Gibson v. Moskowitz

CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedApril 29, 2008
Docket07-1198
StatusPublished

This text of Gibson v. Moskowitz (Gibson v. Moskowitz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gibson v. Moskowitz, (6th Cir. 2008).

Opinion

RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206 File Name: 08a0168p.06

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT _________________

X Plaintiff-Appellee/ - ANTOINETTE GIBSON,

Cross-Appellant, - - - Nos. 07-1074/1198

, v. > - - Defendant-Appellant/ - DAVID MOSKOWITZ, M.D.,

Cross-Appellee. - - N Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan at Grand Rapids. No. 03-00053—Marianne O. Battani, District Judge. Argued: March 11, 2008 Decided and Filed: April 29, 2008 Before: DAUGHTREY and SUTTON, Circuit Judges; POLSTER, District Judge.* _________________ COUNSEL ARGUED: Marcy R. Matson, HALL MATSON, East Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant. Heather A. Jefferson, FIEGER, FIEGER, KENNEY, JOHNSON & GIROUX, Southfield, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Marcy R. Matson, HALL MATSON, East Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant. Heather A. Jefferson, FIEGER, FIEGER, KENNEY, JOHNSON & GIROUX, Southfield, Michigan, for Appellee. _________________ OPINION _________________ SUTTON, Circuit Judge. Ozy Vaughn, a mentally disabled inmate, died from severe dehydration after being held for several days in a 90 to 100 degree observation room. A jury determined that Dr. David Moskowitz’s deliberate indifference and medical malpractice caused Vaughn’s death and awarded his estate $2 million in compensatory damages (later reduced to $1.5 million) and $3 million in punitive damages. We affirm in part and reverse in part.

* The Honorable Dan Aaron Polster, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Ohio, sitting by designation.

1 Nos. 07-1074/1198 Gibson v. Moskowitz Page 2

I. On Friday, January 25, 2002, Vaughn, an inmate in the Riverside Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan, began acting strangely. Concerned about his behavior, prison officials moved him from his prison cell to an observation room in the Residential Treatment Program of the Ionia facility. Each inmate placed in an observation room is looked after by a “treatment team,” which includes a psychiatrist, team of nurses and other trained personnel. For reasons that the record does not fully explain, the temperature in the observation room exceeded 90 degrees (even though it was January in Michigan and even though heating a prison is not cheap, whether in 2002 or today). After moving Vaughn to the observation room, prison officials placed Dr. David Moskowitz, a psychiatrist, on Vaughn’s treatment team. That Friday, Moskowitz met with Vaughn, assessed his condition and proposed treatment—psychiatric medication and observation—to help Vaughn through the weekend. When Moskowitz returned to work on Monday, he learned that Vaughn’s condition had worsened. Although Moskowitz left open the possibility that Vaughn might have a “heat problem,” JA 1256, his plan on Monday morning was to “keep observing Mr. Vaughn” and to give the medication “[a] little bit more time to work,” JA 1302. Vaughn’s condition continued to deteriorate on Monday. At 12:30 p.m., Paul Foster, a prison guard, reported to the treatment team that Vaughn vomited in the bathroom after trying to drink a large amount of water from the bathroom sink. By Monday afternoon, Vaughn’s room had reached 96 degrees. At the end of his Monday shift, Moskowitz concluded that “with cool temperature and more fluids [Vaughn] could be taken care of and . . . the dehydration could be prevented.” JA 1308. Moskowitz’s plan was to give the medication still more time to work, to transfer Vaughn to a cooler room and eventually to move Vaughn to a psychiatric hospital. Moskowitz “didn’t feel that [Vaughn’s] status was life threatening.” Id. He was wrong. Vaughn never reached the psychiatric hospital, and by the time he made it to a cooler room on Monday evening his condition had taken yet another turn for the worse. Vaughn began vomiting and dry-heaving, both of which continued into the night until he died from dehydration early Tuesday morning. Antoinette Gibson, the representative of Vaughn’s estate, filed this § 1983 action against Moskowitz and 22 other defendants, alleging deliberate indifference in violation of the Eighth (and Fourteenth) Amendment and raising several state law claims. Before trial, the district court dismissed seven defendants. The remaining defendants asserted qualified immunity, which the district court denied—save for Nurse Jill Blankstrom, as to whom it granted qualified immunity on the deliberate indifference claims. The estate settled its claims against the remaining defendants, with the exception of Moskowitz, for $600,000. The estate took its claims against Moskowitz to trial, and the jury returned a verdict against Moskowitz on the § 1983 and the state law claims, awarding Gibson $2 million in compensatory damages, later reduced by $500,000 to account for settlements with the other defendants, and $3 million in punitive damages. II. A. Moskowitz first challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, questioning whether it supports the jury’s finding that he acted with deliberate indifference to Vaughn’s serious medical needs and whether Vaughn’s death was a reasonably foreseeable result of Moskowitz’s conduct. An inmate may bring a § 1983 claim under the Eighth Amendment only where he can show that a state official acted with “deliberate indifference” to his “medical needs.” Clark-Murphy v. Foreback, 439 F.3d Nos. 07-1074/1198 Gibson v. Moskowitz Page 3

280, 286 (6th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Deliberate indifference” requires more than mere mistreatment or negligence; it requires the plaintiff to show that the injury was “objectively” serious and that the defendant “subjectively” ignored the inmate’s medical needs. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Was Vaughn’s medical condition objectively serious? While Moskowitz concedes that Vaughn’s medical needs had become serious by Monday, January 28, he argues that they were not serious on Friday, January 25—when officials moved Vaughn to the observation room, when Moskowitz began treating Vaughn and when the jury ascribed initial liability to Moskowitz. But drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of the estate, as we must, Williams v. Nashville Network, 132 F.3d 1123, 1131 (6th Cir. 1997), we disagree. Here is what the jury was told about Vaughn’s condition on January 25. At one point, he stood naked over his cellmate, holding his Bible and “talking about God.” JA 1689. When he finished preaching, Vaughn “tore up all the pages from his Bible, threw the papers all over the floor” and claimed that “outside forces” were controlling his actions. JA 1693. Vaughn was confused, refused to eat or drink and had difficulty following directions. And his condition only deteriorated after officials moved him to the 90-plus degree observation room. Several experts testified that Vaughn’s medication and the hot observation room, in combination, created a serious medical risk, and Moskowitz himself admitted that he understood the potentially deadly combination. Dr. Gerald Shiener, the estate’s psychiatric expert, explained to the jury that the drugs Moskowitz prescribed to treat Vaughn’s schizophrenia “also affect the part of the brain that regulates temperature.” JA 998. When patients on this type of medication are put into a hot environment, they develop a “positive feedback,” which means they “keep getting hot and they can’t convect the heat or get rid of the heat and their body heats up out of control”—all of which leads to “a very dangerous situation.” JA 999. Dr. Kathryn Burns, another expert for the estate and the former chief psychiatrist for the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in Ohio, corroborated Shiener’s testimony. “There is a condition among people who take psychotropic medication,” Burns said, “where they can’t deal with heat as well as other people can. It just impacts their . . .

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Gibson v. Moskowitz, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gibson-v-moskowitz-ca6-2008.