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Abstract: 

Repeated Reports of Chest Pain. After suffering a heart attack while incarcerated at the Pueblo Minimum Center, Annabelle D. Mata sued four employees of Colorado’s Department of Corrections (DOC) for failing to provide her with adequate medical care. Stephen Jarriett, an Ohio state prisoner, asserted that corrections officers were deliberately indifferent to his serious medical needs during the 12-hour period when he was confined in a two and a half foot square mesh steel “strip cage.” He testified that, during this time, he repeatedly complained of “terrible” leg pain and swelling and asked to be seen by a doctor. In McKenna v. Wright, 386 F.3d 432 (2d Cir. 2004), the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied defendants’ motion for summary judgment because the plaintiff, who was positive for the Hepatitis C virus had alleged sufficient facts—including the fact that there had been a “denial of treatment on the basis of inapplicable or flawed policies”—to support his claim that the medical care he had received was inadequate. Johnson v. Wright, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 12428 (2d Cir. June 24, 2005) also involved a challenge to the New York DOCS Hepatitis C treatment guidelines— in this case, the policy that prohibits the prescribing of medication for any prisoner for whom there is “evidence of active substance abuse” within the previous two years.

Keywords: EKG, LPN, metal rod, motorcycle accident, Rebetron, Interferon, Ribavirin

Affiliations:  1: Pace University School of Law Library.