By: Derek Hawkins//August 30, 2016//
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Leroy Anderson v. Matthew Morrison et al
Case No.: 14-3781
Officials: FLAUM, MANION, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges
Focus: 8th Amendment violation
The risk of serious harm was substantial where prison guards forced appellant to walk down stairs unassisted while handcuffed when milk, garbage and other debris were on the stairs
“The defendants respond by arguing, unhelpfully, that the risk of slipping in a prison shower does not violate the Eighth Amendment. They cite cases in which our sister circuits have ruled that keeping a violent prisoner shackled while he uses the shower, see LeMaire v. Maass, 12 F.3d 1444, 1457 (9th Cir. 1993), and failing to drain standing water in a shower area used by an inmate on crutches, see Reynolds v. Powell, 370 F.3d 1028, 1031 (10th Cir. 2004), do not pose sufficient risks of harm to state a claim. But these cases are distinguishable for two reasons. First, plummeting down a flight of 13 steps presents a far greater risk of physical injury than does slipping on a shower floor. Second, the floors in LeMaire and Reynolds and the stairs in Pyles were unavoidably wet: showers necessarily produce wet floors, and in Pyles, the water on inmates’ shower shoes inevitably tracked onto the exit stairway, see Pyles, 771 F.3d at 405. But here, stairs slicked with milk and cluttered with garbage are not a necessary condition of prison. And by cleaning the stairs, the high risk of serious harm would ebb.”
Vacated and Remanded