Plaintiff was placed on suicide watch. While on watch, he had a psychotic episode. The prison psychiatrist was notified, and over telepsych, without ever seeing the prisoner, the prison psychiatrist prescribed some psychotropic meds. While protocol required that he be monitored for two hours after administration of psychotropic drugs, no one did so. He was supposed to be on continuous watch during this time and, while someone was assigned that job, they refused to stand and instead insisted on sitting down, which prevented them from having continuous observation of plaintiff.
Plaintiff inflicted very serious self-injuries (I’ll spare you the details, but be assured, the injuries were both sever and permanent). Because he was sitting down rather than standing, the person assigned to implement the continuous watch did not see him inflict the injuries until after it was too late to do anything about it.
Plaintiff sued both the psychiatrist and the Assistant Warden responsible for suicide watch. The District Court granted summary judgment to both defendants, and plaintiff appealed.
As to the psychiatrist, the court agreed that the nurse violated protocol by not doing any follow up, and not entering any notes into the electronic medical record (EMR). The doctor did not check the EMR, and took no action to ensure follow up happened. The Seventh Circuit held that while everyone failed to do their jobs, plaintiff failed to produce any evidence that the psychiatrist’s failure to follow up was something that “no minimally competent professional would have so responded under those circumstances,” which it held was the standard for medical deliberate indifference. Rather, plaintiff’s expert only opined that the psychiatrist’s actions did not comply with “best practices.” However, the court noted that this is not the standard for deliberate indifference. SJ for psychiatrist was thus affirmed.
As to the Assistant Warden, the court agreed that plaintiff had produced evidence to show that he was aware of a widespread pattern of watchers failing to stand during continuous watches, in violation of policy, and did nothing about it. The court agreed that this constituted deliberate indifference. HOWEVER, the court noted that this is only half of the test. In addition, plaintiff had to prove that the deliberate indifference was the CAUSE of plaintiff’s injuries. The court held that the watcher’s failure to follow protocol “constituted a superseding cause of Passwater’s injuries that severed any liability on the part of Deputy Warden Pretorius” The court thus affirmed summary judgment for the Assistant Warden.
