Debbie Flowers, as Personal Representative of Toby Kristopher Payne v. James Sutterfield, Mental Health Manager, et al.

Toby Payne filed a complaint alleging that the Texas Department of Corrections kept him in a unit for the Chronically Mentally Ill (CMI) that provided virtually no mental health treatment and horrible conditions in violation of the Constitution and disability law. When the court did not act for years, he also moved for multiple temporary restraining orders. The district court denied his request for preliminary relief on the basis that he had not demonstrated a disability or that his need for accommodations were obvious, both despite the prison itself placing him in the CMI unit. Then, without any separate analysis, the court dismissed his complaint under a pre-service screening order. Payne appealed to the Fifth Circuit. After briefing but before a ruling, Payne succumbed to his mental illness and committed suicide. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling, holding that his estate’s equitable claims were moot because he had killed himself but that his damages claims were frivolous because he did “not appear to have alleged a physical injury,” which is required to obtain compensatory damages. The Court did not consider whether Payne’s complaint was frivolous if his estate was still plausibly entitled to nominal and punitive damages nor the number of physical injuries that Payne actually listed in documents attached to his complaint. Nor did the Circuit Court remand with an order granting Payne’s estate leave to amend the pro se complaint to include additional physical injury such as, for example, his death. The question is: 1. Does the courts’ abdication of several procedural and substantive legal principles merit summary reversal?