A prisoner filed a 42 U.S.C.S. sec. 1983 action, alleging that defendant corrections officer violated his Eighth Amendment rights by acting with deliberate indifference to the serious medical harms arising from Shepherd’s involuntary exposure to secondhand smoke. A district court judge granted summary judgment to the officer. Shepherd was imprisoned in close quarters with a chain smoker for more than a month. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the district court’s judgment and remanded the case, ruling that “the prisoner’s claims were sufficient under the objective prong of the Eighth Amendment analysis” under Helling v. McKinney, “the record had to be developed further before a decision could be made concerning the subjective prong.”
2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 12477 (U.S.C.A. 2nd Cir. 2006).
