Eades v. Thompson

• Decision Date: 24 June 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-2961,86-2961
• Citation: 823 F.2d 1055
• Parties: Joe EADES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. James THOMPSON, Individually and as Governor of the State of Illinois, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1055

823 F.2d 1055

Joe EADES, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. James THOMPSON, Individually and as Governor of the State of Illinois, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 86-2961.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 16, 1987.

Decided June 24, 1987.

Francis M. Brady, Brady & Brady, Bloomington, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.

Ann Plunkett-Sheldon, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before WOOD and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges, and WILL, Senior District Judge. ^*

HARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff Joe Eades brought suit against defendant James Thompson, the governor of Illinois, and other state employees associated with the state correctional system. Eades alleged, under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 (1982), that the state officials, acting under color of state law, had deprived him of certain rights guaranteed by the Constitution while he was incarcerated in the state's correctional system. The state officials responded by filing a motion to dismiss Eades's suit under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). The district judge, Judge J. Waldo Ackerman, denied the motion in August 1984. Just prior to trial two years later in August 1986, after the death of Judge Ackerman, Judge Ackerman's successor, Judge Richard Mills, sua sponte reconsidered the motion to dismiss. He then granted the motion without prior notice or hearing. Eades filed a motion to reconsider and to vacate, specifically seeking leave to amend his complaint. Judge Mills summarily denied that motion. Eades appeals the sua sponte dismissal of his complaint and the denial of his request to amend the complaint.

Because we are reviewing a motion to dismiss and a motion for reconsideration, we state the facts as they have been alleged by Eades in his complaint and in his motion for reconsideration.

Eades was convicted of misdemeanor theft and sentenced to 364 days in prison. On May 17, 1980, Eades was an inmate at the Joliet Correctional Center, awaiting transfer to another facility to serve the remainder of his sentence. On that day Eades began to feel nauseous. He also felt pain in his abdomen. Sometime after noon, Eades reported to the prison's infirmary. He told the nurse there on duty that he had vomited four times that morning. After taking Eades's temperature, which was normal, and noting on the infirmary's log that Eades had complained of nausea and vomiting, the nurse sent Eades back to his cell. The nurse also noted on the log that there was a "slight rebound tenderness" on Eades's right abdomen.

At 3:30 p.m. Eades began to vomit blood. He was removed from his cell and taken to Silver Cross Hospital in Joliet. Doctors there at the hospital performed an emergency appendectomy. Eades remained at the hospital for four days and was released on May 21st to return to the prison's infirmary. Upon his release, Eades received doctor's orders to have the sutures, which were holding the abdominal incision together, removed in one week. Eades also received a sheet entitled "General Instructions For Home Care Following Major Abdominal Surgery." These instructions forbade Eades during his recovery time from lifting, pushing, or pulling any objects. These activity restrictions were designed to guard against strain of the incision on Eades's abdomen--at the time of his operation Eades was measured at 6'3" and 270 pounds.

Three days after Eades was returned to the prison's infirmary, on May 24th, he complained about pain at the site of the incision. A doctor noted bloody drainage under Eades's incisional dressing.

The next day, May 25th, the dressing pulled loose from Eades's incision. A notation on Eades's chart showed that one of the sutures had snapped.

One day later, May 26th, the incision began to gape open. The incision was draining. Eades's chart showed that he was continuing to complain about pain.

Two days later on May 28th, and one week from the time Eades had been released from the hospital, Eades repeated his complaints about abdominal pain. A nurse recorded drainage and bleeding from Eades's incision. Eades repeatedly asked for clean dressings for his incision and clean sheets for his bed during the week, but was not provided with either. According to the doctor's orders sent from the hospital, Eades's sutures should have been removed on this day.

The next day, May 29th, Eades was transferred by bus from the prison's infirmary at Joliet to the Vandalia Correctional Center, a distance of about 205 miles. He was forced to carry a heavy box of his belongings onto the bus. Eades was handcuffed and placed on a hard seat for the jolting seven-hour trip.

Once he arrived at Vandalia Eades showed a guard his incision, which at this point was pulling apart and draining green pus. Eades was in pain and asked to be taken to the prison's infirmary. The guard discouraged Eades from going to the infirmary by replying that it would be at Eades's "own discretion." Unsure of what that phrase might mean at a prison to which he was unaccustomed, Eades opted to be placed in a cell.

The next morning, May 30th, Eades went to the prison's infirmary. He was admitted, but the nurses there were uncertain of what they should do with Eades because his medical records had not been sent with him. They did note on the infirmary's log that the incision had pulled apart and was draining.

The following day, May 31st, Eades's chart showed that Eades's incision was oozing a "purient, bloody, foul smelling drainage."

On June 1st, three days after he had arrived at Vandalia, Eades's chart showed that his incision continued to leak a moderate amount of drainage, marked by a foul smell. A physician was notified. Later that evening the physician had Eades admitted to St. Mary's Hospital in Centralia. A treating physician at the hospital finally diagnosed Eades's mysterious ailment as an "infected appendectomy wound." Eades was treated at the hospital and his incision eventually healed.

Some three and one-half years after this episode concluded Eades filed a complaint against Governor Thompson and other state officials associated with Illinois's correctional system. ¹ Eades set out in the complaint the chronology of his episode and included the names of as many of the administrators, guards, doctors, and nurses as he could remember. He also named other "unknown individuals" who had been involved in the episode, but for whom Eades had no names. Eades stated in his complaint that he would add by amendment the specific names of the unknown individuals when their names became available to him through discovery.

Nearly five months after the complaint had been filed, but before any discovery had been completed, Judge Ackerman held a hearing on July 2, 1984. He ruled that Eades would be required to add the names of new parties within forty-five days and complete discovery within ninety days. A jury trial was set for the first week of November 1984.

The day following this hearing, Eades sent to the state defendants a set of interrogatories designed in part to elicit the specific names of the unknown individuals. Under Rule 33, defendants were required to answer those interrogatories within thirty days. Fed.R.Civ.P. 33(a). That would have left Eades with several days in which to amend his complaint with the additional names.

But on August 14th, the forty-second day after the hearing, Eades moved for leave to add new parties. He explained in his motion that none of the interrogatories had been answered. He asked for an extension of the forty-five day deadline to add new parties.

On the forty-fifth day, August 17th, Eades amended Count II of his complaint, his first amendment, by adding the names of some of the unknown parties. Those names had been revealed in answers to some of the interrogatories Eades received from the Vandalia defendants on August 15th, the forty-third day after the hearing. Eades again asked for additional time to add new parties because he had not yet received answers to his other, yet outstanding, interrogatories from the Joliet defendants. Eades filed this first amendment on a Friday.

The following Monday, August 20th, Eades received the remaining answers to his interrogatories. The next day, Tuesday, August 21st, now forty-nine days after the hearing, even though leave to amend had not been granted Eades filed a second amendment to his complaint, amending Count I, to add the remaining names of new parties.

Although during this time the defendants did not answer the interrogatories Eades had sent to them, they did prepare a motion to dismiss or for summary judgment. That motion was filed on July 26th, although the documents supporting the motion for some reason had been filed several days earlier on July 17th. Eades responded to this motion on July 26th with a brief in opposition. On the basis of the briefs and other papers Judge Ackerman denied the defendants' motion to dismiss or for summary judgment on August 8th.

Five days after Eades filed the second amendment to his complaint, on August 26th, his lawyer's offices (Brady & Brady of Bloomington, Illinois) were completely destroyed by fire, including all papers relating to Eades's case. Two days after the fire, on August 28th, the district court clerk's office notified Eades's lawyer that his request for additional time to add new parties through the second amendment which had already been filed on August 21st had been denied.

Thereafter on September 4th Eades filed a motion to extend time to complete discovery because of the fire and to reconsider the decision not to allow Eades to amend his complaint the second time. This motion was granted in full by order dated October 4th by United States Magistrate Charles Evans.

On November 23rd Judge Ackerman died. His successor, Judge Richard Mills, was appointed eight months later on July 22, 1985.

For nearly two years Eades's case remained...