Jeffery R. Froemel v. Randall Hepp

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted February 8, 2024 *
Decided February 12, 2024
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge
CANDACE JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge
No. 23-2901
JEFFERY R. FROEMEL,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
RANDALL HEPP, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of
Wisconsin.
No. 23-cv-407-bhl
Brett H. Ludwig,
Judge.
* The defendants were not served with process and are not participating in the
appeal. We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the brief and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. FED. R. A PP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

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No. 23-2901 Page 2
O R D E R
Jeffery Froemel, a Wisconsin prisoner, appeals the judgment dismissing his suit
alleging that prison officials at Waupun Correctional Institution were deliberately
indifferent toward hazardous conditions of confinement that led to a serious injury. The
district court dismissed his complaint for failure to state a claim. We affirm.
We take the following account from Froemel’s amended complaint, accepting the
allegations as true for our present purposes. Stockton v. Milwaukee County, 44 F.4th 605,
614 (7th Cir. 2022). In 2020, Froemel worked in the Pots and Pans Department of his
prison. His workstation was missing floor tiles that created a hole in the floor. Froemel
asserts that the defect in the flooring was obvious to staff. During a work shift, Froemel
tripped over the hole and fell backwards, causing elbow, neck, and lower back injuries.
A month later, upon noticing that new floor tiles were being installed elsewhere in the
kitchen, he asked the officer managing the renovation if she could repair the hole in the
floor at his station. She told him she would investigate, but the floor was never fixed.
Froemel then brought the present complaint in district court against the officer, the
warden, and a food-service manager.
The district court screened Froemel’s complaint, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1915(e)(2)(B),
1915A(b)(1), and dismissed it for failure to state a claim. The court explained that
slippery surfaces or missing floor tiles do not constitute a hazardous condition of
confinement and, further, Froemel did not allege facts suggesting that any of the prison
officials was aware of a risk of harm and ignored it.
On appeal, Froemel maintains that the defendants must have known of the
flooring’s hazardous condition because any passerby could see that the tile had been
missing long before his injury. And as a further example of deliberate indifference, he
asserts that the officer managing renovations failed to fix the hazard even after his
injury.
To state a claim for hazardous prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment, a
plaintiff must allege both that the complained-of condition posed an excessive risk to
health and safety and that the defendants knew of and disregarded the risk. Farmer v.
Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 844 (1994); Pyles v. Fahim, 771 F.3d 403, 409 (7th Cir. 2014). If we
assume that the missing tiles posed an excessive risk, Balle v. Kennedy, 73 F.4th 545,
554–555 (7th Cir. 2023) (concluding that poor floor conditions, when combined with
other factors, can be objectively dangerous enough to give rise to a potential Eighth
Amendment claim), Froemel has not suggested that any defendant knew the missing

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No. 23-2901 Page 3
tiles posed such a danger. As for his claim about the officer who took no steps after his
injury to fix the flooring, deliberate indifference requires the defendant know of a future
risk of harm, viewed from her perspective at the time. See Farmer, 511 U.S. at 843–44.
Whatever post-accident actions the officer took here do not bear on the defendants’ pre-
accident knowledge of any serious harm the missing tiles posed to Froemel.
AFFIRMED

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