GARFIELD v. FURLONG (2019)

ORDER

A dentist at an Illinois prison extracted a tooth from inmate John Garfield, but complications during the procedure caused Garfield pain and required additional surgery. Garfield brought deliberate indifference claims against the dentist, the prison’s medical director, and a correctional officer, and a retaliation claim against the officer. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. (He sued other defendants too, but the district court at screening determined that Garfield failed to state claims against them. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A.) The court appointed counsel to represent Garfield. A magistrate judge, presiding by consent, see 28 U.S.C. § 636(c), entered summary judgment for the defendants.

Garfield, proceeding pro se on appeal, argues the narrow point that the ineffective assistance of his appointed counsel entitles him to a new trial under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). He submits that his counsel should have disputed the timing of the dental complications and whether his signature on the consent form for the procedure was forged. Strickland instructs that the Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the right to “reasonably effective assistance” of counsel in trial and trial-like proceedings. See id. at 686–87, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Garfield’s suit, however, is civil, and ineffective assistance is not a basis for remand in a civil matter. See Diggs v. Ghosh, 850 F.3d 905, 911 (7th Cir. 2017); Pendell v. City of Peoria, 799 F.3d 916, 918 (7th Cir. 2015). Moreover, counsel in fact did dispute the timing of events, and nothing in the record suggests that Garfield’s signature was forged.

AFFIRMED