A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit found that instead of performing his own analysis of whether court intervention was appropriate, U.S. District Court Senior Judge R. Brooke Jackson had apparently relied on the government’s promise that it was scheduling a medical consultation on its own.

“[A]lmost a year later, there is no evidence in the record that an outside consultation has taken place,” wrote Judge Nancy L. Moritz in the panel’s Dec. 27 order.

In December 2020, David E. Hill asked for a preliminary injunction against the warden of the Florence penitentiary where he was incarcerated. The court order would have, among other things, required immediate transportation to a hospital for an evaluation of Hill’s chronic kidney disease.

“I started feeling dizzy, my head started hurting, my lower right side started hurting, I vomited, my breath became difficult, I felt weak,” Hill wrote in a court filing three months later. “The nurse took vitals and left the unit to write a report. No other medical action was given.”

Hill also alleged he had not received medical treatment for his kidney disease since October 2019. In response, Jackson issued a brief order in April of this year denying the request.

“BOP is scheduling plaintiff for another consultation with an outside nephrology [kidney disease] specialist. Therefore, there is no basis for the Court to issue a mandatory injunction requiring such a consultation,” Jackson wrote at the time.

Hill turned to the 10th Circuit, arguing that Jackson had accepted the word of the Bureau of Prisons without performing a legal analysis of Hill’s request. The appellate panel agreed.

“Hill is correct. The district court’s reasoning is inadequate,” Moritz wrote.

According to Hill, he suffers from Stage 3 or 4 chronic kidney disease, meaning there is a likelihood of kidney failure, with the kidneys less able to filter waste out of the blood. He also was reportedly diagnosed with other heart and respiratory ailments. 

Hill, who is representing himself in the underlying lawsuit, alleged that the warden and others at the Florence prison knew he was in “excruciating pain,” but they ignored a nurse practitioner’s request to bring Hill back for follow-up care. He claimed a violation of his rights under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

The request for an injunction, in addition to seeking hospital transport and treatment of Hill’s conditions, also asked the court to order a number of COVID-19 mitigation measures to protect Hill. 

The Bureau of Prisons responded by claiming corrections officials were “appropriately” treating and monitoring Hill’s “mild” chronic kidney disease. The government believed Hill’s condition was actually less severe than he represented it to be.

Crucially, they told the district court that the bureau “is also currently scheduling the plaintiff for another consultation with an outside nephrologist specialist …. That outside consultation should occur within the next two months.”

Jackson indicated in March that he was open to the possibility that an outside consultant would recommend a course of treatment beyond what the prison was already doing to monitor Hill. He asked the Bureau of Prisons to respond to Hill’s request for a preliminary injunction.

A motion for an injunction triggers four factors for consideration. First, the person must be likely to prevail on the merits of their case. Second, the party should show that they will suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a court order. Third, the benefit to the person seeking the injunction must be greater than the injury to the other party. Finally, the injunction should not be contrary to the public interest.

Jackson did not indicate whether he evaluated any of those factors in denying Hill’s request for an injunction. Instead, his brief order in April focused on the Bureau of Prisons’ promise that it would soon provide Hill with a medical consultation. Jackson also used the occasion to chastise Hill for a history of filing baseless claims, saying Hill’s actions were “not helpful to your cause and is a waste of the defendant’s and the Court’s time. Please stop it.”

Hill argued to the 10th Circuit that he had satisfied all four of the injunction factors and would likely prevail on his constitutional claim that the prison officials showed deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs. The government acknowledged Hill’s complaints that his health had deteriorated as a result of not being brought back for evaluation, but claimed Hill “doesn’t even offer an explanation of what another visit to the nurse practitioner would accomplish in terms of his health care.”

Jackson’s ruling “may well have been correct. But without any legal analysis, we cannot discern whether it applied the correct legal standard and properly exercised its discretion,” wrote Moritz for the 10th Circuit’s panel.

The panel sent the case back to Jackson with instructions to properly analyze the four factors that would determine whether Hill receives a court order to be transported for medical evaluation.

The case is Hill v. True et al.