Misplaced chair no basis for prisoners' rights suit

I sometimes wonder what federal judges think of the weaker cases that come before them. This is such a case. The plaintiff is an inmate who "alleged that the prison employee violated his Eighth
Amendment rights by failing to remove a chair from a baseball field. Cintron later ran into the
chair during a game and broke his arm." The Court of Appeals says plaintiff has no case.

The case is Cintron v. Doldo, a summary order decided on April 19. Inmates are allowed to file their own lawsuits. They do have constitutional rights, and without those protections, just imagine what the jails would look like. But if an inmate files too many frivolous suits, the courts can require him to seek pre-filing clearing before bringing another action. Even if the cases are quite weak, someone representing the government still has to do the work, and the courts have to review the matter, taking time away from other cases.

This plaintiff sues under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and inhumane jail punishments. The courts have interpreted the Eighth Amendment to cover conditions of confinements inside the jail. Usually, these cases involve bad medical treatment or abusive prison guards. The legal standard is this: "a court should assess whether society considers the risk that the prisoner complains of to be so grave that it violates contemporary standards of decency to expose anyone unwillingly to such a risk.”

The Second Circuit (Katzmann, Jacobs and Leval) says there is no case here. "The placement of the chair on the baseball field did not constitute a 'deprivation . . . sufficiently serious that [Cintron] was denied the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities,' nor did treatment by prison staff member Mattraw 'deprive [Cintron] of his basic human needs.'” Nor did plaintiff allege that prison staff acted with deliberate indifference.