Inmate Injured Working in Laundry May Sue Prison Employees

Two prison employees must face a claim filed against them by an inmate who was injured while they were overseeing her unload a laundry truck, the Sixth Circuit said.

Kelly Jane Rhodes was working as a porter in the Michigan prison laundry for two days when she was injured. She received no training but was expected to load and unload laundry carts, which could weigh up to 400 pounds. On the day she was injured the truck driver was Richard Jones and the hydraulic lift gate operator was Paul McPherson.

Rhodes doesn’t remember the incident, but other porters testified that Jones was in a hurry, didn’t follow his usual procedures, and flung the cart that struck Rhodes near the hydraulic lift. The lift wasn’t equipped with a safety device that stabilizes carts. They also said McPherson started the lift before the cart was stabilized, and it fell on Rhodes.

Rhodes’ skull and face were fractured, she suffered a brain injury, and she was bleeding internally.

Rhodes claimed that her Eighth Amendment rights were violated because of the unsafe working conditions in the laundry, she wasn’t trained properly, and Jones and McPherson didn’t protect her.

The district court said that Rhodes didn’t show McPherson was deliberately indifferent to her risk of harm and Jones didn’t violate clearly established law.

Based on Rhodes’ evidence, a jury could decide that Jones was deliberately indifferent because he admitted that the work was dangerous and allegedly flung the cart toward the back of the truck where Rhodes was waiting, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said.

As for McPherson, Rhodes’ evidence suggested he started the lift too early and knew Rhodes was in a position where she could get hurt, the opinion by Judge Karen Nelson Moore said. There is genuine dispute over what happened, and a jury could find he was also deliberately indifferent, it said.

It was also clearly established at the time that a reasonable prison official would violate a prison workers’ constitutional rights by knowingly or recklessly disregarding a known excessive risk to their safety, the court said.

Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey joined the opinion.

Dissenting Judge Amul R. Thapar said that to make out her constitutional claim, Rhodes had to allege she was exposed to a compulsory danger, but she volunteered to be a laundry porter.

Christopher Trainor & Associates represented Rhodes. The Michigan Attorney General’s Office represented Jones and McPherson.

The case is Rhodes v. Michigan, 2021 BL 318871, 6th Cir., No. 20-1246, 8/24/21.