Cooper v. Casey

• Decision Date: 02 October 1996
• Docket Number: 95-3529,Nos. 95-2324,s. 95-2324
• Parties: Darnell COOPER and Anthony Davis, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Michael CASEY, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 914

97 F.3d 914

Darnell COOPER and Anthony Davis, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Michael CASEY, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

Nos. 95-2324, 95-3529.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 16, 1996.

Decided Oct. 2, 1996.

Steven D. McCormick, Roger L. Taylor, Barry E. Fields (argued), Sarah R. Marmor, Kirkland & Ellis, Chicago, IL, for Darnell Cooper in Nos. 95-2324, 95-3529.

Steven D. McCormick, Roger L. Taylor, Barry E. Fields (argued), Sarah R. Marmor, Kirkland & Ellis, Chicago, IL, for Anthony Davis in No. 95-2324.

Mary E. Welsh (argued), Office of the Attorney General, Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Michael Casey, Kevin Laskey, Charles Banks, Rodney Stewart, James Cervenka, Clyde E. Nash, Keith Langston, Rodney D. Johnson in No. 95-2324.

Roger L. Taylor, Barry E. Fields (argued), Sarah R. Marmor, Kirkland & Ellis, Chicago, IL, for Anthony Davis in No. 95-3529.

Mary E. Welsh (argued), Office of the Attorney General, Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Michael Casey, Kevin Laskey, Rodney Stewart, James Cervenka, Clyde E. Nash, Keith Langston, Rodney D. Johnson in No. 95-3529.

Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and ESCHBACH and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Chief Judge.

Two cellmates in the disciplinary wing of Illinois' Stateville prison brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against several guards at the prison, claiming that the guards had beaten them and then refused to give them medical assistance. A five-day jury trial resulted in a judgment for each of the plaintiffs of $5,000 in compensatory damages and $60,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $130,000 for both plaintiffs. The judge then awarded the plaintiffs $163,000 in attorneys' fees and $12,000 in costs. 897 F.Supp. 1136 (N.D.Ill.1995). The state appeals from both the underlying judgment and the award of attorneys' fees.

The plaintiffs testified that as they were being led back to their cells in handcuffs after a stint in the prison's recreational yard, they spotted a friend named Bujack and shouted greetings to him that he answered in kind. One of the defendants, Captain Clyde Nash, came out of his office and told the plaintiffs to "hold the damn noise down." Another defendant--a guard who was escorting the plaintiffs--told them they had "fronted him off in front of the Big C," a reference to Captain Nash (either "Big Clyde" or "Big Crusher"). Prisoners and guards began bickering. When they reached the cell, one of the defendants shoved one of the plaintiffs in the back, provoking the angry response, "Don't be putting your damn hands on me while I am cuffed." The officer threatened to remove the plaintiff's handcuffs and whip or kick his ass. The plaintiff's reply was that such an act would make the officer "bogus" (that is, a wrongdoer). The officers then removed the plaintiffs' handcuffs and, joined by other guards who are also defendants, kicked and beat and maced the plaintiffs, inflicting cuts, severe muscular pain, and (as a consequence of the mace) a burning sensation in their eyes and skin. After the beatings the plaintiffs shouted for medical assistance, to which one officer replied, "Fuck y'all." Despite their repeated pleas the plaintiffs received no medical assistance until the second day after the beating, when they were finally seen by a prison doctor, who ordered x-rays. The x-rays were negative but the doctor prescribed a mild dosage of Robaxin, a prescription drug for the relief of muscular pain.

The defendants' evidence consisted principally of their own testimony and that of prison medical personnel. They testified that the verbal altercation sparked by the shouted greetings to Bujack escalated into a general melee when another inmate shouted "Rodney King!" (The police officers who had been prosecuted for using excessive force in arresting Rodney King had just been acquitted, provoking a race riot in Los Angeles.) The plaintiffs had struck the first blows and no greater force had been used than was necessary to handcuff them--they had managed somehow to remove their handcuffs before the melee began. The prison doctor testified that there was no evidence of significant injury to the plaintiffs save their subjective claims of pain.

The jury didn't have to believe the defendants, who on this appeal make no serious effort to show that there was insufficient evidence of excessive force to support the jury's verdict but do challenge vigorously the finding of deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs' need for medical attention. They argue both that the injuries were too slight to create a constitutional entitlement to medical treatment and that there is no evidence that the defendants knew the plaintiffs had been injured. In support of the first argument they point to the sparsity of evidence that the plaintiffs sustained any injuries, let alone serious ones, and in support of the second argument they point to the plaintiffs' inability to identify which of the defendants knew what and when.

Deliberately to ignore a request for medical assistance has long been held to be a form of cruel and unusual punishment, e.g., Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104, 97 S.Ct. 285, 291, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976), but this is provided that the illness or injury for which assistance is sought is sufficiently serious or painful to make the refusal of assistance uncivilized. E.g, Davis v. Jones, 936 F.2d 971, 972 (7th Cir.1991). A prison's medical staff that refuses to dispense bromides for the sniffles or minor aches and pains or a tiny scratch or a mild headache or minor fatigue--the sorts of ailments for which many people who are not in prison do not seek medical attention--does not by its refusal violate the Constitution. The Constitution is not a charter of protection for hypochondriacs. But the fact that a condition does not produce "objective" symptoms does not entitle the medical staff to ignore it. A similar point is familiar from social security disability cases. Pain, fatigue, and other subjective, nonverifiable complaints are in some cases the only symptoms of a serious medical condition. To insist in such a case, as the social security disability law does not, Sarchet v. Chater, 78 F.3d 305 (7th Cir.1996); Metz v. Shalala, 49 F.3d 374, 377 (8th Cir.1995); Fair v. Bowen, 885 F.2d 597, 601-03 (9th Cir.1989), that the subjective complaint, even if believed by the trier of fact, is insufficient to warrant an award of benefits would place a whole class of disabled people outside the protection of that law.

The issue here is not disability. It is whether the plaintiffs were in sufficient pain to entitle them to pain medication within the first 48 hours after the beating. That was an issue for the jury. See Murphy v. Walker, 51 F.3d 714, 719 (7th Cir.1995) (per curiam). To require a threshold showing of an "objective" injury, the sort of thing that might reveal itself on an x-ray, or in missing teeth, or in a bruised and battered physical appearance, would confer immunity from claims of deliberate indifference on sadistic guards, since it is possible to inflict substantial and prolonged pain without leaving any "objective" traces on the body of the victim. Williams v. Boles, 841 F.2d 181, 183 (7th Cir.1988); Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 13-14, 112 S.Ct. 995, 1002-03, 117 L.Ed.2d 156 (1992) (concurring opinion). So the plaintiffs were not required to call a medical expert as a witness; and the defendants' medical witness helped the plaintiffs' case as much as he helped the defendants'. He acknowledged on cross-examination that he would not have ordered x-rays had he not had some reason to believe that the plaintiffs might be injured. And notwithstanding the negative result of the x-rays he prescribed a prescription painkiller, even though for minor pain nonprescription painkillers are adequate. It would be a different case if, as in Goffman v. Gross, 59 F.3d 668 (7th Cir.1995), the existence or gravity of the particular medical harm were outside a layperson's, and hence the jury's, understanding. That was a case about the effects on human health of ambient smoke; this is a case about pain--which students of philosophy will recognize as the textbook example of a uniquely subjective experience.

As to whether the defendants knew that the plaintiffs needed pain medication--a prerequisite to liability for deliberate indifference to a prisoner's medical needs, Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, ---- - ----, 114 S.Ct. 1970, 1979-80, 128 L.Ed.2d 811 (1994); Billman v. Indiana Dept. of Corrections, 56 F.3d 785, 788 (7th Cir.1995)--we do not think that the fact that the plaintiffs directed their request to the world at large, as it were, by screaming from their cells, rather than directing the request to a specific guard, entitled the defendants to judgment as a matter of law. The defendants were all stationed in the plaintiffs' wing of the prison. It was a permissible though not inevitable inference that all of them would have heard the plaintiffs' cries during the period of almost 48 hours before medical assistance was offered, especially since all had participated in the beating of the plaintiffs and would therefore have had no basis for believing them simply noisy malingerers. When guards use excessive force on prisoners, the requirements for proving deliberate indifference to the medical needs of the beaten prisoners ought to be relaxed somewhat. Beating a person in violation of the Constitution should impose on the assailant a duty of prompt attention to any medical need to which the beating might give rise, by analogy to the duty in ordinary tort law to provide assistance to a person whom one has injured, even if without fault. E.g., Vahlsing v. Commercial Union Ins. Co., 928 F.2d 486, 491 (1st Cir.1991); Restatement (Second) of Torts § 322 (1965). And here it was not without fault.

The defendants complain about the district judge's evidentiary rulings, in particular his refusal to allow testimony...