Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01915/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01915-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 560
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Civil Detainee - Conditions of Confinement
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-1915

SIDNEY COLLINS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

HUGHES LOCHARD,

Defendant-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Central District of Illinois.

No. 11-3086 — Sue E. Myerscough, Judge.

____________________

SUBMITTED JUNE 26, 2015* — DECIDED JULY 9, 2015

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and FLAUM and HAMILTON,

Circuit Judges.

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Sidney Collins, a civil detainee 

in Illinois, appeals an adverse jury verdict in his deliberateindifference suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Hughes 

Lochard, a facility physician. Collins argues that the district 

 * After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral 

argument is unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the briefs and 

record. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

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court should have declared a mistrial after Dr. Lochard violated a pretrial ruling by the court. He also challenges the 

strength of the evidence supporting the jury’s verdict. We 

affirm.

Collins is now 68 years of age. He was convicted of rape 

in the mid-1980s. Upon expiration of his prison sentence in 

2010, he was adjudicated a sexually violent person. Since 

then he has been detained at the Treatment and Detention 

Facility in Rushville, where Dr. Lochard is a physician. Collins suffers from a number of medical conditions—carpaltunnel syndrome, pain in his hips and back lingering from 

past injuries, flat feet, and ligament damage in one foot—

that, he says, prevent him from climbing to the top bunk in 

his cell. Collins had a low-bunk permit during his prior incarceration at a Department of Corrections facility. But Dr.

Lochard refused his request to authorize a similar permit at 

Rushville, which is operated by the Illinois Department of 

Human Services. Unable to climb to the top bunk in his cell, 

Collins says, he was forced to sleep on the floor. 

After sleeping on the floor for seven and a half months, 

Collins sued Dr. Lochard for deliberate indifference to his 

serious health needs, invoking the Fourteenth Amendment 

to the Constitution rather than the Eighth because he is a civil detainee. See McGee v. Adams, 721 F.3d 474, 480 (7th Cir. 

2013). (Collins also sued two supervisors. The district court 

granted summary judgment for them because he produced 

no evidence that they were personally involved in any constitutional violation. Collins does not contest that ruling on 

appeal.)

Before trial Collins, proceeding pro se, successfully 

moved to exclude any reference to his three-decade old rape 

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No. 14-1915 3

conviction. Collins also convinced the court to reserve any 

ruling on whether, as Dr. Lochard proposed, to instruct the 

jury that Collins had been “convicted of a crime” and that 

his conviction was germane to the jury’s analysis of his credibility. After that, clinical attorneys from the University of 

Illinois College of Law volunteered to represent Collins at 

trial.

During the two-day trial, only Collins and Dr. Lochard 

testified, addressing mainly Collins’s carpal-tunnel syndrome. Collins testified that upon arriving at Rushville he 

informed Dr. Lochard of the numbness, tingling, and reduced grip strength he was experiencing in his left wrist and 

hand. He also testified that he routinely complained to Dr. 

Lochard about those symptoms, plus pain in his back and 

hips. To corroborate this testimony, he tendered notes from 

his medical record recounting his complaints. Despite these 

complaints, he did not get a low-bunk permit until a specialist diagnosed him with carpal-tunnel syndrome more than 

two years after he began complaining about his wrist. Collins’s lawyers also decided to disclose to the jury that Collins 

had been convicted of an unspecified felony. Collins conceded, as well, that he regularly exercised by playing basketball, 

lifting weights, or running.

Dr. Lochard defended his treatment decisions. He 

acknowledged that Collins’s symptoms were commonly associated with carpal-tunnel syndrome, but said that he understood Collins’s request for a low-bunk pass to be based 

upon pain in his hips and back. His treatment of Collins’s 

hip and back pain, Dr. Lochard asserted, was consistent with 

the treatment Collins received before arriving at Rushville. 

Based on Collins’s complaints, Dr. Lochard said he initially 

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suspected that Collins’s wrist pain might relate to a bout of 

shingles Collins had in 2004 or might be a side effect of medication Collins was taking for high cholesterol. But when it 

became clear that Collins might have carpal-tunnel syndrome, Dr. Lochard referred him to a neurologist.

Dr. Lochard also read and interpreted reports from Collins’s medical file, including a report of his physical examination of Collins upon arrival at the Rushville facility. While 

reading his notes aloud for the jury, Dr. Lochard mentioned 

that Collins had been incarcerated for 26 years. Collins’s 

lawyers immediately objected, and the court promised to 

give a curative instruction.

At the close of evidence, the court instructed the jury, as 

Dr. Lochard had requested, that it could consider Collins’s 

felony conviction only for the purpose of determining 

whether Collins was credible, but added that the jury “may 

not consider the length of plaintiff’s sentence in deciding 

whether plaintiff’s testimony is truthful.” The jury ultimately returned a verdict for Dr. Lochard. Collins filed no posttrial motions.

On appeal, Collins, again proceeding pro se, makes two 

arguments for reversal. He first argues that Dr. Lochard’s

remark about the length of his sentence was so prejudicial 

that no curative instruction could erase its effect on the trial. 

The only proper remedy, he argues, would have been for the 

judge to declare a mistrial sua sponte.

Collins’s claim implies that there are circumstances in 

which a trial judge has a duty in a civil case to declare a mistrial even when no party has asked for it. We doubt that this 

is correct. If the party wounded by an evidentiary harpoon 

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or some other trial wrongdoing prefers to go forward with 

the trial rather than start over, it is hard to see why the judge 

should force a mistrial upon him. Even if we assumed for 

the sake of argument that a judge might have such a duty, 

she would surely enjoy broad discretion to conclude that a 

trial incident did not so infect the proceedings with unfairness that the only solution was to declare a mistrial that no 

party sought. See Christmas v. City of Chicago, 682 F.3d 632, 

638 (7th Cir. 2012).

Here the judge concluded that a limiting instruction 

would suffice to cure any risk of prejudice. In the first place, 

we presume that the jury followed the court’s directive and 

disregarded Lochard’s remark. See Wilson v. City of Chicago, 

758 F.3d 875, 884–85 (7th Cir. 2014). Moreover, the remark 

itself did not add much to the evidence: The jury already 

knew through Collins’s own testimony that he had been 

convicted of a felony, that his medical issues dated back to 

2002, and that for some time previously he had been a barber 

at his jail. The jury could already infer that he had spent a 

good deal longer than eight years in prison. Even if Collins 

had asked for a mistrial, the court would not have abused its 

discretion by denying it. There was no abuse of discretion in 

not declaring a mistrial that Collins did not request.

Collins next asserts that the jury’s verdict is against the 

manifest weight of the evidence, both as a general matter 

and because he believes the documentary evidence in the 

record discredits Dr. Lochard’s testimony. We cannot reach 

this issue. Collins did not preserve this argument in a posttrial motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50 for 

judgment as a matter of law. Without such a post-trial motion, the Supreme Court held in Unitherm Food Systems, Inc. 

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v. Swift–Eckrich, Inc., 546 U.S. 394, 405 (2006), appellate 

courts are “powerless” to review challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting a civil jury verdict. See also

Consumer Prods. Research & Design, Inc. v. Jensen, 572 F.3d 

436, 437–38 (7th Cir. 2009); Maher v. City of Chicago, 547 F.3d 

817, 824 (7th Cir. 2008).

Although we treat pro se filings liberally, even excusing 

technical mistakes when necessary to afford an uncounseled 

litigant a full and fair hearing, e.g., Kaba v. Stepp, 458 F.3d 

678, 687 (7th Cir. 2006), we cannot excuse Collins’s omission 

here. We review the actions of judges, not juries, and the 

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require civil litigants to 

speak up if they want a trial judge to resolve the factual sufficiency of a claim as a matter of law. See Maxwell v. Dodd, 

662 F.3d 418, 420–21 (6th Cir. 2011). Because Collins did not 

ask the district judge to act, we have nothing to review.

AFFIRMED.

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