King v. Cooke
| Decision Date | 15 August 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 93-2649,93-2649 |
| Citation | 26 F.3d 720 |
| Parties | Shedrick L. KING, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Weldon COOKE, Robert Doster, Charles Bloomer, Tim Todd, and Various Unknown Physicians and Surgeons, Wishard Memorial Hospital, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Hamid Kashani (argued), Gloria K. Grinnan, Indianapolis, IN, for plaintiff-appellant.
Wayne E. Uhl, Deputy Atty. Gen. (argued), Matthew C. Robinson, Office of the Atty. Gen., Gen. Litigation, Indianapolis, IN, for defendants-appellees.
Before BAUER and CUDAHY, Circuit Judges, and MORAN, District Judge. *
During a riot at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana on April 21-22, 1986, emergency squad guards used "artillery simulation devices" to subdue prisoners. Inmate Shedrick King, who was locked in his cell the entire time and did not participate in the uprising, claimed his eyes were injured from the gas used by the prison guards. A lockdown went into effect after the uprising and King was not permitted to see a doctor for nearly a month despite repeated requests. His right eye was subsequently removed and vision in his left eye is impaired.
In 1987, King brought pro se claims under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 and state law against the defendant prison doctors (Weldon Cooke and Robert Doster) and prison hospital administrators (Tim Todd and Charles Bloomer), claiming that their deliberate indifference to his medical needs violated the Eighth Amendment. 1 He alleged that although the prison doctors referred him to eye specialists, defendants Bloomer and Todd repeatedly refused to schedule these outside trips. He also alleged that Drs. Cooke and Doster and other unknown doctors ignored his numerous complaints of severe pain, refused to see him despite nearly daily requests for care and eventually misdiagnosed and mistreated his condition. King was also seen several times at the Wishard Memorial Eye Clinic before his eye was removed in June 1987. The defendants claim King's eye infection resulted from a BB gun shot wound inflicted in 1973. The record indicated that King had suffered from eye problems in his right eye for several years although the condition was apparently stabilized in 1985.
Although the defendants initially admitted King's allegations in their answer, several years into the action they amended their answer to deny liability. The district court subsequently granted summary judgment for the defendants. King appeals from both the order granting the defendants leave to amend their answer and the summary judgment for the defendants.
Given its slipshod performance throughout this litigation, it comes as no surprise that the Indiana Office of the Attorney General received Rule 11 sanctions for filing its answer without carefully reading it. But, despite the state's argument to the contrary, the imposition of sanctions does not resolve King's claim that the amendment came too late and unduly prejudiced his case. 2
King filed his complaint in September 1987. The court appointed him counsel in February 1988. In September 1988, after twice ignoring filing deadlines, the defendants filed an answer admitting that they were deliberately indifferent to King's medical condition and that this indifference constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. 3 They also admitted the factual basis for King's state claims, but denied liability under state law. But the answer also raised affirmative defenses of qualified immunity and failure to state a claim, and concluded with a prayer for relief that King "take nothing by way of his complaint."
In October 1988, King's attorney, Donald Pagos of Michigan City, petitioned to withdraw from the case, although inexplicably leave was not granted until April 1990. King was incarcerated in Michigan City when Pagos was appointed, but was subsequently transferred to the Indiana Reformatory in Pendleton, Indiana. Pagos petitioned for withdrawal on the basis of his inability to communicate with King after the transfer to Pendleton. Although the district court did not rule on the motion for withdrawal until April 1990, the docket makes clear that King was effectively without representation after October 1988. Throughout 1989, King wrote several letters to Pagos and the district court inquiring about the status of the withdrawal motion and his case, expressing concern that he was unable to meet the discovery deadlines in the original scheduling order. 4 In November 1989, the district court informed King it was seeking new counsel for him. The district court in January 1991 appointed King's present counsel, who promptly commenced discovery. 5
The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment in December 1991. King responded with a motion for partial judgment on the pleadings pursuant to F.R.C.P. 12(c), on the basis of the defendants' admissions. The defendants, realizing that they had mistakenly admitted the allegations, moved for leave to amend their answer to deny liability. The district court referred the matter to a magistrate judge, who found that the admissions were merely a word processing error and that the defendants had otherwise indicated that they denied liability--through their affirmative defenses, prayer for relief and a status report filed before their answer indicating that they denied the allegations. The magistrate judge also found that King would not be prejudiced by the amendment since he had not relied on the admissions. The district court adopted the magistrate's report and allowed the amendment. King moved for reconsideration after our decision in Daugherity v. Traylor Bros., Inc., 970 F.2d 348 (7th Cir.1992), but this motion was denied.
King argues that the district court abused its discretion by granting defendants leave to change their admissions to denials. Cf. Daugherity, 970 F.2d at 351 (). Under F.R.C.P. 15(a), courts should freely allow pleading amendments "in the absence of any apparent or declared reason--such as undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on the part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party by virtue of allowance of the amendment, [or] futility of amendment." Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182, 83 S.Ct. 227, 330, 9 L.Ed.2d 222 (1962); Villa v. City of Chicago, 924 F.2d 629, 632 (7th Cir.1991). King does not allege bad faith or dilatory motive; rather he contends that defendants unduly delayed filing their amendment and that he would suffer severe prejudice from the amendment.
The defendants filed their motion to amend more than three years after filing the answer. Apparently they had not noticed their error until King pointed it out in his motion for judgment on the pleadings (hence the Rule 11 sanctions). The defendants argue that they did not "delay" since they promptly moved to amend upon discovering the error. But the state should not be permitted to invoke some sort of discovery rule triggered by the simple act of reading its own pleadings. We hold the state responsible for the three year delay. But delay alone will not generally justify denying a motion to amend a pleading absent a showing of prejudice from the delay. Tragarz v. Keene Corp., 980 F.2d 411, 432 (7th Cir.1992); Textor v. Board of Regents, 711 F.2d 1387, 1391 (7th Cir.1983). However, "the longer the delay, the greater the presumption against granting leave to amend ... when extreme, 'delay itself may be considered prejudicial,' " Tamari v. Bache & Co., 838 F.2d 904, 908 (7th Cir.1988), quoting Andrews v. Bechtel Power Corp., 780 F.2d 124, 139 (1st Cir.1985).
King argues that he is prejudiced by the three year delay because important evidence has gone stale and he is now unable to locate witnesses. The defendants' responses to King's discovery requests bear out King's claim. In an attempt to locate witnesses to the alleged actions of the guards on April 22, 1986, and King's subsequent requests for medical attention, King requested the names and whereabouts of prison staff, infirmary employees and inmates of Cellhouse C (where King was imprisoned and the uprising occurred). The defendants responded that "No one can be found at this time who has any personal knowledge of the injuries." In response to the request for the whereabouts of infirmary employees, the defendants listed 52 names, of whom the whereabouts of 29 were unknown. The defendants declined to provide a list of inmates who were incarcerated in Cellhouse C in 1986-87, claiming this would require looking through 10,000 individual files. King argues that, at this late date, it would be nearly impossible for him to locate witnesses through any other means, but that, in any event, their memories of the 1986 events have probably faded.
Disturbingly, King also alleges that crucial prison logbooks and documents no longer exist (although he explicitly does not allege that the defendants themselves destroyed the documents). King requested from the defendants all log books used by officers of Cellhouse C in 1986, and logs of inmate telephone calls, sick calls and sick passes, obviously to establish the number of times he requested medical assistance. The defendants responded that the information was available for inspection upon request. But when King's counsel went to the Indiana State Prison in April 1992 to inspect the documents, he claims he was told that these documents no longer existed, although similar documents existed for the dates before and after the requested time period. King also produced a Department of Corrections directive dated just prior to the April 1986 uprising indicating that no records at the Indiana State Prison should be destroyed.
Fulfilling the fears...
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