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Abstract: 

Our regular “From the Courts” department examines two cases involving claims of qualified immunity. In the first, “Prisoner’s Suit Over Hip Replacement Surgery Gets New Life,” a doctor treating an inmate incarcerated in the South Mississippi Correctional Institution scheduled hip surgery. When prison administrators refused to cover the cost, the doctor cancelled surgery and the patient was left untreated. In Delaughter v. Woodall, 909 F.3d 130 (5th Cir. 2018), a federal appeals court upheld a district courts finding of qualified immunity for the physician, but reversed the district court’s grant of immunity to the administrators, ruling that whether he was deliberately indifferent to Delaughter’s medical needs was a material fact issue that precluded summary judgment and could proceed to trial. In the second decision covered, Vinegar v. Braggs, 2019 WL 277747 (N.D.Ill. 2019), a federal district court found no liability on the part of medical staff for the care received by an inmate who was injured in a fall and claimed to have been left untreated for three days. The court found that plaintiff’s allegations of injuries to his “head, back, and knees” had not risen to the level of an objectively serious medical need.

Keywords: Hip Surgery; Slip-and-Fall; Delay in Treatment

Affiliations:  1: Ohio Supreme Court Library.