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Medical Malpractice Law & StrategyFeaturesLitigationLJN NewslettersMedical Malpractice

Institutional Deliberate Indifference

By Janice G. Inman
April 02, 2017

Prisoner Eighth Amendment allegations of cruel and unusual punishment due to deliberate indifference to their medical needs are common; most of them go nowhere. No matter the incompetence of the medical care provided, it is hard for a prisoner to prove (particularly when appearing pro se, as is common) that a care provider acted with intentional knowing recklessness as to his health, as this requires a showing of the provider's actual knowledge of a serious risk. Generally, any prison-setting medical care mistake or issue must be addressed in state court as a regular medical malpractice claim, not as a violation of a prisoner's Constitutional rights.

Once in a while, though, the care provided to a prisoner is so substandard that the case actually hurdles the defendants' motion for summary judgment and makes it to trial. A recent such case — Glisson v. Indiana Dept. of Correction, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 3101 (7th Cir., 2/21/17) — not only beat the normal odds, but also presented a rare way of looking at deliberate indifference: In Glisson, it isn't the actions of the individual doctors and nurses that will be in the spotlight come trial time, but the workings of the medical system that employed them.

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