Melton v. Abston
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
More on how this was screened
The Eleventh Circuit's en banc decision in Wade v. McDade, listed below, replaced the “more than mere negligence” formulation that Melton used for deliberate indifference with a subjective recklessness standard. Later Eleventh Circuit decisions, including Glenn v. Britt and Nealy v. Masters, expressly describe Melton as abrogated on other grounds by Wade. Courts continue to cite its separate rulings on Alabama officials' immunity and other issues. Most flagged opinions either apply an unaffected part of Melton or report Wade's treatment in citation histories. Some histories instead attribute abrogation to Twombly, which predates Melton; they supply no separate treatment by the citing court.
46 later cases cite Melton v. Abston; 46 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Melton v. Abston?
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Treatments
Abrogated
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The en banc Eleventh Circuit replaced Melton's “more than mere negligence” deliberate indifference formulation with a subjective recklessness standard.
Wade v. McDade · Eleventh Circuit (en banc) · filed
Having reconsidered the issue, we now repudiate our dueling “more than” formulations and hold instead that a deliberate-indifference plaintiff must prove that the defendant acted with “subjective recklessness as used in the criminal law,” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 839, and that in order to do so, the plaintiff must show that the defendant was subjectively aware that his own conduct put the plaintiff at substantial risk of serious harm—with the caveat that, in any event, a defendant who “respond[s] reasonably” to a risk, id. at 844, even a known risk, “cannot be found liable” under the Eighth Amendment, id. at 837.
Read the full opinion on CourtListener →
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