WV Supreme Court rules “deliberate indifference” in prison lawsuits can’t be used in court

The West Virginia Supreme Court has taken a step to strip away a key legal tool for families of inmates who have died in custody. 

In a 3-2 ruling issued Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that a circuit court committed a legal error when it let a claim of “deliberate indifference” in West Virginia’s jails and prisons move forward in a case. 

However, they didn’t outright kill the claim either. 

“We have not affirmatively disclaimed deliberate indifference to a clearly established law as a cause of action. However, were we to adopt such a claim, we would be the outlier, and perhaps the lone state to recognize deliberate indifference as a standalone claim under state common law,” Justice H.L. Kirkpatrick wrote for the majority. 

Deliberate indifference is when a jail or prison is aware that an inmate is in danger or ill and chooses to ignore it. 

Kirkpatrick and Justices Haley Bunn and Charles Trump ruled in the majority. Justices Bill Flanigan and Bill Wooton dissented. 

The ruling granted “writs of prohibition” – an order from a higher court to a lower court telling them they overstepped their legal bounds – against the Kanawha County Circuit for not dismissing deliberate indifference counts in two cases against the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation. 

While cases brought against DCR on grounds of deliberate indifference have been settled out of court or won in trial, the high court’s ruling means families or inmates in the system can no longer list it as a charge to seek damages for in court. 

The two cases brought before the state’s high court involved inmates who had died in the regional jails. 

In 2021 Jacquline Pyles, 24, who had a documented history of mental conditions on file with the Northern Central Regional Jail due to numerous arrests, was found dead in a cell with a bed sheet tied around her neck. Ronald Marvin Myers, 79, died shortly after attorneys say he did not receive medical care for numerous conditions while locked up at the Eastern Regional Jail. 

Writing for the majority, Kirkpatrick stated that deliberate indifference isn’t a reason to sue the state, but is actually a factor in proving a case in court. He noted that while other cases in West Virginia have used the factor, they did not go as far as to create it as something to sue. 

“If taken as true, the allegations in Mr. Pyles’s and Mrs. Myers’s pleadings ‘narrate a dismal series of events’ and we sympathize with the respondents’ tragic losses,” Kirkpatrick wrote. “However, the ‘objective tragedy of the allegations’ cannot determine this Court’s answer to the pure, legal question presented by DCR’s petitions: whether a common law cause of action for deliberate indifference to a clearly established law is a cognizable claim.” 

Kirkpatrick concluded it was not. 

Flanigan, writing for the dissenting opinion, said he didn’t believe the court really worked out if deliberate indifference is a grounds for a lawsuit or not before making the ruling to bar it from the two cases.  

He pointed out that an appeal to the Intermediate Court of Appeals approved a jury instruction including deliberate existence, which would imply it does exist in West Virginia law for purposes of filing a case. 

“It is difficult to understand how the circuit court’s order could be ‘clearly erroneous as a matter of law’ when this Court has never previously considered this issue,” Flanigan wrote.