United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted September 17, 2019*

Decided September 18, 2019 

Before 

FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge 

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge 

AMY C. BARRETT, Circuit Judge

No. 18-2223 

ROBERT WILLIAMS, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

JONATHAN KELLY and WEXFORD 

HEALTH SOURCES, INC., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 15 C 8135 

Amy J. St. Eve, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

Robert Williams, an Illinois inmate, sued his prison’s medical providers for 

violating the Eighth Amendment by failing to warn him of a potential side effect of a 

prescription drug that he had taken without incident for over a decade. The district 

court entered summary judgment for the defendants. Because Williams provided no 

 

*

 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. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 
No. 18-2223 Page 2 

evidence that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to a serious problem with 

Williams taking his drug, we affirm. 

We construe the facts and draw reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving 

party, Williams. See Arnett v. Webster, 658 F.3d 742, 749 (7th Cir. 2011). Williams has 

schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Starting in the late-1990s, prison doctors prescribed 

Risperdal to treat these conditions. Williams transferred to Stateville Correctional 

Center in 2012, and he saw the prison’s psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Kelly, who renewed 

Williams’s prescription for Risperdal. Williams continued to take Risperdal until March 

2014, when, for the first time, he complained to Dr. Kelly that his chest was swelling. 

Dr. Kelly told Williams that this condition, gynecomastia (increased breast tissue), was 

a potential side effect of Risperdal. The doctor then prescribed another drug. 

Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Williams sued Dr. Kelly and Wexford Health Sources, 

the prison’s medical-services contractor, for violating the Eighth Amendment. He 

accused Dr. Kelly of deliberately ignoring his health needs by not warning him in 2012 

that gynecomastia was a possible side effect of Risperdal. Williams also faulted 

Wexford Health Sources for lacking a policy that requires prison doctors to warn 

patients about the potential side effects of this drug. 

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

ruled that Williams did not put forth evidence that Dr. Kelly departed from accepted 

medical practice. Second, the court concluded that Williams failed to show that 

Wexford’s policies caused a constitutional violation. See Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 

436 U.S. 658 (1978). 

On appeal, Williams does not address the district court’s reasoning or make any 

legal argument for disturbing the judgment. See FED. R. APP. P. 28(a)(8); Anderson 

v. Hardman, 241 F.3d 544, 545 (7th Cir. 2001). Instead, he improperly incorporates other 

documents by reference, see Albrechtsen v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of Wis. Sys., 309 F.3d 

433, 435–36 (7th Cir. 2002), relying entirely on his district-court brief and statement of 

facts in opposition to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. But even if we 

generously construe his pro se appellate brief as arguing that he raised a triable 

failure-to-warn claim against Dr. Kelly and Wexford, he must lose. 

To survive summary judgment, Williams had to furnish evidence that Dr. Kelly 

knew of and disregarded a substantial risk of serious harm to Williams’s health. 

See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 837 (1994). In the context of his claim that Dr. Kelly 
No. 18-2223 Page 3 

should have warned him about the risk of gynecomastia in 2012, Williams needed to 

put forward evidence that this side effect posed a substantial risk of serious harm to 

him. See id. But Williams has not presented any admissible evidence of the magnitude 

of the risks of taking Risperdal long-term. Rather, his decade-long, problem-free use of 

the drug suggests that in 2012 his continued use of the drug would pose little risk to 

him. Based on this record and the facts available to Dr. Kelly in 2012, no reasonable jury 

could conclude that his failure to warn was reckless. See id. at 839; see also Petties 

v. Carter, 836 F.3d 722, 728 (7th Cir. 2016) (en banc). 

Williams’s claim against Wexford also fails. Williams needed to show that 

Wexford knew about serious health risks created by its policies (or “gaps” in its 

policies) regarding the side effects of drugs. See Whiting v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 

839 F.3d 658, 664 (7th Cir. 2016); Thomas v. Cook Cty. Sherriff’s Dep’t, 604 F.3d 293, 303 

(7th Cir. 2010). But Williams has not furnished evidence that Wexford knew of any 

doctors who had failed to warn their patients of substantially risky, serious side effects 

from their prescribed drugs. 

AFFIRMED