MORGAN v. CANADY
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today released an amended order in MORGAN v. CANADY, No. 04-35608, a prisoner appeal. The panel consisted of Stephen Reinhardt, M. Margaret McKeown, and Richard R. Clifton, Circuit Judges.
CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:
Plaintiff Steven Morgan, a Washington prisoner, was injured by a defective printing press while working at a prison job for which he had voluntarily applied. Morgan alleges that he told his supervisor, Defendant Tom Canady, about the problem, but that Canady forced Morgan to keep working. Morgan brought a complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the requirement to continue working under those circumstances violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Canady moved for summary judgment, asserting a defense of qualified immunity, which the district court denied. He appeals that decision, and we affirm. In so doing, we hold that, under certain circumstances, dangerous prison working conditions can give rise to an Eighth Amendment claim, notwithstanding the fact that the prisoner initially obtained his specific employment assignment through a voluntary application process within the prison system. We further hold that a prison official is not entitled to qualified immunity when he orders a prisoner to continue operating prison work equipment that the official has been warned and has reason to believe is unnecessarily dangerous. I. Background Because this case comes to us at the stage of defendant’s motion for summary judgment, where the underlying facts are disputed, we “assum[e] that the version of events offered by the non-moving party is correct” when determining whether the defendant should nonetheless be entitled to qualified immunity. Wilkins v. City of Oakland, 350 F.3d 949, 951 (9th . . .
The opinion filed on October 6, 2006, is amended as follows:
On slip opinion page 17457, line 2 of the second full paragraph, change “California” to “Washington”. With this amendment, the panel has voted to grant Appellee’s petition for rehearing/error correction, and deny Appellant’s petition for rehearing and petition for rehearing en banc. The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing en banc and no judge of the court has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. Fed. R. App. P. 35. Appellee’s petition for rehearing/error correction is GRANTED. Appellant’s petition for rehearing and the peti. . .