By: Derek Hawkins//February 10, 2020//
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Damon Goodloe v. Kul Sood, et al.
Case No.: 18-1910
Officials: WOOD, Chief Judge, and BARRETT and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.
Focus: 8th Amendment Violation
Patients are often the best source of information about their medical condition. A physician’s decision to persist with ineffective treatment and ignore a patient’s repeated complaints of unresolved pain and other symptoms can give rise to liability—or, at the very least, raise enough questions to warrant a jury trial. Damon Goodloe’s case is a good example.
An inmate in the care of the Illinois Department of Corrections, Goodloe invoked 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and alleged that his treating physician within the Hill Correctional Center responded to his repeated complaints of rectal bleeding and severe pain with a course of demonstrably ineffective treatment and undue delay in sending him to an outside specialist for evaluation. The discovery process revealed medical records and other documents corroborating many of these allegations. On the record before us, then, Goodloe has brought forth enough evidence to put to a jury his Eighth Amendment claim against his treating physician for deliberately indifferent medical care. We therefore reverse the district court’s conclusion to the contrary, while otherwise affirming the entry of summary judgment in all other regards.
Reversed in part. Affirmed in part.