United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted November 22, 2011*

Decided November 22, 2011

Before

RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

   

No. 11‐2337

MICHAEL HOLLOWAY,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

PARTHASARATHI GHOSH, et al.,

Defendants‐Appellees.                 

Appeal from the United States District

Court for the Northern District of Illinois,

Eastern Division.

No. 10 C 122

Ruben Castillo,

Judge.

O R D E R

Michael Holloway, an Illinois prisoner, sued several staff members at Stateville

Correctional Center under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that they deliberately ignored his knee

pain in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court dismissed the complaint for

failure to state a claim. We affirm the judgment.

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

*

  The defendants were not served with process in the district court and are not

participating in this appeal. After examining the appellant’s brief and the record, we have

concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. Thus, the appeal is submitted on the

appellant’s brief and the record. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
No. 11‐2337 Page 2

Holloway has a history of knee pain. He first injured his knee in 2000, and he

retwisted it in 2008. An x‐ray revealed that his knee was “normal,” but he requested knee

surgery. Dr. Liping Zhang, a prison physician, opined that Holloway’s knee would heal on

its own and prescribed pain medicine.

Holloway sued Dr. Zhang, two of her supervisors, and the prison warden. The

district court recruited counsel for Holloway but allowed the attorney to withdraw after he

concluded that no “good‐faith basis” existed to file an amended complaint. Holloway asked

the court to recruit another attorney and also filed his own amended complaint. He

acknowledged that Dr. Zhang had prescribed pain medicine and that medical staff had

ordered four knee x‐rays which revealed normal results, but still asserted that the staff

should have sent him to an orthopedic surgeon and ordered an MRI of his knee.

The district court dismissed Holloway’s complaint because his allegations did not

plausibly state a claim for deliberate indifference. Holloway asserted personal involvement

only by Dr. Zhang, the court explained, and his allegations against the doctor were too

speculative to support a claim that she deliberately ignored Holloway’s knee pain.

Holloway argues on appeal that his allegations of inadequate care met the less

stringent pleading standards for pro se litigants. Even liberally construed, however, his

complaint fails to state a claim for deliberate indifference. By Holloway’s own admission,

medical staff had been monitoring his knee regularly, and Dr. Zhang prescribed pain

medicine. No plausible account of the facts shows that the defendants knowingly

disregarded his condition. See McGowan v. Hulick, 612 F.3d 636, 641 (7th Cir. 2010);

Duckworth v. Ahmad, 532 F.3d 675, 680 (7th Cir. 2008); Finnegan v. Maire, 405 F.3d 694, 695–96

(8th Cir. 2005). Holloway’s insistence on meeting with an orthopedic specialist and having

an MRI amounts only to a disagreement with the adequate course of treatment chosen by

Dr. Zhang, and this disagreement does not rise to a cognizable claim of deliberate

indifference. See Johnson v. Doughty, 433 F.3d 1001, 1013 (7th Cir. 2006); Ciarpaglini v. Saini,

352 F.3d 328, 330–31 (7th Cir. 2003); Alspaugh v. McConnell, 643 F.3d 162, 169 (6th Cir. 2011).

Holloway also argues that the district court should have recruited another attorney

to file an amended complaint for him. But he had no right to court‐appointed counsel in his

civil suit, Romanelli v. Suliene, 615 F.3d 847, 851 (7th Cir. 2010), and having another attorney

would not have changed the outcome of the litigation, see Pruitt v. Mote, 503 F.3d 647, 659

(7th Cir. 2007) (en banc). Given Holloway’s competent filings and the straightforward

nature of the case, the district court did not abuse its discretion by declining to recruit a

second attorney for him. Romanelli, 615 F.3d at 852; Pruitt, 503 F.3d at 654–55.

Accordingly, we AFFIRM the judgment.