Daniels v. Williams

Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.

In Parrott v. Taylor, 451 U. S. 527 (1981), a state prisoner sued under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, claiming that prison officials had negligently deprived him of his property without due process of law. After deciding that § 1983 contains no independent state-of-mind requirement, we concluded that although petitioner had been “deprived” of property within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the State’s postdeprivation tort remedy provided the process that was due. Petitioner’s claim in this case, which also rests on an alleged Fourteenth Amendment “deprivation” caused by the negligent conduct of a prison official, leads us to reconsider our statement in Parrott that “the alleged loss, even though negligently caused, amounted to a deprivation.” Id., at 536-537. We conclude that the Due Process Clause is simply not implicated by a negligent act of an official causing unintended loss of or injury to life, liberty, or property.

In this § 1983 action, petitioner seeks to recover damages for back and ankle injuries allegedly sustained when he fell on a prison stairway. He claims that, while an inmate at the city jail in Richmond, Virginia, he slipped on a pillow negligently left on the stairs by respondent, a correctional deputy stationed at the jail. Respondent’s negligence, the argument runs, “deprived” petitioner of his “liberty” interest in freedom from bodily injury, see Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651, 673 (1977); because respondent maintains that he is entitled to the defense of sovereign immunity in a state tort suit, petitioner is without an “adequate” state remedy, cf. Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U. S. 517, 534-536 (1984). Accordingly, the deprivation of liberty was without “due process of law.”