legal memo 法律备忘录(14)

legal memo

Advanced Sample Memo First Draft

To: Paula Berg, Supervising Attorney

From: Associate Attorney

Date: September 13, 2007

Re: Mr. Daniels' ADA claim challenging the conditions of his confinement.

QUESTION PRESENTED

Whether Mr. Daniels can argue that his current conditions of civil confinement at the jail ward of Maricopa County Medical Center amount to violations of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. Section 12101 et seq. (2000) based on establishing a prima facie case of discrimination?1

BRIEF ANSWER

Mr. Daniels will be able to make out a prima facie case of ADA discrimination if he can overcome two hurdles.2Mr. Daniels must successfully argue that he is an otherwise qualified individual and withstand the challenge by the defendants that he is a direct threat and therefore not qualified under the meaning of the ADA.3Secondly, he must argue that civilly incarcerated persons housed in a jail ward of hospital should be entitled to at least the same benefits and services as the criminally incarcerated and then establish what those benefits are vis-á-vis his own conditions of confinement.4

FACTS

In July 2006, Robert Daniels was civil committed by an Arizona civil court on the recommendation of Maricopa County, Arizona officials to the jail ward of Maricopa County Medical Center ("Center"), Comp. ¶ ¶ 1, 21. He suffers from a drug resistant strain of tuberculosis ("TB") most likely acquired during incarceration in a Russian jail and was determined to require quarantine Comp. ¶ ¶ 1, 18. Mr. Daniels filed a complaint in May of 2007 with the District Court of Arizona challenging the conditions of his confinement pursuant to federal and state equal protection, due process, and statutory law. The named defendants are: Maricopa County, Robert England, James Kennedy, Marciella P. Moffitt, M.D., and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Comp. ¶ ¶ 6, 8-11.

The Center has been used in the past to house civilly confined persons under quarantine despite allegations that it was known that the treatment, specifically the punitive conditions of confinement, were the same for both those criminally incarcerated seeking medical treatment and those civilly committed due to illness. Comp. ¶ 24. Sheriff Arpaio, specifically, stated that he would not differentiate between an inmate and person with a contagious disease; he would treat them in the same manner and they would be housed under the same conditions. Comp. ¶ 25.

Mr. Daniels is not challenging his isolation/civil confinement but the conditions of confinement, which seem to be punitive in nature and do not seem related to either his medical treatment or ensuring the general health of the jail ward of the Center. Comp. ¶ 28. Mr. Daniels' drug resistant form of TB is a serious medical condition. Comp. ¶ 55. Despite the conditions of his confinement, the medical reality is that he is probably better off under some type of medical isolation than he would have been had he not been confined.5He was committed, in part, because he failed to comply with the standard guidelines for a person with his strain of TB, i.e., not wearing a facemask in public places. This conduct will likely be raised by the defendants as the district court weighs his ADA claim.6

There are a few facts that are unknown to the plaintiff, and perhaps to the defendants as well, that could have a bearing on the strategy of the case even if they do not bear directly on the question of how likely will it be that Mr. Daniels will be successful in his ADA claim7. It is unclear at this point whether Mr. Daniels' condition has improved since being incarcerated. If his health has not improved than the question may be whether the conditions of his confinement contributed to any deterioration in his health.8

It is also unclear, but quite possible based on these factual allegations, whether some of the conditions alleged in the complaint, such as Mr. Daniels being subjected to unreasonable searches and handling by jail guards, could have exposed other people in the Center community to TB, i.e., guards, hospital/ward staff, and especially the jail inmates in the ward. A jail is a particularly risky setting in which to have a person with this serious a type of TB precisely because the inmate population can

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