Hardy v. Rabie.
No. 24-1138. 8/4/2025. D.Colo. Judge Federico. Inmate Medical Emergency—Official’s Duty to Provide Medical Care—Qualified Immunity—Eighth Amendment—Deliberate Indifference—Substantial Risk of Serious Harm.
August 4, 2025
Hardy was an inmate at Adams County Detention Facility on pretrial detention, during which time he was confined to a wheelchair. Hardy fell out of his wheelchair in his cell while attempting to get around a barrier to the toilet. He was unable to pick himself up from the floor, so his cellmate pressed an emergency distress button in the cell to call for help. Hardy alleges that though his cellmate pressed the button three times over a period of 30 to 45 minutes, no help arrived. Hardy remained on the floor and soiled himself because of the pain and inability to move. Detention Specialist DeHerrera was on duty at the time in a control tower and received signals from the emergency distress button but ignored them. When it became clear that jail officials were not coming, Hardy’s cellmate helped him back into his wheelchair, but this caused him more pain as he was placed in a contorted position in the wheelchair. About 90 minutes after Hardy fell, Deputy Rabie came to his cell as an escort for porters who were bringing him dinner. Rabie found Hardy in the contorted position and in extreme pain, and Hardy explained that he had fallen and was having a medical emergency. But rather than taking Hardy to receive medical care, Rabie told him to file a grievance before closing his cell. Sometime later there was a shift change, and Deputy Chavez arrived at Hardy’s cell with a nurse to pass out evening medication. Chavez and the nurse then rendered medical attention. Hardy filed a pro se action under 42 USC § 1983 against multiple defendants. As relevant here, he sued Rabie and DeHerrera in their individual and official capacities, alleging deliberate indifference claims. Rabie and DeHerrera moved to dismiss Hardy’s claims based on qualified immunity. The district court held that Hardy plausibly alleged that Rabie and DeHerrera violated his clearly established Fourteenth Amendment rights, so they are not entitled to qualified immunity.
On appeal, Rabie and DeHerrera argued that Hardy failed to allege facts showing that they violated his constitutional rights. Jail officials violate a detainee’s constitutional rights through deliberate indifference by knowingly ignoring a substantial risk of serious harm to an inmate. Deliberate indifference is evaluated objectively and subjectively. The objective factor requires the alleged harm to be sufficiently serious to implicate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, while the subjective component requires an inmate to show that the defendants knew the inmate faced a substantial risk of harm and disregarded that risk by not taking reasonable steps to abate it. A medical need is sufficiently serious to satisfy the objective prong if it is a diagnosed condition mandating treatment or is so obvious that a layperson would easily recognize the need for medical attention. Where an alleged harm is caused by a delay in eventual medical treatment, the objective component can be satisfied by pain experienced while waiting for treatment and analgesics. Here, defendants conceded that, accepting all of Hardy’s allegations as true, DeHerrera’s actions caused Hardy sufficiently serious harm to meet the objective prong because he spent 90 minutes in pain before Rabie arrived. Further, Hardy sufficiently alleged that he showed signs of extreme pain and suffering that would be obvious to a layperson in Rabie’s position. Hardy thus made a sufficient showing of objective harm. And although it lacked detail, Hardy’s allegation that DeHerrera was in a control tower where he would have seen that Hardy’s emergency call button was pressed three times sufficiently shows subjective awareness of a serious risk of harm. Coupled with the alleged fact that Chavez told Hardy that DeHerrera chose not to respond to signals from emergency buttons, Hardy sufficiently alleged that DeHerrera was subjectively aware of a serious risk of harm but refused to fulfill his role as a gatekeeper to medical care. Similarly, Hardy has shown that Rabie was subjectively aware of a serious risk of harm to Hardy that he disregarded by failing to take reasonable measures to abate it. Therefore, Hardy’s constitutional rights were violated.
Rabie and DeHerrera also contended that even if Hardy’s rights were violated, those rights were not clearly established at the time. The Tenth Circuit has found in many cases that prison officials exhibit deliberate indifference by ignoring an inmate’s reasonable requests for medical attention. It has also found that it is deliberate indifference for jail officials to ignore calls for help, even where those officials have limited information, and the Tenth Circuit has established a “general constitutional rule” against ignoring an inmate’s requests for emergency medical attention that applies with “obvious clarity.” Accordingly, the law was sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that Rabie’s and DeHerrera’s conduct was unlawful, and therefore neither can claim qualified immunity.
The ruling was affirmed and the case was remanded for further proceedings.