McGee v. Adams

• Decision Date: 01 August 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–2666.,11–2666.
• Citation: 721 F.3d 474
• Parties: Juan McGEE, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Carol L. ADAMS, et al., Defendants–Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

721 F.3d 474

Juan McGEE, Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.Carol L. ADAMS, et al., Defendants–Appellees.

No. 11–2666.

United States Court of Appeals,Seventh Circuit.

Argued Dec. 4, 2012.

Decided Aug. 1, 2013.

Albert Bianchi, Jr., Attorney, Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, Madison, WI, for Plaintiff–Appellant.

Mary Ellen Welsh, Attorney, Office of the Attorney General, Michael John Charysh, Attorney, Charysh & Schroeder, Ltd., Chicago, IL, for Defendants–Appellees.

Before BAUER and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges, and THARP, District Judge. ^*

THARP, District Judge.

Juan McGee, a civil detainee at the Illinois Department of Human Services' Treatment and Detention Facility at Rushville (“Rushville”), brought an action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that twenty-three ¹ state officials, employees, and private medical professionals were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs. McGee alleges that the defendants violated his rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by requiring him to wear leg irons on his swollen and possibly cancerous legs whenever he was transported from the Rushville facility. The district court granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment, and McGee appealed. We affirm.

I.

McGee was convicted of rape, home invasion, aggravated battery, and burglary, and was incarcerated in Illinois Department of Corrections facilities from 1980 until 2005. In 2005, pursuant to the Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act, 725 ILCS 207/1 et seq., he was placed in Rushville. In 2001, while he was still serving his criminal sentence, McGee was diagnosed with liposarcomacancer and underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor and adjacent muscle tissue in his right thigh. Since that time he has undergone extensive treatment and numerous biopsies and other procedures to prevent and/or detect the possible recurrence of the cancer. McGee alleges that he suffers from edema (which causes swelling) and “neuropathic pain” (pain induced by normally non-painful external stimuli) in his legs as a result of the cancer treatments he has undergone (though, so far as the record reflects, McGee has had surgery only to remove a tumor from his right thigh, he has had biopsies on both legs).

Rushville has a policy, authorized by 59 Ill. Admin. Code § 299.350(d)(2), of requiring detainees who are transported outside of the facility to wear metal leg irons. Defendant Eugene McAdory is the security director at Rushville, and he alone has authority (absent a medical order) to exempt a detainee from the leg shackle policy and to authorize leather leg restraints as an alternative. McAdory never issued any order exempting McGee from wearing metal leg restraints.

While detained in Rushville, McGee was treated by at least two doctors associated with the institution: Dr. Michael Bednarz, Rushville's medical director, and Dr. Hughes Lochard, a privately-employed doctor who served as the Rushville detainee doctor and who regularly examined McGee. Both are defendants. McGee complained several times to Dr. Lochard about being required to wear metal leg restraints, but Dr. Lochard informed McGee that he could not override the Rushville security policy that detainees were required to wear leg irons when transported outside the facility. Only Dr. Bednarz, Rushville's medical director, had that authority.

On January 15, 2009, Drs. Bednarz and Lochard and several nurses, including defendant Mull, attended a meeting with McGee regarding his medical needs. One of the topics of discussion was McGee's request to Dr. Bednarz for an order stating that he should not be secured in leg irons when transferred outside the facility. According to McGee, Dr. Bednarz stated that he understood that cancer was causing McGee pain in his legs and that shackles should not be on his legs. A week after the meeting, Dr. Bednarz examined McGee, noted that it was difficult for him to wear the leg restraints, and made an entry saying that he would discuss something—presumably the leg restraints—with security. But Dr. Bednarz did not thereafter issue a medical order requiring security to stop using metal leg restraints, and in the course of this litigation he executed an affidavit stating that “at no time ... were ankle shackles medically contraindicated” and that he “saw no medical reason [McGee] would need to avoid the use of shackles on his ankles.”

McGee describes a number of specific occasions when security personnel transported him from Rushville in leg irons, alleging causing him severe pain and swelling in his legs. McGee underwent surgery on February 12, 2008, to biopsy nodules from the lower portions of both legs. Two days later, on February 14, 2008, McGee was taken by defendants Dougherty and Mercer, who are security therapist aids ( i.e., guards), to Lake County to appear in court on a civil matter. Before leaving Rushville, McGee was secured in metal leg restraints as usual. He complained, to no avail, to Dougherty, Mercer, and Defendant Volk, the shift commander on duty at Rushville, that the leg restraints were too tight and were causing him pain because of his recent surgery and his edema which caused swelling in his legs. When he arrived in Lake County, McGee asked Dougherty for a wheelchair to travel the two blocks to the courtroom. Dougherty refused his request, and told McGee that she “would not be pushing any rapist anywhere.” Dougherty and Mercer then pulled McGee forward under his arms, forcing him to walk at a fast pace. After McGee's court hearing, Dougherty and Mercer again denied McGee's request for a wheelchair to return to the vehicle, and McGee was forced to walk back to the van. When he arrived back at Rushville, McGee's legs were swollen, but Dougherty refused to allow him to go to the Health Care Unit immediately. Twenty minutes later, after Dougherty's shift had ended, McGee was seen in the Health Care Unit, where it was noted that his legs were quite swollen.

On April 22, 2008, McGee was transported to an outside medical facility, this time by defendants Iseminger and Lay, who again required McGee to wear metal leg restraints. In the course of attempting to climb into the vehicle, McGee, who was wearing hand and leg restraints and a waist chain, fell off of a milk crate and cut his ankle. McGee alleges that neither Iseminger nor Lay attempted to help him step up onto the crate and into the van. McGee was taken (per facility policy when residents returned from medical writs) to the facility healthcare unit, where a nurse wrapped his ankle but determined that the cut did not require stitches.

Several subsequent trips followed a similar pattern. McGee next travelled to an outside medical facility on June 16, 2008; defendants Clark and Wallace were responsible for his transportation. Clark put metal leg restraints on McGee, and after McGee claimed that they were too tight, Clark threatened not to take him to the medical facility. McGee then accepted the leg restraints. After arriving at the medical facility, McGee showed Wallace his legs and complained that the restraints were digging into his skin. Wallace asked Clark whether he should loosen the restraints, but Clark refused. McGee also complained about the shackles to the physician who treated him, but that physician did not instruct Wallace or Clark to remove or loosen the leg irons. Wallace and Clark returned McGee to the van in a wheelchair at the conclusion of the appointment, and upon returning to Rushville, the nurse who saw McGee in the healthcare unit noted that McGee had only slight swelling in his left leg and had made no complaint as to his right.

Eight months later, McGee required another MRI on his leg, so on February 13, 2009, defendants Baer and Davidson applied metal leg restraints to McGee in preparation for a trip to an outside hospital. McGee complained to Baer and to appellee Biermann that his metal leg restraints were too tight, but they did not remove them. When they arrived at the hospital, Baer parked at the far end of the parking lot and refused to allow McGee a wheelchair, causing McGee to have to walk across the parking lot to reach the hospital. After McGee's appointment, Baer drove the van to the entrance of the hospital so that McGee would not have to walk across the parking lot a second time.

McGee underwent a second biopsy on his leg on April 28, 2009. Prior to leaving Rushville, he complained to defendant Williams about his metal leg restraints and requested leather restraints. Williams checked McGee's legs, but required him to continue wearing metal restraints.

McGee made several more medical trips outside of Rushville (on at least May 11, 2009; July 14, 2009; and July 28, 2009), but he does not allege whether he was required to wear metal leg restraints on those occasions, and does not claim that his rights were violated on any of those trips.

II.

We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo, construing the facts in favor of McGee, the nonmoving party. Parent v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 694 F.3d 919, 922 (7th Cir.2012). Summary judgment is appropriate if the moving party demonstrates that “there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a).

Claims concerning the conditions of confinement of civil detainees are assessed under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See West v. Schwebke, 333 F.3d 745, 747–48 (7th Cir.2003). Civil detainees “are entitled to more considerate treatment and conditions of confinement than criminals whose conditions of confinement are designed to punish.” Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 321–22, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 73 L.Ed.2d 28 (1982). But the Supreme Court has not determined how much additional protection civil detainees are entitled to beyond the protections afforded by the Eighth Amendment bar on cruel and unusual punishment. For claims of deliberate indifference, like this one, this Court has...