United States District Court, S.D. Ohio, Western Division, Dayton
MELODY L. WILLIAMS, Plaintiff,
v.
OHIO DEPT. OF REHAB. AND CORRECTIONS, et al., Defendants.
Thomas
M. Rose District Judge.
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS [1]
Sharon
L. Ovington United States Magistrate Judge.
I.
Introduction
Plaintiff
Melody L. Williams was, for a time, an inmate at the Dayton
Correctional Institution. She is presently incarcerated
(since mid-September 2016) in the Ohio Reformatory for Women.
Her original Complaint advanced many theories of liability
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, most of which were previously
dismissed. Plaintiff's enduring claims focus on her
allegations that the dental and medical care she did and did
not receive while an inmate at the Dayton Correctional
Institution (DCI) and the Ohio Reformatory for Women violated
her rights under the Constitution. She lodges her claims
under the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel
and unusual punishment.
Her
remaining claims fall upon Defendants Ohio Department of
Rehabilitation and Correction/Gary Moore; DCI Warden Wanza
Jackson-Mitchell; DCI physicians Dr. Moore-Dulan and Dr.
Dulan; DCI health care administrator Ms. Jenkins-Harris; and
four or five dentists (names unknown) at DCI. (Doc. #37,
PageID #919).
The
case is presently pending upon Defendants' Motion for
Summary Judgment (Doc. #33), Plaintiff's Amended
Complaint (Doc. #37), Plaintiff's Objection to Magistrate
Judge Order (Doc. #38), Plaintiff's Motion to Compel
(Doc. #39), and the record as a whole. Although
Plaintiff's Amended Complaint was docketed after
Defendants filed their Motion for Summary Judgment,
Defendants received a copy of the Amended Complaint from
Plaintiff well before it was docketed. See Doc. #25,
PageID #746. Defendants address Plaintiff's
Amended Complaint in their pending Motion for Summary
Judgment. Defendants seek summary judgment on all
Plaintiff's remaining claims.
II.
Summary Judgment
A party
is entitled to summary judgment when there is no genuine
dispute over any material fact and when the moving party is
entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a);
see Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322
(1986); see also Barker v. Goodrich, 649 F.3d 428,
432 (6th Cir. 2011). “A fact is material if it would
establish or refute an ‘essential element[ ] of a cause
of action or defense asserted by the parties[.]'”
Estate of Romain v. City of Grosse Pointe Farms,
F.3d, 2019 WL 3808877, at *3 (6th Cir. 2019) (citation
omitted); see Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477
U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A factual dispute is genuine
where “the evidence is such that a reasonable jury
could return a verdict for the nonmoving party.”
Anderson, 477 U.S. at 248 (1986); see Estate of
Romain___, F.3d___, 2019 WL 3808877, at *3 (citation
omitted).
To
resolve whether a genuine issue of material fact exists, the
Court draws all reasonable inferences in the light most
favorable to the non-moving party. Richland
Bookmart, Inc. v. Knox County, Tenn., 555 F.3d 512,
520 (6th Cir. 2009) (citing Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co.,
Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587-88
(1986)). With these reasonable inferences in the forefront,
“[t]he central issue is ‘whether the evidence
presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a
jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must
prevail as a matter of law.'” Jones v.
Potter, 488 F.3d 397, 402-03 (6th Cir. 2007) (quoting,
in part, Anderson, 477 U.S. at 251-52).
III.
Plaintiff's Allegations
Plaintiff's
Amended Complaint alleges the following. For three years at
DCI, Dr. Moore, Dr. Dulan, and Ms. Jenkins allowed her to
suffer from her serious medical problems and ignored her
serious medical needs, including treatment for H.
pylori.[2] On August 2, 2016, she was in the
Captain's Office at DCI when she “felt the overall
area of her naval ball up into a knot and explode.”
(Doc. #37, PageID #920). She was rushed to the
infirmary where she could not stand, walk, or move without
experiencing violent pain waves through her spine. Dr. Dulan
briefly examined her but did not examine her abdomen or
spine. Dr. Dulan ignored her requests for immediate emergency
medical attention. She was instead given Mylanta and forced
to return to her Housing Unit. She had “severe pain all
night, and the following day, [her] right leg and foot had a
sensitivity to touch, a hot burning tingling sensation, and
the toe on her right foot would lock and stick
together.” Id. at 921. Plaintiff's
“back felt as if it had been burned from the inside out
and there was burning and tenderness above her naval
(abdomen).” Id. Plaintiff asserts that the
repeated denial of medical care for H. pylori caused her to
develop ulcers “one of which did perforate and cause
severe injury and trauma to [her] spine and abdomen.”
Id. at 921.
Plaintiff
also recounts that she was repeatedly denied prompt and
adequate medical care for chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease. This occurred even after Drs. Dulan and Moore were
informed that Plaintiff had a thirty-year history of smoking
a pack of cigarettes a day. She has restricted breathing and
a severe cough for which she was repeatedly denied adequate
medical testing, diagnosis, and treatment. These health
problems prevented her from lying down, sleeping, running,
walking, and working. These health problems also cause her to
vomit and lose control of her bladder.
As to
her dental problems, Plaintiff understands that the Ohio
Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) and DCI
have a policy that requires inmates to wait one year from
when they are first incarcerated to receive dental care,
except for tooth retractions. She maintains that she was
denied dental care for over one year for her existing dental
problems, and she was denied preventative dental care for
over one year, starting from her incarceration at DCI. She
explains:
Plaintiff did enter the ODRC prison system with considerable
dental issues, the first being dental issues that had been
started, but not completed, due to [her] sudden
incarceration, such as capping of her two front feet after
four root canals. Because of incomplete dental procedures,
[she] had two open and exposed teeth in the very front of her
mouth, as well as a post that needed to be removed from a
prior root canal that constantly raised up through the gums
creating severe pain, bleeding and tenderness.
Id. at 922-23. Plaintiff was also missing most of
her back teeth on both sides of her mouth from, as she sees
it, “erosion from mercury fillings as a child, and due
to a history of heavy smoking. As a result, [her] teeth were
in desperate need of repair upon incarceration.”
Id. at 923. She also had several cavities that
needed to be filled. She notes that she has a history of
severe gum disease and grinds her teeth at night.
A
dentist at DCI told Plaintiff that “it was not the
policy of ODRC or DCI to perform root canals or to cap or
crown teeth, and her two front teeth could not be saved or
repaired and would need to be retracted. Plaintiff did refuse
to have the teeth extracted on all occasions hoping to save
the teeth.” Id.
In
September 2016, Plaintiff was transferred to the Ohio
Reformatory for Women. When she arrived there, she was very
sick. A nurse practitioner diagnosed Plaintiff with H. pylori
“that Dr. Moore alleged to have eradicated.”
Id. at 924. She still experienced chronic stomach
pains and felt “as though she had H-pylori. The
gnawing, burning, acidity sensation continued in her stomach
and [she] was unable to sleep and always felt like she was
starving.” Id. at 925.
To
treat her Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, she was
given two inhalers (Symbicort and Albuterol) and placed on a
breathing treatment three times a day. She was denied
testing, like an MRI, an endoscopy, and x-rays, to determine
the extent of her abdominal and spinal injuries. She was not
provided with a treatment plan to rid her of constant pain.
Id. at 924.
Defendants
find much missing from Plaintiff's recounting of her
medical problems. They assert that Defendants have attempted
to provide her with medical treatment including a blood test
by Dr. Dulan; over-the-counter medications recommended by
Defendant Moore; a “cocktail of Amoxicillin, Biazin,
and Prilosec for 14 days”; a steroid shot; a sixty-day
regimen of Prilosec; Mylanta; upper-gastrointestinal tests; a
steroid shot and C-Pac for respiratory infections; an
inhaler; a five-day steroid regimen for allergies; and a
Barium contrast x-ray. (Doc. #33, PageID #783
(quoting, in part, Doc. #3, PageID #358 and citing
PageID #s 357-63)).
IV.
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