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Nature of Suit Code: 555
Nature of Suit: Prisoner - Prison Condition
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted February 22, 2016*

Decided February 25, 2016 

Before 

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge 

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge

No. 14-3520 

VANDAIRE KNOX, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

ROBERT SHEARING, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of Illinois.

No. 3:14-cv-0193-MJR-SCW 

Michael J. Reagan, 

Chief Judge. 

O R D E R 

VanDaire Knox, an Illinois prisoner at Menard Correctional Center, sued several 

officials and medical professionals at the prison under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that they 

ignored his long-standing knee pain. Knox filed a motion for a preliminary injunction 

asking the district court to order the defendants to prescribe an opioid pain medication 

for him. The court denied the motion. Knox has appealed that ruling, as permitted by 

28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). For the following reasons, we affirm. 

 

*

 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). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 

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No. 14-3520 Page 2 

I. Background 

We take the following account of the facts from Knox’s allegations and the 

medical records submitted at the preliminary-injunction stage, recognizing that further 

discovery and fact-finding may yield a different view. 

Knox has complained often to prison medical staff about pain in his left knee. His 

treatment, however, has been largely ineffective. He first complained of knee pain in 

March 2012. A nurse practitioner noted that he had a “limping gait” and prescribed 

Mobic, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory. Two months later Knox told Dr. Samuel 

Nwaobasi that Mobic was unhelpful, so the doctor prescribed Tylenol three times a day 

for a month and advised Knox to keep his knee elevated. Knox complained to a nurse the 

following month that Tylenol was ineffective, and he received Motrin instead. When he 

saw Dr. Nwaobasi a week later, the doctor noted that neither Tylenol nor Motrin 

alleviated Knox’s knee pain and prescribed tramadol, an opioid pain medication, twice a 

day for a month. 

The tramadol prescription ran out sometime in the fall of 2012, and Knox’s knee 

pain returned. In September he saw Rashida Pollion, a nurse practitioner, and told her 

about his severe knee pain. She observed swelling and a limited range of motion in his 

left knee. Knox told her that most of the past pain treatment had not provided much 

relief. She reinstated tramadol twice a day for two months and specified that a doctor 

should examine him. Knox saw Dr. Nwaobasi again in December. The doctor noted that 

Knox’s left knee was larger than his right, but he saw no evidence of joint effusion 

(swelling in a joint caused by excess fluid). He ordered an x-ray, which revealed some 

swelling and calcification. Dr. Nwaobasi prescribed two drugs: Motrin for three months 

and Robaxin (a muscle relaxant) for one month. 

Throughout the next year, Knox’s knee pain remained unrelieved. He saw Nurse 

Pollion in January 2013; she gave him a large knee sleeve and referred him again to a 

doctor. The doctor saw no evidence of a ligament injury in his knee, but noted that the 

nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs that Knox was taking were not relieving his pain. 

Pollion examined Knox twice more that year. In April she noted his continued left knee 

pain and that his pain medications were ineffective. She referred him to a doctor, who 

also noted Knox’s knee pain, but thought the knee was otherwise normal. In September 

Pollion saw Knox again and noted that he was using the knee sleeve but still had pain. 

Through 2014 Knox’s knee pain persisted, but the medical staff ordered treatment 

they knew was ineffective. In February Nurse Pollion prescribed Motrin at one-third the 

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No. 14-3520 Page 3 

previous strength, even though Knox’s records showed that the higher strength had 

been ineffective. She also gave him a knee brace, but another nurse told him that the 

brace was too small for his swollen knee, and no proper braces were available. In April 

Knox saw a prison doctor who prescribed a three-month course of Mobic, also 

previously recorded to be ineffective, and a proper-fitting brace, which the doctor knew 

was not available. 

By affidavit Knox recited the current status of his knee pain. He averred that he 

still has “severe pain” from swelling in his left knee, cannot kneel, has trouble sleeping, 

can stand or walk only with “great difficulty,” and has recently developed pain in his 

right knee because he walks with a limp. He emphasized that tramadol was the only 

drug that had alleviated his pain and he is not receiving it. 

The district judge screened Knox’s complaint and permitted the action to proceed 

against some of the defendants. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. The judge then turned to Knox’s 

motion for a preliminary injunction, which sought two orders. First, Knox asked the 

court to order the defendants to give him tramadol, the opioid pain medication that they 

had previously prescribed for his knee pain. Second, he wanted prison officials barred 

from opening his legal mail outside his presence. (He also asked that his legal mail be 

specially marked so that it would be processed more quickly.) 

The judge denied the motion for a preliminary injunction, noting that prisoners 

have no right to specific treatments. The judge also rejected Knox’s request for an order 

requiring that his legal mail be opened only in his presence. This appeal followed. See 

§ 1292(a)(1). 

II. Discussion 

To obtain a preliminary injunction, the moving party must show that (1) he will 

suffer irreparable harm before the final resolution of his claims; (2) available remedies at 

law are inadequate; and (3) he has a likelihood of success on the merits. See BBL, Inc. v. 

City of Angola, 809 F.3d 317, 323–24 (7th Cir. 2015); Turnell v. Centimark Corp., 796 F.3d 

656, 661–62 (7th Cir. 2015). If the moving party makes this showing, the court then 

“weighs the competing harms to the parties if an injunction is granted or denied,” 

“considers the public interest,” and employs a “sliding-scale analysis” (“the greater the 

likelihood of success on the merits, the less heavily the balance of harms must tip in the 

moving party’s favor”). Korte v. Sebelius, 735 F.3d 654, 665 (7th Cir. 2013). A preliminary 

injunction ordering the defendant to take an affirmative act rather than merely refrain 

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from specific conduct is “cautiously viewed and sparingly issued.” Graham v. Med. Mut. 

of Ohio, 130 F.3d 293, 295 (7th Cir. 1993) (quotation marks and citation omitted). 

Assuming for the sake of argument that Knox met the threshold requirements, the 

judge was well within his discretion to deny the motion. Ordering a specific drug for a 

prison inmate is an exercise of medical judgment and requires proof that prison officials 

have “refus[ed] to provide [the] inmate with prescribed medication or to follow the 

advice of a specialist.” Arnett v. Webster, 658 F.3d 742, 753 (7th Cir. 2011). Knox has not 

presented evidence from any medical professional that he should be prescribed 

tramadol. Although he received it briefly in 2012 and believes it will help him if given 

again, the Eighth Amendment does not entitle inmates to demand specific care, id. at 

754, nor does it authorize courts to decide questions of medical care on the basis of lay 

opinion, see Pyles v. Fahim, 771 F.3d 403, 409 (7th Cir. 2014); Snipes v. DeTella, 95 F.3d 586, 

591 (7th Cir. 1996). Moreover, ordering prison officials to provide an inmate with an 

opioid medication is a substantial interference with prison administration. Prisons have 

strong incentives to limit the provision of controlled substances to inmates for medical 

care; these drugs carry a high risk of being abused or distributed to others. 

Knox replies that his request for a preliminary injunction was not a request for 

tramadol only. He tells us he has not received pain medication since he asked for the 

injunction, and he wanted the court to order the defendants to give him “any kind” of 

medication for his knee pain. In the district court, however, Knox focused exclusively on 

tramadol. 

Regarding the claim about legal mail, Knox makes only one argument: He notes 

that he did not receive a copy of the defendants’ response to his motion until after the 

district court had already denied it. He contends that the delay occurred because the 

response was not marked “legal mail.” But Knox has raised in this court all the 

arguments that he wanted to raise in reply to the defendants’ response, and we have 

considered and rejected them. So Knox was not prejudiced by the delay. Cf. Outlaw v. 

Newkirk, 259 F.3d 833, 841–42 (7th Cir. 2001) (where pro se plaintiff shows no prejudice 

from failure of movant for summary judgment to provide required information to 

plaintiff, remand is inappropriate); Kincaid v. Vail, 969 F.2d 594, 599–600 (7th Cir. 1992) 

(same). 

We have considered Knox’s other arguments; none has merit. 

AFFIRMED. 

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