Cobige v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 08 September 2011
• Docket Number: No. 10–3728.,10–3728.
• Citation: Cobige v. City of Chicago, 651 F.3d 780, 85 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1058 (7th Cir. 2011)
• Parties: Maurice COBIGE, personally and as special representative of the estate of Patricia Cobige, Plaintiff–Appellee,v.CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, et al., Defendants–Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

651 F.3d 780

85 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1058

Maurice COBIGE, personally and as special representative of the estate of Patricia Cobige, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, et al., Defendants–Appellants.

No. 10–3728.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued June 7, 2011.Decided July 12, 2011.As Amended on Denial of Rehearing Sept. 8, 2011.

Josh M. Friedman(argued), Attorney, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellee.Julian Nunes Henriques, Jr.(argued), Attorney, City of Chicago Law Department, Chicago, IL, for Defendants–Appellants.Before EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge, and BAUER and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge.

While in a police lockup, Patricia Cobige died of a heart arrhythmia.She was arrested on June 10, 2006, and pronounced dead at about 1:30 A.M. on June 12.Evidence from one of Cobige's cellmates, plus two deputy sheriffs and a civilian aide at the lockup, permitted a jury to find that she experienced severe abdominal pain throughout her confinement.Dan J. Fintel, Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University and head of coronary care at its hospitals, testified that the pain led Cobige to produce more epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), which combined with a pre-existing heart condition (ventricular hypertrophy) caused her death.Uterine tumors found during a post-mortem examination led Dr. Fintel to conclude that Cobige indeed had suffered serious abdominal pain; Peter Santucci, the medical expert for the defendants, agreed.Dr. Fintel thought that routine tests and care would have prevented Cobige's death had she been taken to an emergency room.Yet Cobige never received any medical attention after her arrest.A jury found that four police officers violated both state law and the federal Constitution by allowing Cobige to suffer untreated pain; the award is $5,000,000 in compensatory and $4,000 in punitive damages to Maurice Cobige, who sued as Patricia's son and special representative of her estate.The City of Chicago will indemnify the officers with respect to compensatory damages, and on this appeal we use “Chicago” or “defendants” to refer to the City plus the four officers.

The police officers who ignored Cobige's pleas for help did not want her to die, but they are responsible for that death nonetheless if the untreated pain caused it.This is an application of the “eggshell skull” rule: A tortfeasor takes his victim as he finds him, and if a special vulnerability (a thin skull, or here a ventricular hypertrophy) leads to an unusually large loss, the wrongdoer is fully liable.SeeColonial Inn Motor Lodge ex rel. Cincinnati Insurance Co. v. Gay,288 Ill.App.3d 32, 45, 223 Ill.Dec. 674, 680 N.E.2d 407, 416(1997);Prosser & Keeton on Torts§ 43 (5th ed.1984).The federal-law claim, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, requires proof of intentional wrongdoing or deliberate indifference to a serious medical need, seeFarmer v. Brennan,511 U.S. 825, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 128 L.Ed.2d 811(1994), but defendants do not contend that the evidence on that issue was deficient.The jury was entitled to conclude that multiple people told the four officers about Cobige's pain, and that each of the four turned a deaf ear—indeed, that one of them, Rene Dimalanta, directed Cobige not to tell sheriff's deputies about her pain when she was taken to the courthouse for a bond hearing, and that, if she did anyway, Dimalanta would see to it that she did not receive any medical care.Cobige did complain, the deputies deemed her too ill to be presented in court, and Dimalanta then carried through with this threat.

Chicago's principal appellate argument is that the proof does not establish causation.Dr. Fintel explained that epinephrine from pain is capable of causing death for only a brief time after each episode.Chicago maintains that Cobige died while sleeping peacefully; this is incompatible with Dr. Fintel's theory and requires judgment for the defense as a matter of law, Chicago concludes.

But the testimony on which this argument depends comes from police officers who denied that Cobige had ever been in pain.The jury was entitled to disbelieve them and to credit the testimony of Cobige's cellmate that the attacks of abdominal pain were frequent and becoming worse, and to infer that she had another episode of abdominal pain shortly before she died.So the district judge observed when denying Chicago's post-judgment motions.See752 F.Supp.2d 860, 869–70(N.D.Ill.2010).Moreover, the fact that Cobige was silent during the four hours before paramedics pronounced her dead need not mean that she was sleeping.A reasonable jury could have concluded that she was silent because she was dead.(The jurors were entitled to find that she was silent during those four hours; they were not required to believe one guard's testimony that Cobige was heard snoring after midnight of June 12.)

Chicago contends that there was another problem with Dr. Fintel's evidence: the judge allowed him to testify that a person with Cobige's symptoms should have been taken to a hospital.How could Dr. Fintel know this?, Chicago asks.He is not a specialist in police procedures.That's true enough, but the extent of his knowledge about how stationhouse lockups handle medical needs affects the weight rather than the admissibility of his testimony.Evidence is relevant whenever it has “any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”Fed.R.Evid. 401.Police procedures unknown to Dr. Fintel may affect the speed of a response, but the need for one is a subject within his medical expertise.Stationhouse personnel have other duties that may take precedence, seePortis v. Chicago,613 F.3d 702(7th Cir.2010), and police are entitled to weed out fakers, but these and other considerations that affect timing can be addressed by defense witnesses.None of Chicago's witnesses disputed Dr. Fintel on this point, however; the defense was that Cobige never said that she was in pain and never appeared to be in distress.

Some evidence in the record implies that the police themselves agree with Dr. Fintel's view that a person suffering abdominal pain needs swift medical care.A placard on the wall of the lockup told the guards that any prisoner claiming to experience abdominal pain should be taken to a hospital immediately.Chicago asked the judge to exclude this chart on the ground that the jury might interpret it as a legal requirement, rather than an exercise of caution and concern for prisoners.Again this is a subject on which the lawyers can present arguments to the jurors; it does not justify exclusion—certainly not when the defense was at the same time trying to block the plaintiff's expert from testifying about the subject.The judge was not required to keep the jury in the dark about the question whether the police department shares Dr. Fintel's...