Inmate's medical indifference case fails

Inmates do have constitutional rights, you know. Under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, correctional facilities must provide inmates with proper medical care, no matter what crimes the inmates were convicted of. However, the legal burden of proof in winning these civil claims is high, and most of these claims fail. This is one of the failed claims.

The case is Roice v. County of Fulton, a summary order issued on February 6. Plaintiff was a pre-trial detainee, which means he was not yet convicted of anything and was incarcerated the county jail. That means Roice proceeds under the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides a more generous legal standard. Under Darnell v. Pineiro, 849 F.3d 17 (2d Cir. 2017), a case that I briefed on appeal, the Court of Appeals interpreted recent Supreme Court precedent to allow pre-trial detainees to win if they show the defendants knew or should have known about the excessive risk to the inmate's health or safety but did not provide proper medical treatment.

Plaintiff says the Fulton County jail did not properly respond to his complaints about abdominal pain and nausea, and that this led to hospitalization and surgery for severe pancreatitis. But while plaintiff says he began complaining prior to May 28, 2014, and that the jail ignored those complaints, the record tells another story. The Court of Appeals (Leval, Raggi and Livingston) says that the "overwhelming evidence" shows that, prior to May 29, plaintiff had not complained to staff about symptoms that might indicate pancreatitis. He did submit many handwritten medical request forms prior to that date, but none mentioned abdominal pain or vomiting. At deposition, plaintiff testified that he "may not have" complained about nausea and vomiting to the jail's medical providers, and that he "[could not] remember but he thought [he] did." That kind of testimony will not get you a trial on a constitutional claim alleging deliberate indifference to serious medical needs. 

Also hurting plaintiff's case is evidence that jail employees appeared to provide plaintiff extensive and consistent medical care for three weeks before he went to the hospital for surgery. While plaintiff claims the jail should have known he was in a medical emergency, "symptoms such nausea [and] abdominal pain" may be consistent with a diagnosis of gallstones or developing pancreatitis, but they are also consistent with many other medical conditions which do not require hospitalization. That appears to be the heart of this case. Plaintiff was in distress, but that distress could have resulted from other causes, and since the jail did provide him with consistent medical treatment all along, he cannot win his case under the Fourteenth Amendment.