Opinion ID: 4374878
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exhausted Claims Against Grogan

Text: The district court held that Rachel exhausted, via JCCC 14-218, two claims against Grogan: (1) that she is unqualified to be the HSA, and (2) that she shouldn’t have returned his first emergency grievance unanswered. But the court held Rachel failed to demonstrate a genuine issue of material fact that Grogan was deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs. To succeed on an Eighth Amendment claim, a prisoner must demonstrate “acts or omissions sufficiently harmful to evidence deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.” Self, 439 F.3d at 1230 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court’s inquiry is comprised of objective and subjective components. Id. “Under the objective inquiry, the alleged deprivation must be sufficiently serious to constitute a deprivation of constitutional dimension.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). “[U]nder the subjective inquiry, the prison official must have a sufficiently culpable state of mind.” Id. at 1230-31 (internal quotation marks omitted). This is “akin to recklessness”: “consciously disregard[ing] a substantial risk of serious harm.” Id. at 1231 (internal quotation marks omitted). Importantly, negligent diagnosis or treatment isn’t enough to demonstrate a constitutional violation. Id. at 1230. Thus, 8 “the subjective component is not satisfied, absent an extraordinary degree of neglect, where a doctor merely exercises his considered medical judgment.” Id. at 1232. The district court held that Rachel’s first claim against Grogan failed because he presented no evidence regarding her alleged lack of qualifications. We affirm summary judgment on that claim because Rachel fails to address the district court’s ruling in his appeal briefs. See Bronson v. Swensen, 500 F.3d 1099, 1104 (10th Cir. 2007). The district court held that Rachel’s second claim against Grogan failed because there is no genuine dispute that he received medical care for the health issues he raised in his first emergency grievance. The court reasoned that, “[c]onsidering [Grogan’s] evidence that medical staff treated [Rachel’s] issues, [he] cannot show that Grogan was deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need for merely instructing [him] to utilize the non-emergency grievance process.” R., Vol. I at 535-36. Rachel acknowledges that he received medical care, but he contends it wasn’t adequate. As the district court held, however, a disagreement with a provider’s medical judgment regarding appropriate treatment is insufficient to demonstrate deliberate indifference. See Gee v. Pacheco, 627 F.3d 1178, 1192 (10th Cir. 2010) (“Disagreement with a doctor’s particular method of treatment, without more, does not rise to the level of an Eighth Amendment violation.”). Rachel asserts that the inadequacy of the treatment he received was obvious to his medical providers, but he fails to develop that argument or point to any evidence supporting it. See Walters v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 703 F.3d 1167, 1173 (10th Cir. 2013) (“While we liberally 9 construe [an appellant’s] pro se filings, we will not assume the role of advocate and make his arguments for him.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). We therefore affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment on Rachel’s deliberate-indifference claim against Grogan based upon her rejection of his first emergency grievance.