Inmate cannot sue jail over another inmate's assault

This inmate claims that jail officials did not protect him from a violent inmate who attacked him at the Westchester County Jail. Plaintiff says the failure to protect violated the Due Process Clause. Plaintiff loses, demonstrating how hard it is to win cases like this.

The case is Haslinger v. Westchester County, a summary order issued on January 18. When plaintiff was arrested and taken to the Jail, an officer asked if plaintiff "had any problems with" any other inmates at the Jail. Plaintiff replied that he had been in an ongoing dispute with an inmate named Rooney and that he wanted to be kept away from this guy. At the time, Rooney was not at this jail,but plaintiff's request for a "keep-separate order" (in the event Rooney showed up) was denied. Rooney coincidentally entered the Jail a few days later, when he attacked plaintiff and injured his neck and eye socket. Plaintiff's lawsuit alleges that the failure to keep him away from Rooney violated the Constitution.

As a pre-trial detainee who was not yet found guilty of anything, plaintiff has greater rights than a convict. That's the rule in Darnell v. Piniero, 849 F.3d 17 (2d Cir. 2017), a case I briefed a few years ago. But plaintiff cannot win the case because he cannot prove deliberate indifference by not issuing the keep-separate order. Plaintiff did not precisely tell the guards what risk he faced should Rooney enter the Jail. That lack of specificity dooms the case. Here's the reasoning:

Although the parties dispute the precise words Haslinger used to describe his dispute with Rooney, Haslinger has offered no evidence indicating that he communicated the threat Rooney posed with any degree of specificity.  In his deposition, Haslinger stated that he told Officer Mays that he “need[ed] to keep away [from] Dennis Rooney because . . . of the little beef [they] had from prior being in jail.” But Haslinger never stated that he warned Officer Mays that Rooney posed a threat of physical harm or that he feared for his safety.  Thus, there is no reason to believe that Officer Mays “knew, or should have known, that [Rooney] posed an excessive risk to [Haslinger’s] health or safety.”

Telling a guard that he and Rooney had a "little beef" from "prior being in jail" is not precise enough, says the Court of Appeals (Sullivan, Bianco and Perez). I can see how in a different world, with different legal standards, plaintiff could win the case on these facts, but that is not our world. In our world, plaintiff has no recourse.