Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-24-01426/USCOURTS-ca7-24-01426-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Michael Field
Appellee
Christopher Jacob
Appellant
Dilip Tannan
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted January 7, 2025*

Decided January 10, 2025 

Before

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

JOHN Z. LEE, Circuit Judge 

JOSHUA P. KOLAR, Circuit Judge

No. 24-1426 

CHRISTOPHER JACOB,

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

MICHAEL FIELD and DILIP TANNAN,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Eastern District of 

Wisconsin. 

No. 22-C-875 

William C. Griesbach, 

Judge.

O R D E R

Christopher Jacob, a Wisconsin prisoner, appeals the summary judgment entered 

in favor of a doctor and a nurse who treated Jacob’s hypertension and attention deficit 

hyperactivity disorder. He contends that they deliberately ignored these two conditions 

in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. But the undisputed 

* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and 

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not 

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. APP. P. 32.1

Case: 24-1426 Document: 25 Filed: 01/10/2025 Pages: 4
No. 24-1426 Page 2 

record shows that the defendants exercised acceptable medical judgment when treating 

Jacob. Because they complied with his Eighth Amendment rights, we affirm.

We recite the facts with all reasonable inferences drawn in favor of Jacob, the 

non-movant at summary judgment. McDaniel v. Syed, 115 F.4th 805, 821–22 (7th Cir. 

2024). From 2017 through 2022, Dr. Dilip Tannan treated Jacob for hypertension. After 

one year of treating Jacob’s persistently high blood pressure with medication, Tannan 

contacted the psychiatrists treating Jacob for his ADHD. Based on his medical training, 

Tannan suspected that Jacob’s amphetamine-based ADHD medicine might be raising

Jacob’s blood pressure, and he wanted to discuss halting that medication. Jacob’s 

psychiatrists rejected this proposal. They reasoned that the ADHD medication was 

necessary to treat his ADHD symptoms and to help him focus while at work. 

The following year, Michael Field, a psychiatric nurse, began treating Jacob’s 

ADHD. Tannan intervened again and contacted Field to reprise his inquiry from a year 

earlier about discontinuing Jacob’s ADHD medication. In November 2020, Field 

stopped that treatment, citing Jacob’s high blood pressure, Tannan’s concerns that the 

ADHD drug was keeping Jacob’s blood pressure high, and the fact that Jacob had not 

worked for months, obviating one reason for the ADHD drug.

Jacob objected to Field’s decision to halt the amphetamine-based ADHD drug. 

He refused to see Field for three months, until early 2021. In October 2021, eight months 

after he was willing to see Field again, Jacob reported to Field deep depression, anxiety, 

and ADHD, symptoms that, Jacob argues to us on appeal, he experienced as soon as

Field stopped his amphetamine-based medication. On Tannan’s recommendation, Field 

prescribed in succession two non-amphetamine drugs for ADHD. Jacob tried them but 

stopped taking them within a month, complaining of side effects. 

Tannan continued to see Jacob regularly for his hypertension until May 2022. 

During this period, Jacob sometimes refused to take his blood pressure medicine. 

Tannan proposed alternative drugs for Jacob and advised him to consume fewer salty 

foods. Tannan did not order a low-sodium diet for Jacob or send him to a hypertension 

specialist because none of Jacob’s test results suggested that he needed a specialist. 

Jacob has now sued Tannan and Field, accusing them of deliberate indifference

to his medical conditions. The two defendants moved for summary judgment, which

the district court entered. The court reasoned that no reasonable jury could find that 

Tannan was deliberately indifferent to Jacob’s hypertension or ADHD because Tannan 

repeatedly tried to lower Jacob’s blood pressure and his suggestion that Field stop 

Case: 24-1426 Document: 25 Filed: 01/10/2025 Pages: 4
No. 24-1426 Page 3 

Jacob’s ADHD medicine was based on medical judgment. Regarding Field, the court 

ruled that the record compelled the conclusion that he halted the amphetamine-based 

ADHD drug after carefully considering Jacob’s health needs; further, any delay in 

prescribing a replacement was explained by Jacob’s insistence on a stimulant-based

drug. 

On appeal, Jacob contests the adverse summary judgment. To get to a trial on his 

Eighth Amendment claims, he must furnish evidence that would permit a jury to find 

that the defendants showed “deliberate indifference” to his “serious medical needs.” 

Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 835 (1994). Deliberate indifference requires evidence 

that the defendants knew of and disregarded a substantial risk of harm. Id. at 837. 

Further, we defer to a medical professional’s judgment unless no minimally competent 

professional would have so responded. McDaniel, 115 F.4th at 832. 

Jacob first argues that a jury could find that Tannan was deliberately indifferent 

to his hypertension by pursuing an ineffective course of treatment from 2017 to 2020, 

but the record does not support this contention. He insists that, after Tannan increased 

the dosage of his blood pressure medication in 2017, he did nothing until 2020 despite 

seeing Jacob’s condition deteriorate. But it is undisputed that, beginning in 2018, once

Tannan saw that the new dosage had not reduced Jacob’s blood pressure, he explored 

other reasonable options: Relying on his medical training and awareness that stimulantbased ADHD drugs can aggravate hypertension, Tannan twice intervened to discuss 

halting that drug, eventually succeeding in stopping that treatment. To avoid summary 

judgment on his contention that these interventions, or their timing, substantially 

departed from acceptable practice, Jacob had to offer expert testimony or other 

comparable evidence on that contention. See White v. Woods, 48 F.4th 853, 862 n.4 (7th 

Cir. 2022). But no evidence suggests that the timing or fact of Tannan’s efforts to take 

Jacob off his ADHD medication in order to lower his blood pressure departed at all, let 

alone substantially, from acceptable medical judgment. 

Jacob has two unavailing replies. First he argues that his unresolved high blood 

pressure alone is sufficient evidence that Tannan was deliberately indifferent to his

condition. But an ineffective treatment by itself does not evince a violation of the Eighth 

Amendment. See Thomas v. Martija, 991 F.3d 763, 772 (7th Cir. 2021). Second, Jacob 

contends that Tannan deliberately ignored Jacob’s needs because he did not order 

low-sodium meals for Jacob or send him to see a specialist. But without evidence that 

these steps were essential, a disagreement over treatment does not require a trial on an 

Eighth Amendment claim. Johnson v. Dominguez, 5 F.4th 818, 826 (7th Cir. 2021). 

Case: 24-1426 Document: 25 Filed: 01/10/2025 Pages: 4
No. 24-1426 Page 4 

That brings us to Field. Jacob first conjectures that Field stopped prescribing

amphetamine-based drugs for his ADHD because Field distrusted Jacob’s self-reported 

ADHD symptoms. But emails and notes from Field incontrovertibly reflect that he

discontinued the ADHD drug because Jacob’s blood pressure stayed high, the ADHD 

drug was arguably keeping it high, and Jacob no longer needed that drug because he 

was not working. This evidence shows that Field permissibly relied on medical 

judgment. See Wilson v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 932 F.3d 513, 520 (7th Cir. 2019). 

Next, Jacob contends that Field’s decision to stop ADHD medicine “cold turkey” was 

inappropriate. But Jacob does not provide any medical evidence in support. 

Finally, Jacob argues that Field deliberately ignored his mental health needs for 

eight months—between the time that Jacob was willing to resume seeing Field in early 

2021 and late 2021, when Field began prescribing non-stimulant ADHD drugs. Jacob

asserts in his brief on appeal that during this eight-month gap he told Field that he was 

feeling suicidal, and Field did nothing. But Jacob did not attest in an affidavit that he 

told Field about suicidal thoughts during these eight months; thus he cannot get to trial 

on a claim that Field ignored a known threat of suicide. Quinn v. Wexford Health Sources, 

Inc., 8 F.4th 557, 566 (7th Cir. 2021). Further, Jacob’s medical records undisputedly show 

that when he did report these symptoms to Field, in October 2021, Field prescribed new

medication. On this record, a reasonable jury could not find that Field deliberately 

ignored Jacob’s mental-health needs. 

AFFIRMED

Case: 24-1426 Document: 25 Filed: 01/10/2025 Pages: 4