Denial of Medical Attention

Jury could find that four-minute delay in seeking medical help for plaintiff officer shot in the head was deliberately indifferent, but law was not clearly established, and officer was entitled to qualified immunity.

Right to be free from deliberate indifference to symptoms including psychosis, fecal incontinence, and catatonia was clearly established; fact issues precluded summary judgment in favor of nurse, county, and sheriff.

Ddelirium tremens are objective serious medical need for purpose of due process claim; defendants must be analyzed individually, court cannot impute knowledge from one defendant to another.

Officers did not demonstrate objective unreasonableness or deliberate indifference when they failed to recognize that person arrested following stop for expired vehicle registration had overdosed on drugs, where she vomited, but denied withdrawing or detoxing, stated she had not eaten anything, stated she was sick, her stomach was turning, and she was pregnant, and officers found no drugs in her car.

Plaintiff’s decedent was arrested for suspended license violation and three hours after he was booked into jail he was found dead of a drug overdose; objective component that prisoner’s medical need was sufficiently serious was met because he died of multiple drug intoxication; prisoner had an obvious need for medical care where he was bent at the waist, swaying, grabbing his head and midsection, dropping his food, falling to the floor repeatedly, and lying on floor with a pool of vomit around his head; court refuses to reach issue of whether Kingsley eliminated subjective prong be

Affirming denial of summary judgment to officers who arrested and detained plaintiff’s decedent and failed to provide him with any medical attention despite patently visible blood and contusions and the detainee’s repeated complaints of head injuries, demonstrating their indifference by harassing and openly laughing at him.

Licensed clinical social worker, employee of private organization that contracted with jails and prisons to provide health services, was categorically not entitled to claim qualified immunity.

Mother was 35 weeks pregnant in custody when her water broke; employees of nationwide private medical contractor ignored and minimized her symptoms, refused to transport her to hospital, failed to conduct even a cursory pelvic exam; after 30 hours of painful labor and bleeding child was born with umbilical cord wrapped around neck, not breathing, with no pulse; court concludes the private medical contractors were not entitled to assert defense of qualified immunity and reversed district court’s grant of summary judgment to defendants.

Plaintiff stated plausible claim for denial of medical attention where decedent was placed in cell for intoxication and received no medical attention despite officers’ knowledge that he had consumed drugs and alcohol, had seriously diminished capacity to talk, walk, and sit, and was unconscious or semi-conscious, and bottles found near him showed he had consumed large amounts of pills; court notes but does not reach question of whether Kingsley required use of objective, rather than subjective, standard.

District court erred in failing to appoint counsel for pro se plaintiff; with counsel it would be reasonably likely that medically ill plaintiff could hold prison doctor liable on claim that he left him in significant and prolonged pain to “teach him a lesson about the consequences of self-destructive behavior,” namely plaintiff’s head-banging in response to hearing voices.