Opinion ID: 2828807
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Facts in the Record

Text: On Rowe’s claim that the timing of his Zantac doses showed deliberate indifference to his health, the evidence in the record consists of two items. First, plaintiff Rowe asserts in his verified complaint and in several affidavits that he believes the prison’s schedule for giving him two 150 mg Zantac pills each day left him in unnecessary and avoidable pain for hours every day after meals. Second, defendants filed an affidavit from defendant Dr. William Wolfe, who was a career physician in the United States Air Force and is now a contract physician for the Indiana Department of Correction. Dr. Wolfe testified: “It does not matter what time of day Mr. Rowe receives his Zantac prescription. Each Zantac pill is fully effective for twelve hour increments. Zantac does not have to be taken before or with a meal to be effective. Providing Mr. Rowe with Zantac twice daily as the nursing staff makes their medication rounds, whatever time that may be, is sufficient and appropriate to treat his heart burn symptoms.” The record thus shows a prisoner’s diagnosed disease and complaints of pain that prison staff treated with an apNo. 14-3316 31 propriate medicine. The prisoner is not satisfied with details of the treatment’s timing, but a physician testified that the timing change the prisoner wanted was not called for because the medicine was equally effective as long as he was receiving two doses per day. This evidence does not support a reasonable inference of deliberate indifference. Proof of deliberate indifference is much more demanding than proof of even medical malpractice. E.g. Petties v. Carter, — F.3d —, 2015 WL 4567899 (7th Cir. July 30, 2015); Ray v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 706 F.3d 864, 866 (7th Cir. 2013); Duckworth v. Ahmad, 532 F.3d 675, 679 (7th Cir. 2008); see generally Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976). This record evidence would not let a reasonable jury find that the prison’s schedule for giving Rowe his medicine departed so far from professional standards to find that any prison staff acted with deliberate indifference to his health. The district court therefore properly granted summary judgment for defendants on this claim. See, e.g., Norfleet v. Webster, 439 F.3d 392, 396 (7th Cir. 2006) (reversing denial of summary judgment), citing Estate of Cole v. Fromm, 94 F.3d 254, 262 (7th Cir. 1996) (affirming summary judgment); see also, e.g., Pyles v. Fahim, 771 F.3d 403, 409 (7th Cir. 2014) (affirming summary judgment; physician’s refusal to order MRI for prisoner’s back pain did not show deliberate indifference). As noted above, the majority claims twice that its decision does not actually depend on its independent factual research, at pages 14 and 16. See also ante at 27–28 (Rovner, J., concurring). These denials contradict the rest of the majority opinion. If they were accurate, the majority’s long discussion of its research and its justifications for it would amount to a long essay not necessary to the court’s decision. If the denials 32 No. 14-3316 were accurate, moreover, the majority decision would amount to a significant rewriting of the Eighth Amendment law governing health care for prisoners. Where prison medical staff just refuse to treat serious pain or disease, a prisoner may well have a viable claim that should go to trial. E.g., Miller v. Campanella, No. 14-1990,— F.3d —, 2015 WL 4523799 (7th Cir. July 27, 2015) (no treatment of prisoner’s GERD); Hayes v. Snyder, 546 F.3d 516, 524– 26 (7th Cir. 2014). Where the evidence shows, however, that medical staff have provided at least some treatment for pain we almost always hold that the prisoner is not entitled to a jury trial on a claim for deliberate indifference based on a claim that the pain treatment was not adequate. E.g., Pyles v. Fahim, 771 F.3d 403, 409, 411 (7th Cir. 2014); Holloway v. Delaware County Sheriff, 700 F.3d 1063, 1073–76 (7th Cir. 2012). If the majority decision did not depend on its own factual research, then the majority would be holding that the prisoner’s dissatisfaction with pain treatment is enough to require a jury trial on whether the prison’s medical staff were deliberately indifferent to his pain. We have not found before this case that such evidence is sufficient to infer deliberate indifference. But we will see a lot more cases like this one. As the average age of the prison population increases, so will the incidence of painful, chronic conditions that cannot be treated to the complete satisfaction of the prisoners. The fact that a treatment for pain is not as effective as the prisoner would like should not be enough to support an inference that the prison staff are deliberately indifferent to his pain. In fact, the majority’s reversal on this claim is based on a small but important category of cases in which prisoners No. 14-3316 33 have shown that medical staff persisted in obviously inadequate courses of treatment. In those cases, we have found triable issues of deliberate indifference. E.g., Arnett v. Webster, 658 F.3d 742, 754 (7th Cir. 2011); Berry v. Peterman, 604 F.3d 435, 441–42 (7th Cir. 2010); Greeno v. Daley, 414 F.3d 645, 654 (7th Cir. 2005) (treatment prisoner received was “blatantly inappropriate”). As we explained in Pyles, these decisions were based on evidence showing that the need for specialized expertise or different treatment was either known by the treating physicians or would have been obvious to a lay person. 771 F.3d at 411. The problem for the majority here is that Rowe himself has made no comparable showing. Only by relying on its independent factual research can the majority establish an arguable basis for applying this theory that the course of treatment was so clearly inadequate as to amount to deliberate indifference. The majority decision to reverse summary judgment on this claim thus depends on that independent factual research.