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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15-2254

QUASIM BOLLING,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

VICTOR CARTER, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 12 C 3432 — Robert M. Dow, Jr., Judge.

____________________

SUBMITTED APRIL 13, 2016—DECIDED APRIL 26, 2016

____________________

Before POSNER, RIPPLE, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff, a pretrial detainee at 

Cook County Jail, fell and injured his back, and sued six correctional officers, contending that they had manifested deliberate indifference to an acute medical need, thus violating 

his rights under the due process clause of the Fourteenth 

Amendment. See, e.g., City of Revere v. Massachusetts General 

Hospital, 463 U.S. 239, 244 (1983); Jackson v. Illinois Medi-Car, 

Inc., 300 F.3d 760, 764 (7th Cir. 2002); cf. Estelle v. Gamble, 429 

Case: 15-2254 Document: 34 Filed: 04/26/2016 Pages: 4
2 No. 15-2254

U.S. 97, 104–05 (1976); Walker v. Benjamin, 293 F.3d 1030, 1040 

(7th Cir. 2002). They had refused to move him to a lower 

bunk even though a doctor at the jail determined that he 

needed to be in a lower bunk. There was no ladder to his 

upper bunk and because of his injury he couldn’t climb up 

to it without a ladder and so had to sleep on the floor until 

his term of confinement ended and he was released from the 

jail. There is no suggestion that because of jail crowding or 

other factors it would have been infeasible to assign him to a 

lower bunk—or that the floor was a comfortable place for 

him to sleep.

The district judge granted summary judgment in favor of 

the defendants, precipitating the plaintiff’s appeal to us. The 

plaintiff advances other claims against the defendants besides their refusal to assign him to a lower bunk, but those 

claims have no merit and do not warrant discussion.

When the plaintiff fell, which was in January 2012, he 

asked the defendants to find him a lower bunk. They said 

they couldn’t do that unless he obtained a lower-bunk assignment from the jail’s medical unit. He had been seen by a 

member of the unit right after the accident, but had not obtained (and may not in that brief encounter have sought) a 

lower-bunk assignment, so he needed to revisit the medical 

unit. It took him a month to get an appointment with a doctor, who after examining him on February 9 (the examination included an x-ray of his back) concluded that he should 

indeed be reassigned for medical reasons to a lower bunk. 

Although the jail’s staff was alerted to the reassignment, the 

defendants did not give the plaintiff a lower bunk; nor did 

anyone else. So he continued to sleep on the floor. After 

three more weeks of this, which he claims without contradicCase: 15-2254 Document: 34 Filed: 04/26/2016 Pages: 4
No. 15-2254 3

tion further aggravated his back injury, his ordeal ended on 

March 1, when he was released from the jail.

The defendants argue that they never received an order 

from a doctor directing them to assign the plaintiff to a lower bunk, even after the doctor’s examination of him on February 9. But the denial appears in an unsworn submission

that the plaintiff contends was untruthful, which it may well 

have been. The doctor’s order (one of only four pages of evidence attached to the plaintiff’s response to the defendants’ 

motion for summary judgment, and therefore difficult, one 

would have thought, for the district judge to have overlooked) kicks off with the following statement, overlooked 

by the defendants and the district judge, that goes some distance (though not all the way) toward establishing the plaintiff’s case: “Alert CCDOC [Cook County Department of Corrections] 2/9/2012 11:36 [a.m] [the date and time of the examination], Lower Bunk [the relief ordered by the doctor].” Yet 

all the district judge said in granting summary judgment in 

favor of the defendants was that “it is undisputed that Plaintiff never received a lower bunk permit at any time while at 

the jail.” This is doubly false. It is disputed and he did receive an order from a doctor directing that he be assigned to

a lower bunk. The defendants’ brief does not discuss the 

dispute. It denies there was a permit or a doctor’s order, but 

does not substantiate its denial. Indeed its principal argument is that the plaintiff in opposing the motion for summary judgment violated Local Rule 56.1 (which governs motions for summary judgment) of the district court for the 

Northern District of Illinois. Because the plaintiff had no 

lawyer, the district judge did not exceed his authority in excusing the plaintiff’s pleading errors. Stevo v. Frasor, 662 F.3d 

880, 886–87 (7th Cir. 2011).

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4 No. 15-2254

The judgment is reversed in part, with instructions to vacate the grant of summary judgment with respect to the 

plaintiff’s claim of willful indifference to an acute medical 

need, but is otherwise affirmed.

Case: 15-2254 Document: 34 Filed: 04/26/2016 Pages: 4