8th Amendment violations

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Lamonte Lake v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc. et al

Case No.: 15-2360

Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and POSNER and KANNE, Circuit Judges

Lamonte Lake, a prisoner at Illinois’ Hill Correctional Center, claims in this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that Wexford Health Sources, Inc., a contractor serving the state’s prisons, and prison dentist Carol Jackson, a Wexford employee, were deliberately indifferent, and thus in violation of the Eighth Amendment, to his need for dental care. Having lost in the district court as a result of the judge’s granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants, Lake appeals, contending that Dr. Jackson had refused to send him to an outside dentist to extract a decayed tooth that was causing him pain. He attributes this refusal to what he alleges to be a Wexford policy of withholding medical care to save money. That’s a common criticism of Wexford, see Michael Sandler, “Illinois Prison Contractor Paid $3.1 Million to Resolve Complaints Over Five Years,” Modern Healthcare, May 20, 2015, www.modernhealthcare.com/ article/20150520/NEWS/150529989 (visited Feb. 8, 2017, as were the other websites cited in this opinion); Jason Meisner, “Independent Experts Blast Quality of Medical Care in Illinois Prisons,” Chicago Tribune, May 19, 2015, www.chicagotri bune.com/news/ct-illinois-prison-medical-care-met-20150519 -story.html. But there is no evidence that Dr. Jackson was incapable of competently removing a decayed tooth— usually not a highly complex procedure . . . He complains that the court should have authorized him to depose the dentist (and two assistants) who removed the decayed tooth after he finally gave permission to do so. Their testimony, Lake insists, would have established that the in-house extraction was not wholly free of pain, thus vindicating his belief that any in-house procedure using a local anesthetic would be painful. But what happened during a procedure conducted by a different dentist is not proof that Dr. Jackson knew that her planned method of anesthetizing Lake’s mouth would be unsuccessful or would inflict more pain than an alternative method. Dr. Jackson submitted an affidavit that was not controverted in which she testified that she believed that the anesthesia techniques that she intended to have used on Lake would have enabled her to succeed in pulling the tooth with minimal discomfort to him.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.