Dorsey v. Varga

• Decision Date: 15 December 2022
• Docket Number: 21-1132
• Citation: 55 F.4th 1094
• Parties: Jermari C. DORSEY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. John VARGA, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

55 F.4th 1094

Jermari C. DORSEY, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.John VARGA, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 21-1132

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued October 24, 2022

Decided December 15, 2022

Olaniyi Quddus Solebo, Attorney, Paul Hastings LLP, San Francisco, CA, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Nadine J. Wichern, Attorney, Office of the Attorney General, Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for Invitee Office of the Illinois Attorney General.

Julie Ann Teuscher, Attorney, Cassiday Schade LLP, Chicago, IL, for Invitee Wexford Health Sources, Inc.

Wexford Health Sources, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, Pro Se.

Before Hamilton, St. Eve, and Kirsch, Circuit Judges.

St. Eve, Circuit Judge.

Jermari Dorsey suffered a serious back injury while incarcerated. He alleges that his efforts to seek medical treatment were met with resistance from corrections officers, a nurse, and a doctor. Instead of being treated for back pain, Dorsey was prescribed psychiatric medications without his knowledge or consent. Dorsey filed suit, seeking redress for Eighth Amendment and due process violations. The district court screened his complaint as required by 28 U.S.C. § 1915A and determined that Dorsey had improperly joined unrelated claims in a single lawsuit. The court struck the complaint and denied Dorsey's motion to appoint counsel, but it invited Dorsey to file an amended complaint that cured the joinder problem. Dorsey attempted to comply with the court's instructions but to no avail. After deeming three amended complaints unsatisfactory, the district court dismissed the case. This appeal followed, and we appointed counsel to represent Dorsey.¹

Resolving joinder issues and deciding whether to recruit counsel are issues left to the district court's sound discretion, but the court must exercise that discretion within the bounds set by statute and caselaw. In handling this case, the district court went outside those bounds in some respects. Therefore, we affirm the judgment in part, reverse in part, and remand for further proceedings.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

We take the factual allegations in Dorsey's third amended complaint as true at the screening stage. Gomez v. Randle , 680 F.3d 859, 864 (7th Cir. 2012). Dorsey was unrepresented before the district court, so we construe his filings liberally. Shaw v. Kemper , 52 F.4th 331, 334 (7th Cir. 2022).

1. Dorsey's Back Injury

Dorsey is an Illinois state prisoner. The washing machines in the prison are not attached to drainpipes; water drains into buckets, which inmates must empty manually. On January 31, 2018, Dorsey was emptying a bucket when he felt a pop in his lower back and felt pain shoot down his leg. He informed Mr. Julius, a corrections officer, about his injury and asked for permission to see a nurse. Julius told Dorsey to "go lay down" and that "it was probably a sprain." Dorsey took ibuprofen

and lay down for two hours, but his pain worsened. He informed Julius that his pain had gotten worse and again requested permission to seek medical care. Julius responded that he "didn't care how much pain [Dorsey] was in," told Dorsey to "go sleep it off," and threatened to write Dorsey up. Dorsey went back to his cell but was unable to sleep.

The next morning, Dorsey could barely move. He asked his cellmate to bring him a form so he could request medical care. Dorsey detailed the circumstances of his injury and his symptoms, and his cellmate submitted the form on Dorsey's behalf. Days passed, and Dorsey received no medical treatment.

2. The Appointment with Nurse Doe

On February 6, six days after his injury, Dorsey was called to the healthcare unit. A registered nurse he identifies as Jane Doe examined him. Dorsey rated his pain as a 12 on a 1–10 scale. The nurse tested Dorsey's range of motion and asked him to sit, which he refused to do because standing up after-ward would be too painful. The nurse stated that she "did not care how much pain [Dorsey] was in" and refused to put in a request for him to see a doctor. She stated that protocol was for Dorsey to request another appointment after at least two days, then a third appointment at least two days after the second—only then could Dorsey see a doctor. She gave Dorsey an 18-pack of ibuprofen

and sent him back to his cell.

The nurse's progress notes indicate that she did not take Dorsey's injury as seriously as Dorsey did. Although she reported that he "presents as not being able to fully bend forward or side to side," that he is "unable to sit [be]cause [it is] difficult to get up," and that he experiences "distress or pain with movement" when bending, she noted no gait disturbance, "[s]welling, redness, bruising, tenderness to touch, limitation to movement," numbness, or tingling. She also suggested that Dorsey was exaggerating his symptoms, writing that she "viewed [Dorsey] ambulate up [the] hall" without difficulty, but when he entered the waiting room, he "began moaning [and] groaning when he knew he was being observed." Dorsey characterizes this as a false statement that "could cause others who read her report not to take [him] seriously."

3. The Prescriptions

Dorsey left his February 6 appointment under the impression that he would have to request medical appointments two more times before a doctor would see him. But that same day, unbeknownst to Dorsey, Dr. Doyle—whom Dorsey describes as a "[p]sych [d]octor"—wrote him three prescriptions. The prescriptions were for an anti-anxiety medication, an anti-convulsant, and an anti-depressant, which Dorsey calls "[p]sych [m]eds." Dorsey insists that he did not consent to take these medications and that he had not seen Dr. Doyle or any other psych doctor except for routine intake.

To Dorsey's surprise, on February 8, two days after his appointment with the nurse, he was told over the intercom to "report to medline," the window from which inmates receive medications. Because Dorsey was still in pain, he asked a corrections officer to call him a ride. The officer refused, so Dorsey walked. Dorsey took the four pills he received at medline, believing they were for his back injury. But the pills exacerbated his symptoms rather than relieved them. Within 10 minutes, Dorsey began feeling dizzy and lightheaded, and his pain did not subside.

The next morning, February 9, Dorsey was called back to medline, but he was in too much pain to walk. He relayed that message to the corrections officer on duty and requested a ride. The officer refused to order Dorsey a ride and threatened him with a disciplinary write-up for refusing to report to medline. Dorsey clarified that he was not refusing; he simply could not walk that far. Dorsey did not visit medline that morning, and the same pattern recurred in the evening: Dorsey was called to medline, he asked for a ride, an officer refused to call him one, and the officer threatened him with a write-up. Dorsey asked to speak to a supervising officer, Lieutenant Andrews. Dorsey explained that he "was not refusing but that [he] had hurt [his] back and the medication they were giving [him] was not helping with the pain." Lt. Andrews arranged for a ride to medline, where Dorsey again received four pills he believed were for his back pain.

When Dorsey returned to his cell, Lt. Andrews stated that the nurse on duty had said that Dorsey was taking psych meds. Lt. Andrews added that Dorsey would receive no more rides to medline. Dorsey objected, stating that he had never seen a psych doctor and that if he had been prescribed psych meds, "it was bogus and illegal." Lt. Andrews replied that "the nurse said [the pills] were mandatory" and that if Dorsey did not take them, then he "would get tickets and would eventually be put in segregation." Dorsey explained the negative effects the prescriptions were having, but Lt. Andrews was unmoved.

Over the next several days, corrections officers repeatedly disciplined Dorsey for failing to take his pills. In total, Dorsey received four disciplinary tickets for failing to visit medline. Dorsey's prescriptions were discontinued on February 13, one week after they were first prescribed.

B. Procedural Background

After exhausting his administrative remedies, Dorsey filed this lawsuit on January 21, 2020. His complaint spanned 46 pages, including attachments, and asserted three claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against 12 defendants. Two claims alleged Eighth Amendment violations based on the poorly maintained washing machines and deliberate indifference to a serious medical condition, his back injury. The third alleged a due process violation, that Dorsey was prescribed medications without his consent. Along with his complaint, Dorsey moved for the district court to appoint counsel for him.

The district court² screened the complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. That section, part of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "PLRA"), requires the court to review suits filed by prisoners against "a governmental entity or officer or employee of a governmental entity" before defendants are served with process, § 1915A(a), and to "identify cognizable claims or dismiss the complaint, or any portion of the complaint, if the complaint—(1) is frivolous, malicious, or fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted; or (2) seeks monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such relief." § 1915A(b).

On June 15, 2020, the court found that joinder was improper and held that the case could not proceed because "[t]he claims that [Dorsey] seeks to raise in this lawsuit involve separate conduct by separate sets of Defendants, and the claims are legally and factually distinct from each other." The court gave Dorsey advice about how to replead his case, struck the complaint, denied his motion to recruit counsel, and invited Dorsey to file an amended complaint.

Dorsey accepted that invitation and filed a first amended complaint that significantly improved upon the original. The complaint now totaled 17 pages, named six defendants, and asserted...