AUGUST 6, 2015 – AUGUST 12, 2015
46-2-7568 Ragin v. Herran, App. Div. (per curiam) (14 pp.) Plaintiff appealed the grant of defendants’ motion for summary judgment dismissing his complaint alleging that while he was a pretrial detainee, he lost the sight in one eye when he was stabbed with a pipe another inmate was using to smoke crack cocaine while in a holding cell and asserting that defendants’ failure to pat down inmates before placing them in cells constituted a failure to protect him and violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights under the federal constitution and his civil rights under 42 U.S.C.A. §1983. The panel reversed in part, finding that the court erred in granting summary judgment to defendants Herran, who was stationed outside of and responsible for securing the holding cell at that time, and Muhammed, the housing officer at the jail, as plaintiff presented sufficient evidence that they knew or should have known that the inmates had not been searched and that this created a substantial risk to the inmates’ safety, and to the city of Newark because plaintiff produced evidence that the policy requiring all detainees to be searched before they were admitted into a jail had not been consistently followed for a prolonged period of time before his injury and thus there was a material issue of fact in dispute concerning the municipality’s liability. The panel affirmed the grant of summary judgment with respect to the remaining defendants.
