions that result in preventable attacks and injuries,” Hanen said.
“Canales also violent incidents involving other pre-trial detainees and inmates in the Harris County Jail (namely, Lee, Nebuwa, Ward, Jacobs, Harris, Simmons and Jones). Ultimately, he alleges that officers’ failure to intervene during assaults constitutes a municipal pattern or practice, and that ‘the understaffing of the jail is the moving force behind the failures to protect pre-trial detainees and inmates while in custody.”
Hanen began his analysis by determining that the defendants’ argument that the plaintiff’s claims against the unnamed ‘John Doe’ defendants are barred by the relevant two-year statute of limitations, was accurate.
Canales’ claim accrued on Nov. 15, 2021, the date of the alleged assault. As a result, Hanen determined, any claim brought after Nov. 15, 2023, is time-barred.
“Plaintiff filed suit against all defendants in state court on Nov. 10, 2023, and defendants removed to this Court on Dec. 8, 2023. Plaintiff filed his First Amended Complaint on Jan. 2, 2024, in which the John Doe defendants (deputies and inmates) remained unnamed,” Hanen stated.
“This case was filed over seven months ago. Even assuming plaintiff is able to identify the unnamed defendants, plaintiff’s claims against the Deputies and inmates collectively referred to as ‘John Does’ are clearly time-barred. The Court therefore grants defendants’ motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim against the unnamed defendants and plaintiff’s claims against Deputies John Doe 1-10 and inmates John Doe 1-10 are dismissed with prejudice.”
Hanen then turned to Canales’ claims against both Harris County and Gonzalez under Section 1983, indicating that the injuries he suffered were the result of municipal policy violations – and specified that the two threshold questions involved are whether Canales “plausibly alleges that the identified de facto policies exist, and whether they are unconstitutional.”
“Canales argues that there is a widespread ‘pattern or practice’ of law enforcement officers in the Harris County Jail failing to intervene when detainees are assaulted by other inmates, and a policy of ‘allowing overcrowding and understaffing.’ To support these contentions, Canales points to his assault, the alleged assaults against the other pre-trial detainees listed in the first amended complaint, statewide assault statistics’ and a letter sent to Gonzalez in 2021 complaining of understaffing and the resulting safety concerns. Canales alleges that Gonzalez is the chief policymaker for the County, and that Gonzalez had actual or constructive knowledge of the de facto policies alleged by plaintiff,” Hanen said.
“Plaintiff’s factual allegations as to the injuries suffered by Evan Lee, Jerome Nebuwa, Rory Gene Ward, Paul Joshua Jacobs, Fred Joseph Harris, Jaquaree Simmons, and Reginald Jones, even viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, do not point to a severe or pervasive pattern of inattention or of detention officers’ failures to intervene such that he states a plausible claim against the County. For example, the allegations regarding Evan Lee’s assault state only that he was attacked in the Jail on March 11, 2022, and the Sheriff’s Office was ‘dishonest about the death’ and ‘advised his family that he was on life support’ when ‘they knew he was dead before she called.’ This does not amount to an allegation that officers failed to intervene, or even that staff inattention played a role in his injuries.”
Hanen stated that since Canales’ allegations do not involve facts or circumstances sufficiently comparable to plausibly allege that a pervasive practice of “failing to intervene” is an official policy or custom, and found “the same is true of plaintiff’s alleged municipal policy claim as to overcrowding and understaffing at the Harris County Jail.”
“Plaintiff offers factual allegations detailing his assault (and that of others) in the Harris County Jail, but pleads no specific facts sufficient to state a claim that the unnamed officers’ failure to intervene during his assault was the ‘highly predictable consequence’ of Sheriff’s Gonzalez’s alleged failure to train or supervise. As a result, the Court grants defendants’ motion as to Canales’ failure to train/failure to supervise claim against the County,” Hanen said.
“Plaintiff also argues that Gonzalez is liable in his personal capacity for the failure to supervise or train claim under a theory of supervisory liability. To succeed on such a claim, the plaintiff must show that ‘(1) the supervisor either failed to supervise or train the subordinate official (2) a causal link exists between the failure to train or supervise and the violation of the plaintiffs rights, and (3) the failure to train or supervise amounts to deliberate indifference. The elements required to succeed on this claim match the elements required to succeed on the failure to supervise or train claims made against the City of Houston, analyzed above. For the reasons articulated above, plaintiff has failed to satisfy the 12(b)(6) requirements for this claim as well.”
Similarly, since the basis of the claims against Sheriff Gonzalez are official-capacity claims, and the municipality is already a defendant, Hanen determined that the claims against Sheriff Gonzalez were redundant and ripe for dismissal.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas case 4:23-cv-04599
11th District Court, Harris County, Texas case 2023-78740
From the Southeast Texas Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com