Alfredo Miranda v. County of Lake
Alfredo Miranda v. County of Lake
Opinion
In the fall of 2011, Lyvita Gomes failed to show up for jury duty. This minor infraction triggered a series of events that led to her untimely death in the early days of 2012. She wound up in the county jail, where she refused to eat and drink. The medical providers who worked at the Jail did little other than monitoring as she wasted away in her cell. By the time she was sent to the hospital, it was too late to save her.
Alfredo Miranda, the administrator of Gomes's estate, brought an action under
I
A
On October 12, 2011, an officer arrested Gomes, a 52-year-old Indian national, for failing to appear for jury duty. (In hindsight, this was the County's first misstep: as a non-citizen, Gomes was categorically ineligible to serve as a juror. 705 ILCS 305/2(a)(4).) Gomes pulled away from the officer as he attempted to arrest her. That action earned her a second charge of resisting arrest. The officers took Gomes to Lake County Jail, where she made statements that landed her on suicide watch the next day. But she did not stay at the Jail long. On October 14, Gomes was transferred to the custody of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service, which released her within a few days.
Roughly two months later, on December 14, after failing to appear in court on the resisting-arrest charge, Gomes found herself back in the Lake County Jail. Though officials initially placed her in the general population, it quickly became apparent that her physical and mental health were deteriorating, and so she was moved.
On December 16, CCS's Director of Mental Health, Jennifer Bibbiano (a social worker), performed a mental health evaluation on Gomes. Bibbiano documented that Gomes had ingested no food or water since arriving at the Jail two days earlier. As a result, Gomes was transferred the next day to the Jail's medical pod for closer monitoring. On December 18, staff placed Gomes on suicide watch and the hunger strike protocol. At that point, after she had gone four days without food or water, staff weighed her for the first time and recorded a weight of 146 pounds. Over the next ten days, this number plummeted; by December 28, Gomes weighed only 128 pounds.
During this period, social workers and physicians continued to assess Gomes daily. Defendant Dr. Rozel Elazegui, an internist, saw Gomes on December 22 and 27. In several progress notes, the CCS staff reported various symptoms of dehydration, such as skin tenting. Gomes's refusal to eat or drink and her unresponsiveness often prevented the medical staff from recording her vital signs and collecting any blood or urine samples. For most of this time, Gomes lay in bed and refused to speak.
As Gomes's physical condition worsened, concerns about her mental state grew. When Gomes appeared in court on December 20, the judge ordered a mental fitness examination. On December 22, Gomes was identified as needing an urgent psychiatric visit. That prompted a visit two days later from psychiatrist Hargurmukh Singh, who first met Gomes then and diagnosed her with a "psychotic disorder not otherwise specified." He prescribed no medication. After seeing Gomes again on December 27, Dr. Singh concluded that her psychosis rendered her unable to understand the risks of not eating and unable to participate in her treatment plan. But his only advice to Dr. Elazegui, who wanted to perform an involuntary blood draw for monitoring purposes, was that Elazegui could do so if push came to shove.
Around this time the officials in charge of Lake County Jail entered the picture. On December 26, Wayne Hunter, the Jail's acting chief, was first notified by email that Gomes was in the Jail and was refusing medical treatment and tests. Hunter received assurances that CCS staff were monitoring Gomes's condition and that they would provide him with any updates. Two days later, Hunter personally went down to Gomes's cell in a futile attempt to persuade her to eat. On December 27, Scott Fitch, the liaison between the correctional and medical staff, learned about Gomes. He too asked for updates. Fitch called Gomes's public defender, entreating her to visit and encourage her client to eat. Sheriff Mark Curran did not hear about Gomes until December 29, the day she left the Jail. That same day, Jail officials went to court to get Gomes formally released from custody.
Also on December 29, Dr. Young Kim, another CCS internist, returned to work from a vacation. Dr. Kim was surprised to learn that Gomes had remained in the Jail while continuing to refuse all food and drink. (A few stray comments in Gomes's medical records suggest that she may have rubbed water on her body and perhaps taken a few sips of water from her sink. But the record as a whole implies little to no water intake.) Dr. Kim immediately called an ambulance to take Gomes to the hospital for evaluation and treatment of her dehydration and psychosis. Unfortunately, this intervention came too late. On January 3, 2012, five days after arriving at the hospital, Gomes died. The autopsy opined that she died of "Complications of Starvation and Dehydration." The manner of death was suicide.
B
The Estate filed this action against Lake County, Sheriff Curran, Hunter, Fitch, CCS, Dr. Elazegui, Dr. Singh, Bibbiano, and two more social workers, Ruth Muuru and Edith Jones. It raised due process claims under
But the jury never had the opportunity to resolve some of those claims. At the close of the Estate's presentation of evidence, the court entered judgment as a matter of law under Rule 50(a) for social workers Muuru and Jones on all claims against them. The court also concluded that the Estate had failed to present enough evidence to reach the jury on the question whether the medical defendants caused Gomes's death; it therefore granted them judgment as a matter of law on that part of the case. The only question remaining for the jury was the Estate's due process claim for inadequate medical care, limited to the pain and suffering Gomes experienced while in the Jail. The jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict regarding the conduct of Dr. Elazegui and Dr. Singh but it held social worker Bibbiano liable. It awarded the Estate $119,000 in compensatory damages, which Bibbiano has paid in full.
The Estate does not challenge the jury verdict, but it takes issue with four aspects of the proceedings below: first, the district court's dismissal of the County defendants; second, the judgment as a matter of law on causation of death; third, the court's ruling barring the Estate from pursuing one of its theories of recovery under the Due Process Clause; and fourth, the court's instruction on the applicable legal standard. While we find no merit in its first point, we conclude on the latter three that the Estate is entitled to the opportunity to try its full case against the medical defendants before a jury.
II
A
We start with the Estate's attempt to revive some of the claims against the County defendants. It first challenges the district court's conclusion that the Jail's chief, Hunter, and liaison, Fitch, were not deliberately indifferent to Gomes's inadequate medical care in violation of her due process rights. We need not delve into the nuances of the standard for such a claim, because the Estate faces an insurmountable hurdle independent of that standard. We have long recognized the fact that correctional institutions (like most entities in a modern economy) engage in the division of labor. See
Greeno v. Daley
,
Nothing in this record justifies a finding of personal liability against the County defendants. Hunter and Fitch received assurances that CCS staff were regularly monitoring Gomes. They requested periodic updates on her condition. The medical providers informed Hunter and Fitch that Gomes was stable and promised to send her to the hospital if necessary. Knowing that the CCS employees were on the case, Hunter and Fitch were entitled to rely on their professional judgments. See
Arnett v. Webster
,
Because we find that Fitch and Hunter's reasonable reliance on their medical providers shields them from liability under section 1983, we need not consider the County defendants' alternative arguments for dismissal.
B
While the Estate has apparently abandoned its claim that Sheriff Curran is individually liable for Gomes's inadequate medical care, it is still trying to pursue an official-capacity claim about the Jail's allegedly deficient hunger-strike policy. As an Illinois sheriff, Curran has final policymaking authority over jail operations.
DeGenova v. Sheriff of DuPage Cnty.
,
The focus of the Estate's Monell claim is Lake County Jail's hunger-strike policy. That policy required four things: (1) the immediate notification of medical staff when an inmate begins a hunger strike; (2) documentation of meal refusals and immediate notification of a command officer after an inmate's third consecutive meal refusal; (3) the command's investigation and communication with medical staff as needed; and (4) a conference including the health services administrator and the chief or deputy chief of corrections about the best course of action. The Estate finds the policy lacking in some respects, including the timing of notification and consultation, follow-up procedures if the hunger strike continues, methods to review past suicidality, and guidance on what to look for and how to document an inmate's condition on suicide watch.
The Estate's concerns may be valid, but it has not shown that the Sheriff was deliberately indifferent in enacting this policy. Though hunger strikes may be common in jails, as
amici
suggest, Gomes went longer without food and water than anyone else in the Jail's experience. This does not give the Sheriff a free pass, since a single incident can be enough for liability where a constitutional violation was highly foreseeable.
Woodward v. Corr. Med. Serv. of Ill., Inc.
,
The Estate presented no evidence that would allow a trier of fact to conclude that some feature in the Jail's policy caused Gomes's death. Once Jail staff learned about her refusal to eat or drink, they stayed in regular communication with CCS's medical personnel. See
Belbachir v. Cnty. of McHenry
,
C
We can be brief with the Estate's complaint that the County defendants failed to comply with their international treaty obligations. Article 36 of the Vienna Convention guarantees a foreign national the right to have her home country's consular office notified when she is detained. Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, art. 36, Apr. 24, 1963, 21 U.S.T. 77 ;
Sandoval v. United States
,
The district court was concerned that the Estate failed to mention section 1983 when raising this claim, see
Jogi v. Voges
,
We need not wrestle with that issue now, however, because our case is easily resolved on the more straightforward ground of qualified immunity. The County officials are immune from suit if it was not clearly established in 2011 that their conduct violated the Vienna Convention. See
Pearson v. Callahan
,
D
The Estate also seeks to reinstate a
Monell
claim based on the County's alleged failure to train Jail staff to notify detainees of their consular rights. A failure-to-train claim is actionable only if the failure amounted to deliberate indifference to the rights of others.
City of Canton v. Harris
,
Here, Sheriff Curran had neither. The Estate points to no evidence indicating that detainees repeatedly complained about the absence of consular notification.
The parties try to paint the problem as rampant or nonexistent, but the record does not support either extreme.
Sheriff Curran did not fail to act in the face of foreseeable violations. Lake County Jail has had a policy about consular notification since at least October 2005. In addition to requiring booking officers to inform detainees, the policy specified that all officers who work at the booking desk "shall receive appropriate training," including a video, handouts, and a training session. Sheriff Curran testified that he knew about this policy and was never notified that it was not being followed. Thus, at most, Sheriff Curran was negligent in failing to ensure that the Jail's training protocol was being implemented. This is not enough to establish that he was deliberately indifferent to detainees' rights. See
Rice
,
III
We turn now to the Estate's claims against Drs. Elazegui and Singh, which the district court partially blocked on the ground that there was not enough evidence of causation to reach the jury. Though the Estate assigns error to the court's ruling on a motion
in limine
and its jury instruction, we need reach these decisions only if we reverse on causation. This is because neither ruling prejudiced the Estate on the claim that did go to the jury. Under the single recovery rule, defendants are jointly and severally liable for the full amount of compensatory damages that result from an indivisible harm; a plaintiff can recover only once for those damages.
Janusz v. City of Chi.
,
A
The court granted judgment as a matter of law on the Estate's constitutional and state-law wrongful death claims against Drs. Elazegui and Singh because it thought that no rational jury could conclude that their actions caused Gomes's death. It identified two evidentiary gaps: first, the lack of expert testimony explaining what the notation of "Complications of Starvation and Dehydration" in the autopsy report meant and how those complications related to Gomes's death; and second, the lack of expert testimony about what took place during the five days between Gomes's transfer to the hospital and her death. We consider this decision
de novo
.
Holder v. Ill. Dep't of Corr.
,
We start with the Estate's claim under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process clause for inadequate medical care.
1
Although Dr. Elazegui and Dr. Singh were employed by a private company that contracted with Lake County to provide detainees' medical care, they are considered state actors amenable to suit under
section 1983.
West v. Atkins
,
To recover on its due process claim, the Estate had to present " 'verifying medical evidence' that the delay" in medical care "caused some degree of harm."
Williams v. Liefer
,
The record contains ample evidence from which a jury could infer that Drs. Elazegui and Singh's inaction diminished Gomes's chances of survival. First, it shows that she died from starvation and dehydration. Under Illinois law, autopsy reports are prima facie evidence of their findings and conclusions, including cause of death. 725 ILCS 5/115-5.1. The report here did not mince words about Gomes's cause of death-"Complications of Starvation and Dehydration"-or her manner of death-"suicide." The coroner implicitly ruled out the possibility that Gomes died from any hospital-based illnesses or other causes. The report is clear: not eating or drinking caused her death. (Hospital records underscore this conclusion. On the day she arrived at the hospital, Gomes was already experiencing acute liver and renal failure. For present purposes, however, we disregard these records, because they were excluded from trial at the request of the medical defendants, and the Estate has not challenged that exclusion on appeal.)
Moreover, the Estate's expert witnesses testified that the doctors' failure to transfer Gomes to the hospital sooner allowed her deterioration to reach a dangerous point. Psychiatry expert Dr. James Gilligan repeatedly testified that Dr. Singh contributed to Gomes's death by failing to initiate her transfer from the Jail to the hospital. Furthermore, Dr. Singh (a psychiatrist, recall) knew that Gomes was clinically incompetent, but he took no steps to treat her even though she was endangering her life. Dr. Gilligan concluded that Dr. Singh's "failure to act ... contributed to [Gomes's] death." Internal medicine expert Dr. Jack Raba testified that Gomes's pulse on December 25 was an "ominous sign," raising the possibility of cardiovascular problems, electrolyte or metabolic imbalances, or renal failure. He added that Gomes's blood pressure clearly indicated dehydration. Dr. Raba said it was "impossible" not to consider that Gomes was starting to show signs of organ failure. These "absolute signs" signaled that Gomes urgently needed to be admitted to a hospital for bloodwork and possibly forced feeding and medication. Dr. Raba concluded that Dr. Elazegui's failure to intervene "contributed to [Gomes's] ultimate demise and death."
The prison doctors' testimony lent support to Dr. Raba's expert opinion on causation. When Dr. Elazegui spoke with Gomes on December 22, he informed her that starvation risked organ failure and death. He asked to be informed when her weight loss hit 18%, since that number indicates an increased risk of organ failure. Dr. Kim's testimony was also relevant to the causation question. When he returned from vacation, he was concerned that Gomes could go into respiratory failure or cardiac arrest at any minute (and unlike the others, he promptly acted on this concern).
Taken together, this evidence was enough to support an inference on the jury's part that the delay in sending Gomes to the hospital resulted in her death, or at least lessened her chance of survival.
Our analysis applies with equal force to the Estate's state malpractice claims. See 740 ILCS 180/1. Under this theory, the Estate had to show that the physicians' negligent failure to comply with the standard of care proximately caused Gomes's injury. See
Sullivan v. Edward Hosp.
,
The proximate-cause inquiry encompasses both cause-in-fact and legal cause.
Palay v. United States
,
A jury would have been permitted to find legal cause here. By their own admission, Drs. Elazegui and Singh knew that if Gomes continued to refuse food and fluids, she could die. They warned her as much. The record also contained support for cause-in-fact. The experts opined that the medical defendants' inaction contributed to Gomes's death. This was not impermissibly conclusory for an expert opinion. See FED. R. EVID. 705 ; see also
Wilson v. Clark
,
B
Since the Estate is entitled to a new trial against the medical defendants, we will also say a few words about its challenge to the district court's decision to bar all reference to the theory that the medical defendants violated the Due Process
Clause by failing to protect Gomes from harming herself. Our review is for abuse of discretion.
Perry v. City of Chi.
,
The Supreme Court has declared that "competent persons" have a due-process "right to refuse lifesaving hydration and nutrition."
Washington v. Glucksberg
,
We repeatedly have recognized a jail or prison official's failure to protect an inmate from self-harm as one way of establishing deliberate indifference to a serious medical need.
E.g.
,
Estate of Miller, ex rel. Bertram v. Tobiasz
,
In barring this theory, the court reasoned that the Estate had not presented evidence that Gomes's suicidal ideation and mental illness were "so acute" that the defendants should have known about them and protected her from herself. See Seventh Circuit Pattern Civil Jury Instruction 7.19 (rev. 2017) (an element of a failure-to-protect-from-self-harm claim is that the defendant was aware or strongly suspected a strong likelihood of serious self-harm). The court attached particular weight to testimony from Gomes's family members and the administrator that she was a devout Catholic who had no history of mental illness and would not have committed suicide.
In the past, we have taken into account jail officials' knowledge of a decedent's mental health history or warnings from family members, as that information pertains to the defendants' subjective awareness of a problem.
E.g.
,
Payne for Hicks v. Churchich
,
And in any event, the trial record was filled with evidence supporting a finding that the medical defendants knew that Gomes was at great risk of death by starvation and dehydration, and that she was unable to think rationally. On December 27, Dr. Singh deemed her not competent and concluded that she did not understand the risks of refusing to eat. Before then, CCS staff documented Gomes's suicidal ideation and placed her on suicide watch. Dr. Elazegui had warned Gomes that if she continued to refuse nutrition, she could die. The defendants' records reveal that they were aware that Gomes was at serious risk of causing her own death. The district court abused its discretion by prohibiting the Estate from pursuing this line of argument. At the next trial, the Estate must be allowed to argue this theory of recovery to the jury.
C
Finally, we consider whether the district court properly instructed the jury on intent. We evaluate the jury instructions anew when deciding if they accurately state the law.
Sanchez v. City of Chi.
,
The Supreme Court first recognized an incarcerated person's right to receive adequate medical treatment in
Estelle v. Gamble
,
This subjective standard is closely linked to the language of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits the infliction of "cruel and unusual
punishments
." The Supreme Court has interpreted this to ban only the "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain."
Farmer v. Brennan
,
Pretrial detainees stand in a different position: they have not been convicted of anything, and they are still entitled to the constitutional presumption of innocence. Thus, the punishment model is inappropriate for them.
Kingsley v. Hendrickson
, --- U.S. ----,
That said, we have typically assessed pretrial detainees' medical care (and other) claims under the Eighth Amendment's standards, reasoning that pretrial detainees are entitled to at least that much protection.
E.g.
,
Minix
,
Cavalieri
,
The Supreme Court recently disapproved the uncritical extension of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence to the pretrial setting in
Kingsley v. Hendrickson
, --- U.S. ----,
Several considerations have led us to conclude that the appropriate standard for a pretrial detainee's excessive force claim is solely an objective one. For one thing, it is consistent with our precedent. We have said that "the Due Process Clause protects a pretrial detainee from the use of excessive force that amounts to punishment." Graham [ v. Connor ,490 U.S. 386 , ] 395, n. 10 [109 S.Ct. 1865 ,104 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989) ]. And in Bell [ v. Wolfish ,441 U.S. 520 ,99 S.Ct. 1861 ,60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979) ], we explained that such "punishment" can consist of actions taken with an "expressed intent to punish."441 U.S., at 538 [99 S.Ct. 1861 ]. But the Bell Court went on to explain that, in the absence of an expressed intent to punish, a pretrial detainee can nevertheless prevail by showing that the actions are not "rationally related to a legitimate nonpunitive governmental purpose" or that the actions "appear excessive in relation to that purpose."Id., at 561 [99 S.Ct. 1861 ].
Though
Kingsley
's direct holding spoke only of excessive-force claims, two of our sister circuits have held that its logic is not so constrained. The Ninth Circuit first extended
Kingsley
's objective inquiry to detainees' Fourteenth-Amendment failure-to-protect claims.
Castro v. Cnty. of L.A.
,
The Eighth, Eleventh, and Fifth Circuits have chosen to confine
Kingsley
to its facts-that is, to Fourteenth-Amendment claims based on excessive-force allegations in a pretrial setting.
E.g.
,
Whitney v. City of St. Louis
,
Some circuits have continued to analyze inadequate medical treatment claims under the deliberate indifference standard without grappling with the potential implications of
Kingsley
.
E.g.
,
Duff v. Potter
,
We have not yet expressly weighed in on the debate. Since
Kingsley
, we have continued to duplicate the Eighth Amendment inquiry for claims of deficient medical treatment.
E.g.
,
Phillips v. Sheriff of Cook Cnty.
,
Because the answer may make a difference in the retrial of Gomes's claims, we think it appropriate to address the proper standard at this time. We begin with the fact that the Supreme Court has been signaling that courts must pay careful attention to the different status of pretrial detainees. In this respect,
Kingsley
does not stand alone. See,
e.g.
,
Manuel v. City of Joliet
, --- U.S. ----,
Although the defendants failed to mention
Parratt v. Taylor
,
We also see no conflict between this application of
Kingsley
and the Supreme Court's later decision in
Daniels v. Williams
,
Here is what the Court had to say about this problem in Kingsley :
We consider a legally requisite state of mind. In a case like this one, there are, in a sense, two separate state-of-mind questions. The first concerns the defendant's state of mind with respect to his physical acts- i.e., his state of mind with respect to the bringing about of certain physical consequences in the world. The second question concerns the defendant's state of mind with respect to whether his use of force was "excessive." Here, as to the first question, there is no dispute. As to the second, whether to interpret the defendant's physical acts in the world as involving force that was "excessive," there is a dispute. We conclude with respect to that question that the relevant standard is objective not subjective. Thus, the defendant's state of mind is not a matter that a plaintiff is required to prove.
The allegations here easily fit the mold of Gordon , Darnell , and Castro . A properly instructed jury could find that Drs. Elazegui and Singh made the decision to continue observing Gomes in the jail, rather than transporting her to the hospital, with purposeful, knowing, or reckless disregard of the consequences. (The jury could also reject such a conclusion.) It would be a different matter if, for example, the medical defendants had forgotten that Gomes was in the jail, or mixed up her chart with that of another detainee, or if Dr. Elazegui forgot to take over coverage for Dr. Kim when he went on vacation. Such negligence would be insufficient to support liability under the Fourteenth Amendment, even though it might support state-law liability. Here, there is evidence that Drs. Elazegui and Singh deliberately chose a "wait and see" monitoring plan, knowing that Gomes was neither eating nor drinking nor competent to care for herself. See Glisson , 849 F.3d at 380, 382 (recognizing inaction as a choice). Because the Estate does not claim merely negligent conduct, a jury must decide whether the doctors' deliberate failure to act was objectively reasonable.
IV
Any death is a great loss, but one as preventable as Gomes's is especially disturbing. On this record, a jury could have found that the intentional and knowing inaction of Drs. Elazegui and Singh caused Gomes's death. We therefore REVERSE and REMAND for new trial of the Estate's claim against them, as it relates to Gomes's death. We AFFIRM the district court's grant of summary judgment to the County defendants.
We do so because this was the claim that supports the district court's subject-matter jurisdiction under
Once again, it is worth recalling that a person may recover only once for a given set of injuries. At this stage, however, no one has had any occasion to consider whether state law and federal law overlap so much that the elements supporting each theory are the same, or that full relief could be recovered under either. Reconciliation of those theories is something better done by the district court on remand.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Alfredo MIRANDA, Administrator of Estate of Lyvita Gomes, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. COUNTY OF LAKE, Et Al., Defendants-Appellees.
- Cited By
- 1408 cases
- Status
- Published