Where Complaint Good, Inmate Plaintiff Should Have Chance to Establish Some Evidence

Fifth Circuit Judges Patrick Higginbotham, Edith Brown Clement and Priscilla Owen, in a per curiam opinion, reversed and remanded the dismissal of a Texas state prison inmate's suit against the food service captain when the offender bit into a metal nut hidden in a piece of cornbread he was eating and broke a tooth. Kendrick Green, the plaintiff, alleged in his complaint that the captain had admitted to him that this was not the first time a foreign object had gotten into the food. The panel held that Green should have had the chance to prove this point before his suit was dismissed.