Echols v. Craig, 14-1829
| Decision Date | 04 May 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 14-1829,14-1829 |
| Citation | 855 F.3d 807 |
| Parties | Derrick ECHOLS, Jr., Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Frederick A. CRAIG, Defendant–Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Nicholas A. Gowen, Attorney, Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C., Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff–Appellant.
James Edward Abbott, Attorney, Christie Bolsen Benear, Attorney, Litchfield
Cavo LLP, Chicago, IL, for Defendant–Appellee.
Before Easterbrook, Kanne, and Hamilton, Circuit Judges.
Derrick Echols, an Illinois inmate, claims in this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that prison dentist Dr. Frederick Craig (an employee of Wexford Health Sources) violated the Eighth Amendment by providing dental care with deliberate indifference to Echols' serious health needs. While Dr. Craig was extracting a wisdom tooth, a drill bit broke. Dr. Craig sutured Echols' gum with gauze and at least one half-inch long piece of the broken bit still inside, where it caused pain for about two weeks before it was finally removed.
Knowledge is the key issue in this lawsuit. Echols alleges that Craig sutured the extraction site after intentionally packing it with non-soluble gauze and without first locating the missing shards from the broken drill bit. The district court screened Echols' operative complaint, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, and dismissed it with the explanation that Echols' allegations are factually frivolous. On appeal, we conclude that Echols' allegations are quite plausible and state a claim for violation of the Eighth Amendment. We vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.
Because we review a dismissal on § 1915A screening, we treat the allegations in the complaint as true, but without vouching for their objective truth. Plaintiff Echols is a prisoner in the Stateville Correctional Center. He filed a pro se complaint alleging that Dr. Craig and Dr. Jaqueline Mitchell (another dentist employed by Wexford) were deliberately indifferent to the pain and potential for further injury caused by having the gauze and fragment of drill bit sutured into his gum. Dr. Craig had removed one of Echols' wisdom teeth and sewed up the extraction area.
According to Echols' initial complaint, when he returned to Dr. Mitchell nine days after the extraction to have the sutures removed, he complained of a metallic taste in his mouth, blood and pus oozing from the extraction site, a small knot in the gum next to that site, and a lot of pain. But Dr. Mitchell, instead of ordering an X-ray, simply told Echols that these problems would go away. The next day Echols asked to see a dentist again because the pain had increased, but his request was denied. Three days after that, the initial complaint continued, a wad of gauze and a piece of metal drill bit (about one-half inch long) dislodged from Echols' gum while he was rinsing his mouth.
Dr. Mitchell then opened the extraction site and removed more gauze and a small piece of tooth root. Echols attached to this complaint a mostly illegible chart from the prison infirmary listing the dental services he received and a "Shakedown Record" confirming that Echols, fourteen days after the tooth extraction, gave prison staff a "Dental Drill Bit" and a "small piece of gauze." He also attached a grievance officer's decision substantiating his grievance about the incident and acknowledging that an "X ray was produced to verify objects were in grievant's mouth," and the Administrative Review Board's decision recounting Echols' allegation that, after the half-inch piece had worked loose, Dr. Mitchell had removed more of the broken bit from his gum after an X-ray.
The district court screened this complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A and initially allowed it to proceed against both Dr. Craig and Dr. Mitchell. Later the court granted Dr. Mitchell's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. After the court had recruited counsel to assist Echols under § 1915(e)(1), he amended the complaint to drop Dr. Mitchell from the lawsuit. This amended complaint repeated the allegations in the initial complaint. As before, Echols claimed that Dr. Craig, by leaving the gauze and broken bit in the extraction site and not following up on his condition, ignored an obvious risk and caused him more than two weeks of unnecessary pain.
On Dr. Craig's motion, the district court dismissed the amended complaint, again on the ground that it failed to state a claim of deliberate indifference. The court reasoned that in the revised version, Echols did not allege explicitly that Dr. Craig intended to cause him pain or that he knew about the gauze and broken drill bit in his gum. The court acknowledged that deliberate indifference can be inferred from treatment decisions that are far afield of accepted professional standards. The court found, however, that no such inference could arise in this case because Echols did not allege that Dr. Craig made a treatment decision to leave metal and gauze in the extraction site.
The district court gave Echols another chance to amend his complaint, which he did. But by then his lawyer had withdrawn. The second amended complaint (the pro se version at issue in this appeal) included new details. Echols alleges that during the tooth extraction, he heard a popping sound and that Dr. Craig, who was performing the procedure with Dr. Mitchell's assistance, responded to his inquiry by saying, "Gosh, the drill bit broke," and then, "Everything's okay." Dr. Mitchell asked Dr. Craig if he had the drill bit, and, according to Echols, Dr. Craig replied, "It broke." Dr. Craig then sutured the site after packing it with gauze, which, Echols maintains, is not done by dentists because gauze does not dissolve. Later that day, Echols continues, the infirmary was placed on lockdown when administrators learned that a drill bit was missing. Echols later complained to prison administrators and to Dr. Craig and Dr. Mitchell multiple times that he tasted metal, had blood and pus oozing from the extraction site, and was in extreme pain, but his requests to be examined were ignored.
The second amended complaint includes additional information that Echols learned from personal investigation. An X-ray that Dr. Craig took after the extraction, says Echols in the complaint, shows the broken bit inside his sutured gum. Echols points to the favorable decision on his grievance and the line in that decision saying that an "X ray was produced to verify objects were in grievant's mouth." In the second amended complaint, Echols also alludes to the follow-up ruling of the Administrative Review Board, which implies that the X-ray was taken before Dr. Mitchell reopened the extraction site and shows more pieces of the bit still in his gum.
In screening Echols' second amended complaint under § 1915A, the district court called his allegations "factually frivolous" and dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice. The court began by acknowledging that the complaint "includes additional factual allegations which, if true, would suggest" that Dr. Craig had reason "to believe the drill bit was lost in Echols' mouth but sutured his wound nonetheless." Yet this scenario, the court asserted, was "fanciful and incredible" for three reasons. First, the new allegations were not mentioned in Echols' grievances or first two complaints even though these documents were quite detailed and one of the complaints was drafted by counsel. Second, the medical records attached to the complaint did not identify Dr. Mitchell as a participant in the initial procedure to extract the tooth. And, third, according to the court, Echols admitted that he was "heavily sedated" during the procedure yet alleged he overheard the conversation between the two dentists about the broken drill bit.
On appeal, Echols argues that the district court erred by dismissing his Eighth Amendment claim against Dr. Craig as factually frivolous. He asserts that his additional allegations in the second amended complaint are consistent with the allegations in the earlier versions and are not implausible or frivolous.
A complaint cannot be dismissed under § 1915A as factually frivolous unless it rests on allegations that are clearly baseless, irrational, fanciful, or delusional. See Felton v. City of Chicago , 827 F.3d 632, 635 (7th Cir. 2016) ; Edwards v. Snyder , 478 F.3d 827, 829–30 (7th Cir. 2007). In our view, Echols' new allegations—those, which in the district court's view, raise the inference that Dr. Craig knew the broken drill bit was "lost" in Echols' gum when he sutured it closed—are quite plausible, not "factually frivolous."
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