Watson v. Caton
| Decision Date | 29 January 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 92-1269,92-1269 |
| Citation | 984 F.2d 537 |
| Parties | Charles N. WATSON, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. C. Mark CATON, et al., Defendants, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Charles N. Watson, on brief pro se.
Before SELYA, CYR and BOUDIN, Circuit Judges.
The appellant, Charles N. Watson, was an inmate in the Maine correctional system incarcerated at the Downeast Correctional Facility, and later at the Charleston Correctional Facility, at all times relevant to this lawsuit. In November 1991 Watson filed a complaint in federal court which alleged that the defendants, all officials of the Maine Department of Correction or the Downeast or Charleston prisons, had violated his federal constitutional rights, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Watson's complaint contained four counts, only three of which are at issue in this appeal. 1 In his first count, Watson described injuries he had sustained to his right hand before he went to prison. The injuries had required surgery, and the hand continued to cause problems. After he entered prison, beginning in February 1989, Watson sought treatment. The specialists he contacted would not travel to the prison, and prison officials would not allow him to go to the doctors. According to the complaint, defendant Peggie Mitchie, a nurse at the Downeast Correctional Facility, refused to examine Watson's hand because the injury had occurred before he went to prison, and she said that "therefore she was not responsible for care or treatment of that hand." Thereafter Watson says he continued to suffer and eventually a doctor did examine the hand and recommended another round of surgery.
The second count of the complaint alleged that Watson was injured when he fell through a weak ceiling while working at the Downeast prison. He saw a nurse, who treated a gash on his leg but declined to provide further treatment when he told her that he had also injured his back, saying that his back "would be okay." Not until he transferred to the Charleston prison did Watson receive treatment for his back injury; but even then, Watson complained, the doctors prescribed only medication and bed rest, and failed to order the physical therapy that he thought was necessary. Eventually, the injury required surgery, and even after the operation Watson's back remained "40% impaired."
Finally, Watson alleged in his fourth count that, while housed at the Downeast Correctional Facility, he purchased a number of cassette tapes and compact disks through the mail. When these items arrived at the prison, officials deemed them "non-allowable" and did not deliver them to Watson. Nor did they provide Watson with a "non-allowable property sheet," which, Watson contends, the Department of Correction "normally issues" in such situations. A corrections officer destroyed the tapes and disks, but the prison did not notify Watson of either the delivery or the destruction until 11 days had passed.
In addition to his complaint, Watson filed with the district court an application to proceed in forma pauperis. Acting on this request before any of the defendants had responded to the complaint, the district court granted Watson in forma pauperis status but dismissed the complaint on its own motion under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d) with a short opinion stating its reasons. After the district court denied his motion for reconsideration and motion to vacate judgment, Watson filed this appeal.
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d) a federal district court may dismiss an in forma pauperis complaint if the complaint is, among other things, "frivolous." A claim is "frivolous" within the meaning of section 1915(d) when it is "based on an indisputably meritless legal theory," or makes "clearly baseless" factual contentions. Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 327, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 1832, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989). We review a section 1915(d) dismissal for "abuse of discretion," Denton v. Hernandez, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 1728, 1734, 118 L.Ed.2d 340 (1992), taking into account the liberal pleading standards applicable to complaints filed by pro se plaintiffs.
Watson's first two counts alleged that the defendants failed to provide, or caused delays in providing, appropriate medical care. The courts have consistently refused to create constitutional claims out of disagreements between prisoners and doctors about the proper course of a prisoner's medical treatment, or to conclude that simple medical malpractice rises to the level of cruel and unusual punishment. See, e.g., Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106, 97 S.Ct. 285, 292, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976); DesRosiers v. Moran, 949 F.2d 15, 19 (1st Cir.1991). However, prison officials and doctors may violate the Eighth Amendment if they exhibit "deliberate indifference to serious medical needs." Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. at 106, 97 S.Ct. at 292. The obvious case would be a denial of needed medical treatment in order to punish the inmate. But deliberate indifference may also reside in "wanton" decisions to deny or delay care, Wilson v. Seiter, --- U.S. ----, ----, 111 S.Ct. 2321, 2326, 115 L.Ed.2d 271 (1992), where the action is recklessness, "not in the tort law sense but in the appreciably stricter criminal-law sense, requiring actual knowledge of impending harm, easily preventable." DesRosiers, 949 F.2d at 19.
Watson alleged in the first count of his complaint that the prison nurse refused to treat him for an injury, which proved serious enough to require surgery, on the non-medical ground that the state was not responsible for injuries caused by events that occurred before Watson entered prison. A deliberate refusal to treat a serious medical condition of a prisoner on such a ground could hardly be justified and, while the allegations may prove untrue, they are not "fantastic or delusional." Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. at 328, 109 S.Ct. at 1833. We conclude that Watson's first count was not frivolous, although it may--based on further information--prove to be wholly without merit. How and in what form that information is obtained is a matter for the...
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