United States Seventh Circuit

In an inmate's 42 U.S.C. section 1983 suit against a nurse, a doctor and jail administrator for violating his Eighth Amendment right for refusing to refer him to a dentist for a serious toothache, district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants is affirmed in part and reversed in part where: 1) district court's conclusion that plaintiff has raised a genuine issue of material fact as to whether he exhausted his administrative remedies is proper; 2) district court correctly held that plaintiff suffered a serious medical condition and that the jail administrator is entitled to summary judgment because he was not deliberately indifferent to plaintiff's situation; but 3) plaintiff has offered sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could infer that the doctor and nurse acted with deliberate indifference toward his condition by persisting in an easy but ineffective course of treatment that subjected him to two months of serious but avoidable pain.

Appellate Information

• Decided 05/05/2010
• Published 05/05/2010

Judges

• HAMILTON, Circuit Judge., Before POSNER, MANION, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Seventh Circuit

Counsel