Justia U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff began experiencing severe headaches and swelling in his left eye in 2007 while incarcerated. Shortly after his release, plaintiff was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a serious form of bone cancer. According to plaintiff, surgery would have been sufficient to treat the disease had prison staff detected it earlier. However, due to the late diagnosis, chemotherapy and radiation are now necessary. In his suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, the district court held that plaintiff pled sufficient facts upon which one could draw the inference that defendants violated the Eighth Amendment and committed medical malpractice. The doctor and nurse filed an interlocutory appeal, arguing that their involvement with plaintiff was minimal and cannot form the basis for a finding of deliberate indifference or gross negligence. The Sixth Circuit reversed, finding the defendants entitled to qualified immunity. Neither negligent medical care, nor delay in providing medical care, can rise to the level of a constitutional violation absent specific allegations of sufficiently harmful acts or omissions reflecting deliberate indifference.

In 2004, plaintiff had arthroscopic surgery to treat pain and instability in his shoulder joint. The doctor implanted a pain-pump catheter and, over the next two days, a Stryker pain pump delivered a regular dose of a local anesthetic, bupivicaine, to the joint. Plaintiff’s condition improved after surgery but worsened over time, and in 2008 he learned he no longer had any cartilage remaining in his shoulder, a condition called chondrolysis. He sued, alleging strict liability, negligence and breach of warranty. The district court concluded that Stryker could not reasonably have known about the risk of chondrolysis in 2004 and thus had no duty to warn of the risk and held that Plaintiff failed as a matter of law to prove causation. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. Plaintiff did not present any evidence that Stryker knew or should have known that the use was dangerous or that a warning on Stryker's pain pump would have caused the doctor not to use the device in his joint space.