United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted January 7, 2019*

Decided January 10, 2019 

Before 

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge 

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge 

AMY J. ST. EVE, Circuit Judge

No. 18-1638 

TRAVIS D. WILLIAMS, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

REBECCA SWENSON, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States 

District Court for the 

Eastern District of Wisconsin. 

No. 14-C-1594 

William C. Griesbach, 

Chief Judge. 

O R D E R 

Travis Williams, a Wisconsin inmate, sued medical and nonmedical jail officials 

for violating the Eighth Amendment by not giving him the treatment that he wanted, 

though he refused to let medical staff fully examine him. Both sides moved for 

summary judgment, and the district court entered judgment for the defendants. The 

judge correctly ruled that Williams has not furnished evidence of a constitutional 

 

*

 We agreed to decide this 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. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

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

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

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

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 18-1638 Page 2 

violation. The medical defendants provided a reasonable, alternative approach to his 

preferred treatment plan, and the nonmedical defendants were not personally involved 

in his medical care. Thus, we affirm. 

On appeal from rulings on cross-motions for summary judgment, we view each 

motion separately and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. 

Black Earth Meat Mkt., LLC v. Village of Black Earth, 834 F.3d 841, 847 (7th Cir. 2016). We 

turn first to the defendants’ motions for summary judgment. 

 The relevant events concern three medical issues that arose during the short time 

that Williams was housed at the Kenosha County Pretrial Facility. The first issue 

involves pain medication. Two days before arriving at Kenosha, Williams was at Dodge 

Correctional Institute, where a doctor prescribed ibuprofen three times a day for his 

pain. Once at Kenosha, Dr. Karen Butler, a doctor for the pretrial facility, reduced that 

dosage to twice per day. Williams complained to a nurse about the reduction, and she 

replied that to raise the dosage, he would first have to be medically examined. Williams 

refused to be examined. Based on his refusal, Officer Mark Uelman asked him to sign a 

release from medical responsibility, which Williams also refused to do. The medical 

staff later offered to increase his dosage to three times a day for two weeks but said that 

an extension would require a doctor’s examination. Williams eventually allowed 

Dr. Butler to see him, but he refused to submit to blood work to better evaluate his 

health. Unable to diagnose the cause of Williams’s pain, Dr. Butler changed his 

prescription from ibuprofen to gabapentin to minimize the adverse health risks 

associated with chronic use of ibuprofen. Williams says gabapentin was ineffective. 

Williams also wanted lactulose for constipation, another drug that he had been 

prescribed before his transfer to Kenosha. Dr. Butler prescribed lactulose for two weeks, 

but as with the pain medication, she said that he needed to be examined before she 

would extend the prescription further. Williams again refused to be examined, and his 

prescriptions ran out about a month after he brought this suit. 

Williams had also previously received a wheelchair for long distances and a cane 

for daily use. At Kenosha he told medical staff that he still needed a wheelchair because 

of his limited ambulation. To evaluate his assertion, Dr. Butler placed Williams on a 

72-hour “activity log.” During that time, he was observed moving around his cell, 

bending, walking, and standing without difficulty. He was checked two more times up 

close, but this too revealed no ailments supporting Williams’s account of limited 
No. 18-1638 Page 3 

ambulation. He was allowed continued use of a cane until he struck another inmate 

with it. 

Dissatisfied with his medical care, Williams submitted multiple grievances, and 

when these did not resolve his concerns, this lawsuit followed. In it Williams raises the 

claims that Kenosha’s medical officials violated the Eighth Amendment by not 

prescribing medicine that he desired and that nonmedical officers improperly ignored 

his grievances and medical needs. The judge entered summary judgment in favor of the 

defendants. He concluded that medical staff reasonably exercised medical judgment 

and that no nonmedical defendant was personally involved in a constitutional 

deprivation. Williams’s appellate brief is difficult to parse, but we understand him to 

challenge these conclusions. 

Williams argues first that he supplied evidence that the medical defendants 

violated the Eighth Amendment by refusing to follow the treatment prescribed by his 

previous doctor. But as the judge correctly reasoned, Williams’s contention amounts to 

a disagreement over reasonable, alternative treatments, which is insufficient to support 

an Eighth Amendment claim of deliberate indifference to a health condition. See Berry 

v. Peterman, 604 F.3d 435, 441 (7th Cir. 2010). Williams assumes that the Kenosha 

medical staff should have known, without medically examining him, that his past 

prescriptions were the only proper treatment for his conditions. But he does not offer 

any evidence suggesting that their alternatives—a desire to examine him before 

continuing those previous dosages and cancelling a wheelchair after he showed full 

mobility—were reckless exercises of medical judgment. And since he refused to be fully 

examined, a jury could not find that the treatment he received—limited or alternate 

pain relievers and short-term constipation medicine—was “so far afield of accepted 

professional standards as to raise the inference that it was not actually based on a 

medical judgment.” Norfleet v. Webster, 439 F.3d 392, 396 (7th Cir. 2006). 

William raises two arguments regarding the nonmedical defendants and both are 

meritless. He first complains that jail officer James Parker violated the Eighth 

Amendment by ignoring his grievances. But Williams points to no evidence that he 

directed any of his grievances to Parker. Without any personal connection to these 

grievances, Parker cannot be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. See Colbert v. City of Chicago, 

851 F.3d 649, 657 (7th Cir. 2017). Second, he argues that Uelman, the officer who asked 

Williams to sign the medical release after he refused to be examined, violated the Eighth 

Amendment by withholding medicine from him to retaliate for Williams’s refusal. But 
No. 18-1638 Page 4 

no evidence contradicts Uelman’s assertion that he had no control over Williams’s 

medications. 

Because the judge properly granted the defendants’ summary-judgment motions 

on the Eighth Amendment claim, it necessarily follows that the judge properly denied 

Williams’s cross-motion for summary judgment. 

One final matter. Williams challenges the district court’s denial of his motions to 

allow him to speak in support of his motion for summary judgment and to recruit 

counsel. But the court did not abuse its discretion in denying either motion. See Perotti v. 

Quinones, 790 F.3d 712, 721 (7th Cir. 2015); Pruitt v. Mote, 503 F.3d 647, 658 (7th Cir. 

2007) (en banc). The judge explained that oral argument was not necessary given the 

extensive briefing. On the motion to recruit counsel, the judge reasonably determined 

that Williams’s previous filings demonstrated that he could adequately represent 

himself. And even if the judge were wrong about that, we would reverse only if 

Williams could show that he was prejudiced by that decision. But he has not articulated 

what material evidence a lawyer’s participation might have unearthed. See Tidwell v. 

Hicks, 791 F.3d 704, 709 (7th Cir. 2015). 

We have considered Williams’s other arguments, and none has merit. 

AFFIRMED