Inmate may have a claim for deliberate indifference to medical needs

In this case, the Court of Appeals has to decide if the inmate-plaintiff timely filed his constitutional claim alleging that prison doctors failed to properly treat his prostate cancer. A divided court says that, for now, it looks like plaintiff may have filed this case in time. That may change once the parties start discovery, for the lawsuit alleges facts that plausibly suggest plaintiff did not wait too long to bring suit.

The case is Mallet v. New York State Dept. of Corrections, issued on January 13. While in jail, plaintiff began to feel discomfort and experience urinary problems. A urologist examined him and confirmed that plaintiff was in fact experiencing prostate problems, but he did not think it was cancerous or perform a biopsy. Instead, the urologist gave him a prescription for pills that would help with urinary dysfunction. After plaintiff left prison, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer after his bloodwork showed a high PSA count. 

Here is the problem, plaintiff sued within three years of the cancer diagnosis, but the initial medical work, which showed urinary problems but without any diagnosis took place more than three years before plaintiff filed suit. The statute of limitations for these cases is three years. If the prison-medical work was enough to put him on notice that he had cancer, then the case is not timely. If the clock began running after plaintiff left jail and got the formal cancer diagnosis, then the case is timely. For the court, the question is when the clock began running.

Judge Calabresi writes for the majority and says, on the face of the lawsuit, using Iqbal plausibility standard, we can say plaintiff might have a case. He writes:

Taken together, then, Mallet’s deliberate indifference claim could not have accrued until he either knew or had reason to know both (1) that he suffered from an objectively serious medical condition while he was incarcerated and (2) that Defendants-Appellees  failed  to  provide  adequate  treatment  because  they consciously disregarded a substantial risk to his health and safety. Put differently, Mallet could not have brought his deliberate indifference claim before he knew or should have known these facts because he would not yet have had a complete and present cause of action.

During his incarceration, the majority writes, plaintiff could have reasonably assumed he was enduring uncomfortable and annoying urinary problems but not cancerous conditions. Since he did not learn that until after he was released from prison, and he filed the lawsuit within three years of learning he had cancer, the case is timely,

The factual analysis is drawn from the Complaint, not a summary judgment record. Discovery will focus on whether the facts in the Complaint are accurate. The state will try to show that plaintiff knew about or suspected prostate cancer while he was in jail. So, while plaintiff generates a good ruling for statute of limitations purposes in deliberate indifference cases, the case is far from over.