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

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted February 17, 2015*

Decided February 17, 2015 

Before 

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge 

JOHN DANIEL TINDER, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

No. 14-3107 

CHAD ANDREW STITES, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

DAVID MAHONEY, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.

No. 12-cv-383-wmc 

William M. Conley, 

Chief Judge. 

O R D E R 

Chad Stites developed Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (“MRSA”) 

while detained at a facility in Dane County, Wisconsin. Stites claims in this suit arising 

under the Due Process Clause and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 that jail staff were deliberately 

indifferent in preventing and treating his infection. The district court concluded at 

summary judgment that Stites had not exhausted his administrative remedies before 

suing as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act, see 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), and 

dismissed the action without prejudice. We affirm the judgment. 

 

*

 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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. 14-3107 Page 2 

The relevant facts are undisputed, and we recount them in the light most 

favorable to Stites, as the opponent of summary judgment. See Arizanovska v. Wal-Mart 

Stores, Inc., 682 F.3d 698, 702 (7th Cir. 2012). Stites contracted MRSA in March 2006. He 

showed a nurse what he believed to be a bug bite on his right hand, but the pain and 

swelling rapidly worsened over the next two days, so another nurse decided to transfer 

him to a hospital. Stites remained at the hospital for about a week, and a hand surgeon 

diagnosed MRSA, irrigated the infection, and removed the dead tissue. Stites returned to 

the lockup with a prescription for an oral antibiotic and instructions to frequently soak 

his hand in a cleaning solution and then cover it with a dry dressing. The facility’s 

medical staff regularly treated Stites and monitored his progress, but he again tested 

positive for MRSA that June. Sometime after September 2006, Stites was transferred from 

Dane County’s custody to a state prison, and afterward he tested positive for MRSA four 

more times from 2007 to 2009. 

Before his transfer to state custody, Stites filed three grievances related to his 

contraction of MRSA. Wisconsin allows county facilities to institute their own grievance 

procedures. See WIS. ADMIN. CODE DOC § 350.26. Dane County’s procedures are found 

in section 607.07 of the county sheriff’s Security Services Manual and are included in a 

handbook given to prisoners. A prisoner must attempt to resolve his complaint 

informally before submitting a grievance, and if he is dissatisfied with the staff’s 

response, he may appeal to the “Jail Captain.” 

In Stites’s first grievance, he complained that doctors and nurses had not followed 

the hospital’s instructions to clean and wrap his hand. An administrator deemed this 

grievance “unfounded”—meaning, according to the grievance policy, that the allegation 

was “false or not factual”—and Stites did not appeal. Two months later, Stites submitted 

his second grievance complaining about having to wait several hours for a nurse when 

he had severe stomach and chest pain that caused him to believe he had MRSA again. 

This time, the grievance was rejected as “not substantiated”—meaning that the 

allegation was not backed by sufficient evidence—and Stites’s appeal was denied. Stites 

submitted his third grievance a few days later, alleging that one of the doctors was not 

properly tracking his medical records. This grievance too was deemed “unfounded,” 

and Stites did not appeal. 

Stites brought this suit in 2012, long after his transfer from Dane County but while 

still in state custody. He alleged that the former and current sheriffs, the jail 

administrator, two deputy sergeants, a doctor, and a nurse all had been deliberately 

indifferent to his health by failing to develop and enforce effective policies to treat and 

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prevent the spread of infectious diseases like MRSA. Stites also complained that the 

defendants had ignored his requests for treatment and misled him about the nature and 

risk of MRSA. The district court screened the complaint, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, and 

allowed Stites to proceed only against the current sheriff, the jail administrator, and the 

doctor on the policy claim. Stites does not challenge this ruling on appeal. 

The defendants moved for summary judgment. They argued that Stites could not 

establish that he exhausted his administrative remedies because he appealed only the 

grievance about waiting too long for a nurse, which was not related to his lawsuit about 

the need for policies to combat MRSA and other infectious diseases. And in any event, 

the defendants continued, a finder of fact could not reasonably conclude that they had 

been deliberately indifferent to Stites’s medical condition. The district court agreed with 

the defendants’ first contention and, for that reason, dismissed the lawsuit. 

On appeal Stites makes several arguments, all of them geared toward trying to 

excuse his undisputed failure to exhaust. He first asserts that his administrative 

remedies necessarily were exhausted because he informally discussed his medical 

treatment with a guard, and also because the sheriff’s department paid his hospital bill. 

But informal discussions are only the first step in the grievance procedure, and the 

source of payment to the hospital is irrelevant. Stites also contends that the exhaustion 

requirement fell away because he no longer was incarcerated by the time he amended 

his complaint to supply the defendants’ names (he initially had called two of them John 

or Jane Doe). All that matters, though, is that he was incarcerated when he initiated this 

lawsuit, which is the relevant point of analysis in applying § 1997e(a). See Dixon v. Page, 

291 F.3d 485, 488–89 (7th Cir. 2002). Stites further insists that exhaustion was not 

required because he sought only damages, which the grievance process could not 

award. That does not matter; the PLRA requires exhaustion “even where the relief 

sought—monetary damages—cannot be granted by the administrative process.” 

Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 85 (2006); see Dole v. Chandler, 438 F.3d 804, 808–09 (7th Cir. 

2006). And, finally, Stites asserts that it was unnecessary to include in his grievances 

details about the alleged deficiencies in the facility’s policies. This proposition misses the 

point; the one grievance that Stites appealed—and thus exhausted—has nothing at all to 

do with policies concerning the prevention or treatment of infectious diseases. 

We have reviewed Stites’s remaining contentions, and none has merit. 

Accordingly, the judgment is AFFIRMED. 

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