McDonald v. Hardy
| Decision Date | 09 May 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 15–1102.,15–1102. |
| Parties | Donald L. McDONALD, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. Marcus HARDY, Warden, et al., Defendants–Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Donald L. McDonald, Joliet, IL, pro se.
Mary Ellen Welsh, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, for Defendants–Appellees.
Before RIPPLE, WILLIAMS, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.
RIPPLE
, Circuit Judge.
Donald McDonald was diagnosed with arthritis
and high cholesterol while serving a life sentence at Stateville Correctional Center (“Stateville”), a maximum-security prison in Illinois. Over the ten years following his diagnosis, he received a low-cholesterol diet planned by a dietician at the facility. In 2009, however, a new warden took the helm at Stateville, and he promptly discharged the dietician and cancelled all special diets, including Mr. McDonald's. The new warden also decreased the frequency of outdoor recreation for inmates to two days each week and altered the prison's job-assignment policy to restrict inmates from working in a particular job for more than one year.
As a result of these changes, Mr. McDonald brought this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983
against Marcus Hardy, the new warden, Daryl Edwards, an assistant warden, and Salvador Godinez, then the director of the Illinois Department of Corrections.1 Mr. McDonald claimed that Warden Hardy, with the support of Assistant Warden Edwards, had violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by cancelling his prescribed low-cholesterol diet, decreasing his outdoor-recreation time, and changing the job-assignment system. Mr. McDonald also alleged that Director Godinez had violated the Equal Protection Clause by allowing inmates at the other maximum-security prisons in Illinois to have prescription diets and more time for outdoor recreation. Mr. McDonald sought both damages and injunctive relief.
The district court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment on each of Mr. McDonald's four claims. In this appeal, Mr. McDonald challenges the grant of summary judgment only as to his claims concerning the cancellation of his low-cholesterol diet, the limited time given for outdoor recreation, and the purported disparity of treatment of inmates at different Illinois maximum-security prisons. Mr. McDonald does not mention the district court's rejection of his claim about the new system for assigning prison jobs; that claim therefore has been abandoned. See Thornton v. M7 Aerospace LP, 796 F.3d 757, 771 (7th Cir.2015)
We conclude that Warden Hardy and Assistant Warden Edwards are not entitled to summary judgment on Mr. McDonald's claim concerning the cancellation of his prescription diet, and we remand that claim for further proceedings. In all other respects we affirm the judgment of the district court.
Because the district court ruled in favor of the defendants at summary judgment, we view the following facts in the light most favorable to Mr. McDonald, the nonmoving party. See Riker v. Lemmon, 798 F.3d 546, 551 (7th Cir.2015)
.
Mr. McDonald, who has been incarcerated at Stateville for twenty years, was diagnosed with high cholesterol in 1998. A physician at the prison prescribed a low-cholesterol diet, along with cholesterol-lowering medication.2 Mr. McDonald remained on that prescription diet until the end of 2009, when Warden Hardy took charge. Warden Hardy then fired Stateville's dietician and cancelled all medical diets. Since then, Mr. McDonald has eaten the regular diet at Stateville, which includes foods that the dietician had warned him to avoid, including cheese, eggs, and foods containing high amounts of mayonnaise.3 Medical providers working at Stateville repeatedly have told Mr. McDonald that they cannot reinstate his prescription for a low-cholesterol diet because the cafeteria staff does not have the means to satisfy the prescription.
During a January 2014 deposition, Mr. McDonald acknowledged that his total cholesterol level had decreased at some point during the two years preceding the deposition, perhaps because doctors continued experimenting with different cholesterol medications.4 Specifically, Mr. McDonald stated that his total cholesterol level had gone “down from 400” milligrams per deciliter (“mg/dL”) to “around three.”5 That level, he added, was “still too high.”6 There is no evidence in the record, however, about Mr. McDonald's cholesterol level when his diet was cancelled four years before that deposition.
Mr. McDonald also has been diagnosed with arthritis
, for which physicians have recommended exercises and sometimes prescribed pain medication. Stateville provides inmates with outdoor recreation twice each week for two and one-half hours each day, but Mr. McDonald alleges that this time is insufficient to provide therapeutic treatment for his arthritis. He also asserts that other maximum-security Illinois prisons provide “full yard,” meaning “they have sometimes three and four times a day exercise programs where [inmates] might get three yards and a gym.”7
Mr. McDonald brought this action in March 2013. He first alleged that Warden Hardy had violated the Eighth Amendment by “maintain[ing] and enforc[ing an] institutional policy denying Plaintiff a low cholesterol diet.”8 He also asserted that Warden Hardy was “the moving force behind the Policy of two (2) days of recreation, two hours each day,” which, he said, caused him “to aggravate his medical conditions of high cholesterol, arth[ritis] and borderline diabetes
.”9 Mr. McDonald next contended that Assistant Warden Edwards had violated the Eighth Amendment when he “failed to create programs that offered medical diets” and failed to provide sufficient time for outdoor recreation.10 Finally, Mr. McDonald alleged that Director Godinez unconstitutionally discriminated against similarly situated Illinois inmates “by allowing Menard Correctional Center and Pontiac Correctional Center to provide special medical diets and yard or gym (exercise) more than two (2) times a we[e]k.”11 He sought damages against the individual defendants as well as “an injunction [r]equiring Stateville Correctional Center [to] provide [s]pecial diets for high cholesterol [and] diabetes, and an opportunity for plaintiff to exercise five (5) days a week.”12
In August 2013, five months after Mr. McDonald brought this action, he requested various documents from the defendants, including a “complete copy” of his medical file at Stateville, policies and procedures concerning medical diets and opportunities for exercise at Stateville, and policies and procedures concerning opportunities for exercise throughout the Illinois Department of Corrections.13 When the defendants failed to respond with all of the requested documents, Mr. McDonald twice asked the district court to compel production, and both times the court ordered the defendants to comply with Mr. McDonald's discovery requests.
Three months after the second order compelling discovery, and without complying with that order, the defendants moved for summary judgment. Warden Hardy and Assistant Warden Edwards did not dispute that Mr. McDonald had a medical prescription for a low-cholesterol diet when Warden Hardy arrived at Stateville in late 2009. Instead, these defendants simply asserted that “[n]o physician ha[d] prescribed a low cholesterol diet for Plaintiff in the last several years. ”14 These defendants also did not dispute that Warden Hardy had given (and Assistant Warden Edwards had carried out) the order to cancel Mr. McDonald's prescription. Nor did they offer evidence that Warden Hardy had consulted Mr. McDonald's physicians (or any medical source) before cancelling Mr. McDonald's prescription diet. And these defendants did not offer a medical expert's opinion that Mr. McDonald's low-cholesterol diet was unnecessary or that cancelling it had not harmed him and had not placed him at a greater risk of suffering a heart attack
or stroke.
Rather, the only relevant evidence submitted by any of the defendants was the transcript of Mr. McDonald's deposition. Warden Hardy and Assistant Warden Edwards—without producing any evidence showing what Mr. McDonald's cholesterol level had been before his diet was cancelled—asserted that Mr. McDonald did not have a valid claim because during his deposition he had acknowledged that his cholesterol level decreased from 400 mg/dL to 300 mg/dL in the two years preceding that January 2014 deposition. The defendants contended that this decrease established that Mr. McDonald's high cholesterol was being treated adequately “by physicians at Stateville with medication.”15 The defendants did not explain, though, how Mr. McDonald's claim could be defeated by evidence that his cholesterol level remained at least as high as 300 mg/dL two years or more after they had ended his diet. Mr. McDonald countered with medical literature (accepted by the district court without objection from the defendants) explaining that the optimal cholesterol range for someone of middle age is 115 mg/dL to 200 mg/dL. The defendants did not offer evidence, or even suggest, that a cholesterol level of either 300 mg/dL or 400 mg/dL is safe.
In granting summary judgment for the defendants on all claims, the district court first rejected Mr. McDonald's contention that the amount of outdoor recreation available to Stateville inmates is constitutionally deficient. The court reasoned that Mr. McDonald's evidence concerning his opportunities to exercise both in his cell and outdoors defeated his claim of an Eighth Amendment violation, particularly because Mr. McDonald had not presented evidence “that the limitation on his yard time adversely affected his cholesterol level or his arthritis
.”16 The court then turned to the cancellation of Mr. McDonald's low-cholesterol...
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