10-3696 Florek v. Village of Mundelein, Illinois

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Civil Rights
Due process; medical assistance

Summary judgment was properly granted to officers on a refusal to provide medical assistance, where they refused to give a baby aspirin to a suspect in custody who claimed to be having a heart attack.

“With that caveat, summary judgment was proper in this case. The result is dictated by a straightforward application of the factors we highlighted in Williams. There, we identified four factors that courts might look to in evaluating whether an officer’s response to an arrestee’s medical needs was reasonable. The factors are (1) ‘notice of the arrestee’s medical need . . . whether by word . . . or through observation of the arrestee’s physical symptoms’; (2) ‘the seriousness of the medical need’; (3) ‘the scope of the requested treatment,’ which is balanced against the seriousness of the medical need; and (4) police interests, a factor which ‘is wide-ranging in scope and can include administrative, penological, and investigatory concerns.’Williams, 509 F.3d at 403. One should not fixate on factors, however: the intuitive, organizing principal is that police must do more to satisfy the reasonableness inquiry when the medical condition they confront is apparent and serious and the interests of law enforcement in delaying treatment are low. That is not the situation here. As to the first factor, officers had knowledge of the request for baby aspirin, but did not know that Florek was experiencing chest pains, and her outward appearance did not put officers on notice of her medical condition. (Again, the way the parties presented the issue leads us to hold to one side Florek’s contention that she did tell officers she was experiencing chest pains and requested an ambulance.) Although her breathing was rapid at one point, Hansen’s advice to take slower breaths appears to have been effective. Moreover, Florek was conversing at the scene, admonishing her son for his association with a drug dealer. In short, law enforcement were not on notice of a serious medical condition. The request for baby aspirin was minor in scope as treatments go, but the weight of this factor is substantially reduced by the fact that the medical need did not appear to be great. Our case law does not require police officers to alleviate all discomfort or distress associated with arrest. Sides, 496 F.3d at 828 (‘[T]he Constitution does not require arrests to be conducted in comfort.’). As to the fourth factor we identified in Williams, police had a valid interest in denying the request for aspirin. Although the police appear to have quickly brought the arrest scene under control, they were executing a search warrant for illegal narcotics, and they had no way of knowing if a particular medication was in fact what it purported to be. (The same conclusion might not apply to an arrestee’s request to take prescription medication in accordance with the instructions on the bottle, as the containers for prescriptions describe the proper appearance of the pill and the symptoms that trigger their use.)

Affirmed.

10-3696 Florek v. Village of Mundelein, Illinois

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Valdez, Mag. J., Flaum, J.

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