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Minor v. Barwick11/25/2003
berate indifference. Both Minor and Carter argue that they are entitled to qualified immunity.
"Government officials, including police officers, are entitled to immunity from personal liability under 42 USC § 1983 if their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Outlaw v. Nasworthy, 250 Ga. App. 362, 363 (1) (551 SE2d 785) (2001), citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (102 SC 2727, 73 LE2d 396) (1982). The test for determining whether the official is entitled to immunity is the objective reasonableness of the official's conduct in light of legal rules which were clearly established at the time the action was taken. Harlow, supra, 457 U.S. at 818-19; Outlaw, supra at 364 (1). "The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right." Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (107 SC 3034, 97 LE2d 523) (1987). "On a motion for summary judgment, if the applicable law was clearly established at the time the defendant acted, the immunity defense ordinarily should fail, since a reasonably competent. . . official should know the law governing his conduct." (Citations and punctuation omitted.) Outlaw, supra at 364 (1), citing Gardner v. Rogers, 224 Ga. App. 165, 167 (1) (480 SE2d 217) (1996).
In 1976, the United States Supreme Court first recognized a cause of action under § 1983 for failure to attend to an inmate's serious illness or injury :
eliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes the `unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain,' proscribed by the Eighth Amendment. This is true whether the indifference is manifested by prison doctors in their response to the prisoner's needs or by prison guards in intentionally denying or delaying access to medical care or intentionally interfering with the treatment once prescribed. Regardless of how evidenced, deliberate indifference to a prisoner's serious illness or injury states a cause of action under § 1983.
(Citations omitted.) Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97, 104-105 (97 SC 285, 50 LE2d 251) (1976). See Howard v. City of Columbus, 239 Ga. App. 399, 402 (1) (521 SE2d 51) (1999) (" iability on an action under 42 [U.S.C.] § 1983 prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment as a violation of Eighth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution exists through `acts omissions sufficiently harmful to evidence deliberate indifference to serious medical needs,' of an inmate in jail"); Merritt v. Athens Clarke County, 233 Ga. App. 203, 207 (2) (504 SE2d 41) (1998) ("under Estelle, the constitutional violation of `deliberate indifference' can be established only after determining two components: whether evidence of a serious medical need existed, and (2) whether the defendant's response to that need amounted to deliberate indifference"). Thus, the general right which Minor and Carter are alleged to have violated was well established at the time of Barwick's overdose and subsequent death.
In Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (114 SC 1970, 128 LE2d 811) (1994), the United States Supreme Court defined the test for determining deliberate indifference:
We reject petitioner's invitation to adopt an objective test for deliberate indifference. We hold instead that a prison official cannot be found liable under the Eighth Amendment for denying an inmate humane conditions of confinement unless the official knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety; the official must both be aware of facts from which the inference could be drawn that a substantial risk of
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