Delbert Heard v. Andrew Tilden

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
• Decided: January 11, 2016
• Docket: 15-1732
• Status: Published

Opinion

In the

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 15‐1732 DELBERT HEARD, Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

ANDREW TILDEN, et al., Defendants‐Appellees. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois No. 14‐1027 — Joe Billy McDade, Judge. ____________________

SUBMITTED DECEMBER 4, 2015* — DECIDED JANUARY 11, 2016 ____________________

Before RIPPLE, ROVNER, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM. Delbert Heard, an Illinois inmate, claims in this lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that the defendants— Dr. Lewis Shicker, the medical director for the Department of Corrections; Wexford Health Sources, which contracts

* After examining the briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the briefs and the record. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 2 No. 15‐1732

with the Department to provide medical care for inmates; and Dr. Andrew Tilden, a Wexford employee—violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment by delaying surgery for a hernia. At screening, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, the district court concluded that Heard’s complaint states a claim of deliberate indifference to a serious medical need, see FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(6). The court, though, did not allow Heard to proceed against Dr. Shicker, reasoning that the medical director was sued in his official capacity and thus, as a substitute for the State of Illinois, was not a “per‐ son” subject to liability under § 1983. See Will v. Mich. Dep’t of State Police, 491 U.S. 58, 71 (1989). Later the court granted summary judgment for Wexford and Dr. Tilden, who ar‐ gued that Heard had released them from liability when he settled two earlier lawsuits. Those lawsuits alleged, as here, that Wexford and its physicians had delayed surgery for hernias. On appeal Heard argues, and we agree, that both rulings are erroneous. Except as noted, the following facts are undisputed. For twenty years Heard has suffered from inguinal hernias, i.e., hernias in the groin. When Heard’s current imprisonment in the Department of Corrections began in 1995, he already had been diagnosed with one painful hernia. A second hernia, on the other side of his groin, was diagnosed in 2000. Outside physicians concluded that both hernias required surgical re‐ pair, but the Department and Wexford stalled until No. 15‐1732 3

May 2007 after both hernias had become incarcerated,1 prompting emergency surgery. By then Heard had brought the first of two parallel suits (the first was filed in Febru‐ ary 2006, the other in May 2009) claiming that employees of the Department and Wexford had been deliberately indiffer‐ ent by not authorizing surgery sooner. See Heard v. Ill. Dep’t of Corr., No. 06 C 644, 2012 WL 5199616 (N.D. Ill. July 13, 2012); Heard v. Wexford Health Sources, No. 3:09‐CV‐00449‐ JPG‐PMF, 2011 WL 4479309 (S.D. Ill. Oct. 4, 2012). Heard did not prevail against the Department employ‐ ees. At trial on his 2006 lawsuit, a jury returned verdicts in favor of Wexford but against a Wexford physician. The company and its employees then settled both lawsuits in September 2012 for $273,250. In exchange Heard agreed to release Wexford and the doctors from and for any and all actions, causes of ac‐ tion, claims, demands, damages, costs, loss of services, expense and compensation, including attorney’s fees, on account of or in any way arising out of, any and all known and un‐ known personal injuries resulting or which may result from the incidents or events involv‐ ing DELBERT HEARD, while he was incarcer‐ ated in the Illinois Department of Corrections that Heard claims violated his constitutional

1 An inguinal hernia is incarcerated when the intestine protruding through the weak spot in the abdominal wall becomes trapped. Inguinal Hernia—Complications, MAYO CLINIC, http://www.mayoclinic. org/diseases‐conditions/inguinal‐hernia/basics/complications/con‐20021 456?reDate=04122015 (visited Dec. 9, 2015). 4 No. 15‐1732

rights, including without limitation his ingui‐ nal hernias, which are the subject matter of cases 06 C 644 … and 09 CV 00449. In the original document, Heard initialed a line drawn through the words “or which may result from.” His attorney had told the Wexford defendants that Heard would not sign the release unless those words were deleted.2 At some point after his 2007 surgery, Heard developed a “recurrent” left hernia (i.e., in the same place as the left her‐ nia that was surgically repaired in 2007, see Giampiero Cam‐ panelli et al., Inguinal Hernia Recurrence: Classification and Ap‐ proach, J. MINIMAL ACCESS SURGERY, 2006 Sep., at 147–50, available at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2999775/). In Janu‐ ary 2013, Dr. Tilden referred Heard for a surgical consulta‐ tion, and a March 2013 computerized tomography scan con‐

2 In a letter to Heard dated after the filing of the defendants’ motion for

summary judgment in this case, Heard’s (now former) lawyer offered this opinion about the deleted language: With or without the scratched out language in your Release, you have not waived any claims based on Wex‐ ford’s continued new violation of your constitutional rights. Just because you released them from claims you sustained in 2007, does not mean that you authorize them to continue to violate your constitutional rights in the future. The fact that it may have exacerbated the in‐ jury you previously sustained does not waive your rights to bring a future claim and does not change the fact that you can sue them for their new violations of your rights. The district court permitted Heard to introduce counsel’s letter at summary judgment. No. 15‐1732 5

firmed the recurrent hernia. A surgeon at the University of Illinois Medical Center discussed the CT scan with Heard and advised that surgery would be scheduled through a De‐ partment of Corrections liaison. The surgeon’s progress notes from this visit indicate that Heard said he had known about the recurrent hernia since his 2007 surgery. A second surgery did not occur until late July 2013, four months after the CT scan. Heard again sued, claiming this time that Wexford, Dr. Tilden, and Dr. Shicker, the Department’s medical direc‐ tor, all had been deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need by delaying the second surgery. (A fourth defendant, Dr. Arthur Funk, who serves as Wexford’s regional medical director, was dismissed at screening. Heard does not chal‐ lenge this ruling, so we do not discuss that defendant.) Heard alleged that, ever since April 2011, Dr. Tilden had de‐ layed authorizing the second surgery because of a policy, which Dr. Shicker created and Wexford enforced, to classify hernia surgeries as elective, unnecessary procedures. Heard’s previous lawsuits presented this same theory. The Wexford defendants did not answer Heard’s com‐ plaint. Instead, six days after the district court had entered a scheduling order authorizing discovery to proceed, the de‐ fendants moved for summary judgment solely on the grounds that Heard’s release, as well as the doctrines of claim and issue preclusion, foreclosed the § 1983 action as a matter of law. Almost a year later, the district court granted that motion. The court reasoned that Heard had released all claims known to him when he executed the settlement agreement, and that—as evidenced by his complaint—he knew in April 2011 that he needed a second surgery. The 6 No. 15‐1732

court did not address the alternative defenses of claim and issue preclusion. On appeal Heard contends that the September 2012 re‐ lease does not shield Wexford or Dr. Tilden from liability for deliberate indifference to his recurrent hernia, which, alt‐ hough known to him before he executed the release, was not surgically repaired for another ten months. In response the Wexford defendants continue to rely on the release but also reassert their defenses of claim and issue preclusion. We are not persuaded by any of these three defenses. We can quickly dispense with the preclusion arguments. We are puzzled by the defendants’ contention that the doc‐ trine of issue preclusion bars Heard from litigating whether they were deliberately indifferent to his need for hernia sur‐ gery in 2013. The defendants point to the jury’s verdict in Wexford’s favor during the 2006 trial, but that jury also found during the same trial that a Wexford doctor had been deliberately indifferent to Heard’s need for hernia surgery. Regardless, those verdicts were supplanted by the settle‐ ment agreement, and settlement agreements generally do not give rise to issue preclusion—as opposed to claim pre‐ clusion—unless it is clear that preclusion is what the parties intended. See Arizona v. California, 530 U.S. 392, 414 (2000); Cell Therapeutics, Inc. v. Lash Grp., Inc., 586 F.3d 1204, 1211–12 (9th Cir. 2009); Nichols v. Bd. of Cty. Commʹrs of Cty. of La Pla‐ ta, Colo., 506 F.3d 962, 969 (10th Cir. 2007). The release pre‐ sented to Heard includes a representation that Wexford and its employees—including the doctor found liable by the ju‐ ry—“expressly denied” “any liability,” so the parties clearly did not intend for the jury’s verdicts to have preclusive ef‐ fect. Moreover, even if the verdicts or the settlement would No. 15‐1732 7

preclude Heard from relitigating whether Wexford and its employees were deliberately indifferent to Heard’s medical needs prior to 2007, that limitation would be irrelevant to Heard’s complaint in this case, which involves fresh allega‐ tions of stalling a different surgery, and even a different Wexford physician. The defendants’ reliance on the doctrine of claim preclu‐ sion fares no better. Under federal law, claim preclusion re‐ quires, among other elements, that the second lawsuit assert claims arising “out of the same set of operative facts” as the first lawsuit. See Matrix IV, Inc. v. Am. Natʹl Bank and Trust Co. of Chicago, 649 F.3d 539, 547 (7th Cir. 2011); see also Bernstein v. Bankert, 733 F.3d 190, 226 (7th Cir. 2012). In arguing that this element is satisfied, the defendants con‐ ceptualize too broadly the injury about which Heard com‐ plains. It is true that this lawsuit also involves a complaint about delay in providing hernia surgery, but that is where the similarity with the earlier lawsuits ends. Heard’s present action asserts a new claim of deliberate indifference distinct from the Eighth Amendment claims in his first two lawsuits. As we explained in a related context during one of Heard’s earlier appeals, every day that the defendants improperly refused to treat Heard’s condition potentially constituted a new act of deliberate indifference. Heard v. Sheahan, 253 F.3d 316, 318 (7th Cir. 2001); see also Turley v. Rednour, 729 F.3d 645, 651 (7th Cir. 2013); Devbrow v. Kalu, 705 F.3d 765, 769–70 (7th Cir. 2013). The doctrine of “claim preclusion generally does not bar a subsequent lawsuit for issues that arise after the operative complaint is filed” in the first lawsuit, Ellis v. CCA of Tenn. LLC, 650 F.3d 640, 652 (7th Cir. 2011); see Smith v. Potter, 513 F.3d 781, 783–84 (7th Cir. 2008), so Heard’s alle‐ gation that the defendants once again displayed deliberate 8 No. 15‐1732

indifference to his recurrent hernia in no way arises from the operative facts of the previous lawsuits, see Supporters to Op‐ pose Pollution, Inc. v. Heritage Grp., 973 F.2d 1320, 1326 (7th Cir. 1992) (“Traditional principles of preclusion allow addi‐ tional litigation if some new wrong occurs.”). What remains, then, is the release itself, upon which the Wexford defendants primarily rely. The defendants focus on what they characterize as the release’s broad language, which they read as exonerating Wexford and its employees of liability for “all ‘known and unknown’ claims arising from Plaintiff’s inguinal hernia condition, of which the 2006 and 2009 cases are examples.” We cannot accept that reading. A release is a contract, and thus, even though the settlement occurred in litigation brought in federal court, Illinois law governs the effect of the release at issue here. Capocy v. Kirtadze, 183 F.3d 629, 632 (7th Cir. 1999); see Hampton v. Ford Motor Co., 561 F.3d 709, 714 (7th Cir. 2009). When a release that includes broad language also refers specifically to particular claims, Illinois courts limit the scope of the release to the claims arising from those specific references. Capocy, 183 F.3d at 632; Carona v. Ill. Cent. Gulf R.R. Co., 561 N.E.2d 239, 242 (Ill. App. Ct. 1990); White‐ head v. Fleet Towing Co., 442 N.E.2d 1362, 1365 (Ill. App. Ct. 1982); see also Farm Credit Bank of St. Louis v. Whitlock, 581 N.E.2d 664, 667 (Ill. App. Ct. 1991). Here, the references to the 2006 and 2009 lawsuits limit the scope of the release to claims arising in those actions, i.e., that Wexford and its em‐ ployees had been deliberately indifferent in delaying the first surgery for the bilateral hernias that were finally re‐ paired in 2007. Neither of those suits alleged that the de‐ fendants also had been stalling surgery for Heard’s recurrent No. 15‐1732 9

hernia, which, by definition, could not have developed until after the 2007 surgery. The defendants seek to distinguish this adverse authority by observing that, where both parties were aware of an addi‐ tional claim when a release was executed, Illinois courts will give effect to a broad release despite references to specific claims. See Capocy, 183 F.3d at 632. Yet this argument mis‐ characterizes the nature of the harm that Heard alleges in this case. Heard may well have known in September 2012 that a new hernia had developed. Indeed, he might even have thought that surgery would be required. But surely the Wexford defendants do not suggest that both he and they anticipated when the release was signed that Wexford doc‐ tors would intentionally delay the surgery for many months after learning it was medically necessary. That is the nature of deliberate indifference to a serious medical need, which is the Eighth Amendment claim presented by this action. Heard could not possibly have expected that, at some point in the future, the Wexford defendants would repeat the same conduct that led to a significant settlement of the 2006 and 2009 lawsuits, and thus the release cannot plausibly be read as completely barring Heard’s new lawsuit. See Hamp‐ ton, 561 F.3d at 715 (explaining that a general release typical‐ ly covers all claims about which a signing party has actual knowledge or that he could have discovered upon reasona‐ ble investigation); Feltmeier v. Feltmeier, 798 N.E.2d 75, 89–90 (Ill. 2003) (“It is clear that a contractual release cannot be construed to include claims not within the contemplation of the parties, and it will not be extended to cover claims that may arise in the future.”); Carona, 561 N.E.2d at 242 (noting that “the intention of the parties controls the scope and effect of the release”). 10 No. 15‐1732

Again, the question is not whether Heard knew when he executed the release that he had a history of inguinal herni‐ as. Heard had suffered from hernias for twenty years. The defendants may be suggesting that, by prolonging Heard’s first surgery, they made it more likely that he would experi‐ ence recurrent hernias in the future, and to that extent Heard arguably has been compensated for that increased risk. But that cannot mean, as the Wexford defendants argue, that the company’s doctors were free to ignore the recurrent hernia as it grew increasingly painful over time. “[A] hernia can be an objectively serious medical problem,” Gonzalez v. Feinerman, 663 F.3d 311, 314 (7th Cir. 2011); see Heard, 253 F.3d at 317–18, and Heard himself required emergency sur‐ gery in 2007. Under the defendants’ expansive reading of the release, they could have refused indefinitely—with impuni‐ ty—to arrange for Heard’s second surgery, even if the un‐ treated hernia eventually endangered his life. That interpre‐ tation clearly is against public policy, see Feltmeier, 798 N.E.2d at 90; Chubb v. Amax Coal Co., Inc., 466 N.E.2d 369, 373 (Ill. App. Ct. 1984), and cannot be correct. In sum, the three defenses raised by the Wexford defend‐ ants are not persuasive because each relies on the defend‐ ants’ flawed characterization of Heard’s constitutional claim. And since these defendants have yet to deny Heard’s allega‐ tions or assert that he does not state a claim for deliberate indifference, our rejection of their defenses means that this action must be remanded for proceedings on the merits against Wexford and Dr. Tilden. Heard next challenges the dismissal at screening of Dr. Shicker, the Department’s medical director. The district court concluded that Heard was suing Dr. Shicker in his offi‐ No. 15‐1732 11

cial capacity, apparently because Heard’s amended com‐ plaint alleges that Dr. Shicker instigated a policy of treating hernia surgeries as purely elective procedures. That reading of Heard’s complaint is mistaken. The amended complaint is explicit that Dr. Shicker “is culpable in his individual capacity,” not only because he al‐ legedly was the author of the “elective surgery” policy, but also because he did not “act to stop the delay despite his ac‐ tual knowledge that the delay was causing” Heard to suffer pain. The latter allegation that Dr. Shicker was involved di‐ rectly in the choice to stall necessary surgery and prolong Heard’s pain is enough to state a claim. See Smith v. Knox Cty. Jail, 666 F.3d 1037, 1040 (7th Cir. 2012) (explaining that “[e]ven a few days’ delay in addressing a severely painful but readily treatable condition suffices to state a claim of de‐ liberate indifference”); Arnett v. Webster, 658 F.3d 742, 753 (7th Cir. 2011) (ten month delay in providing medication for rheumatoid arthritis stated claim for deliberate indifference); McGowan v. Hulick, 612 F.3d 636, 640 (7th Cir. 2010) (same for three month delay in scheduling tooth extraction). More‐ over, contrary to the district court’s reasoning, Dr. Shicker’s further involvement as a policy maker does not insulate him from personal liability for his own actions, even when mak‐ ing and enforcing policy. See Hafer v. Melo, 502 U.S 21, 27 (1991) (rejecting view that “state officials may not be held liable in their personal capacity for actions they take in their official capacity”); Duane v. Lane, 959 F.2d 673, 675 n.1 (7th Cir. 1992). As the district court recognized, it would not serve Heard to attribute Dr. Shicker’s policy decisions to the Department of Corrections, since doing so would constitute an official‐capacity theory that would not state a claim against the Department. See Will, 491 U.S. at 71 (holding that 12 No. 15‐1732

“neither a State nor its officials acting in their official capaci‐ ties are ‘persons’ under § 1983”); Wagoner v. Lemmon, 778 F.3d 586, 592 (7th Cir. 2015); Parker v. Franklin Cty. Cmty. Sch. Corp., 667 F.3d 910, 926 (7th Cir. 2012). Heard is not try‐ ing to hold the Department accountable for Dr. Shicker’s ac‐ tions, however, so Will is not a concern. The judgment in favor of Dr. Shicker, Wexford, and Dr. Tilden is VACATED, and the case is remanded for fur‐ ther proceedings consistent with this opinion. We express no view about the merits of Heard’s claim of deliberate indif‐ ference as to any of these defendants but recommend that the district court consider appointing counsel to represent Heard in this action. The judgment is AFFIRMED with re‐ spect to the dismissal of Dr. Funk.