An incarcerated man allegedly told his supervisor of faulty equipment on a work assignment and ended up losing two fingers as the result of an accident, but the federal appeals court based in Denver has thrown out his lawsuit alleging cruel and unusual punishment.

Gregory Morris Sanders was working through Colorado Correctional Industries, the state’s prison labor program, when he crushed two of his fingers on June 12, 2017. Sanders alleged that he had reported at least four times that a pull-down door on a trailer had a tendency to stick, but his supervisor, Alan Werner, failed to repair or replace the defective door.

Consequently, Sanders caught two of his fingers in the door and they were “perniciously-crushed to the bones – causing amputation and permanent disfigurement,” he wrote.

Sanders, representing himself in court, claimed that Werner and the Colorado Department of Corrections had violated his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. He sought $250,000 in damages. The government argued that Sanders had alleged, at most, negligent behavior on the part of Werner, and that losing two fingers did not amount to “an objectively serious deprivation.”

“In addition, there are no Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit cases which hold that injuries resulting from malfunctioning equipment at a prison job will support an Eighth Amendment claim,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Ann M. Luvera, referring to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

Under the Eighth Amendment, plaintiffs need to demonstrate that prison officials knew of and ignored an excessive risk to inmates’ health or safety. The U.S. Supreme Court has clarified that mere discomforts are not violations, and instead prisons have to deny someone “the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities.” Officials who violate the Eighth Amendment are, in legal terms, deliberately indifferent to serious safety needs.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix granted the government’s request to dismiss the lawsuit in March of last year. She noted that courts do not necessarily equate deliberate indifference under the Eighth Amendment with a failure to follow workplace safety protocols.

“Many cases are brought by inmates regarding allegedly cringeworthy conduct, but even cases of severe injury, like here, do not automatically conclude with a finding that more than negligence has occurred and that the claims constitute violations of the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment,” Mix reasoned.

She added that Sanders’ loss of his fingers was “tragic,” but the allegations did not show Werner was aware of an excessive risk and disregarded it.

Sanders appealed to the 10th Circuit, arguing, among other things, that Mix ignored his allegations that Werner knew of the defective door and chose not to address it prior to Sanders’ injury.

“Respectfully,” Sanders wrote, “how can the law be expected to evolve in Colorado, in cases like this one, if deliberate indifference and wanton disregard of a severe substantial known risk of plausible harmful conditions affecting resident-prisoners’ limbs and lives are continually relegated as acts of negligence instead of being construed and interpreted and simply being called what it truly is – Deliberate Indifference?”

On Friday, a three-judge panel for the 10th Circuit upheld the decision to dismiss the case. The panel agreed with Mix that Werner reportedly knew only that the sliding door would sometimes stick, not of a scenario amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.

Judge Allison H. Eid, writing for the panel, elaborated that Werner had not inflicted punishment “even if Mr. Sanders sufficiently alleged that an official in Mr. Werner’s position should have been aware of the risk posed by the sliding door and should have done more to protect inmates.”

Matthew Cron, a civil rights lawyer with Rathod Mohamedbhai, said it would have been difficult for Sanders to bring a negligence claim, given the requirements of Colorado’s governmental immunity law. Success under the Eighth Amendment similarly involves a standard that is “extremely difficult to meet.”

“This case illustrates that the legal standard makes it extremely difficult for prisoners to receive a remedy even where they suffer significant harm as a result of a government official’s negligence.  As a society, we ought to expect better from our prison officials,” Cron said.

The case is Sanders v. Werner et al.