Scott v. Dart

99 F.4th 1076

Quintin SCOTT, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Thomas J. DART, Sheriff of Cook County, andCook County, Illinois, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 23-1312

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit

Argued December 7, 2023

Decided April 29, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:17-cv-07135 — Martha M. Pacold, Judge.

Kenneth N. Flaxman, Joel A. Flaxman, Attorneys, Law Office of Kenneth N. Flaxman P.C., Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Christina Faklis Adair, Attorney, Office of the Cook County State's Attorney, Civil Actions Bureau, Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellee Thomas J. Dart.

Monica Burkoth, Attorney, Johnson & Bell, Ltd., Chicago, IL, for Defendant-Appellee Cook County, Illinois.

Before Wood, Kirsch, and Jackson-Akiwumi, Circuit Judges.

Wood, Circuit Judge.

Quintin Scott, a former pretrial detainee at the Cook County Jail, filed this class action more than six years ago. Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Scott asserts that Cook County and its sheriff (collectively, the "County") provided him and other pretrial detainees inadequate dental care in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court refused to certify the class, and soon after, Scott voluntarily settled his individual claim. But the settlement reserved his right to appeal the adverse class ruling and to seek an incentive award for his role as named plaintiff.¹ Scott followed through with this timely appeal.

The County contends that Scott lacks Article III standing to pursue the class aspects of this case. It asserts that Scott no longer has a live interest in the litigation, and that even if he did, we could not redress his injury because nineteenth-century Supreme Court precedent forbids courts from granting "incentive awards." We find these arguments unpersuasive, largely because we do not agree with the County's reading of the Supreme Court's decisions. We see no reason to stray from nearly half a century of case law in which courts across the country have granted incentive awards to named plaintiffs in class actions.

We also conclude that the district court abused its discretion in denying class certification, as it misapplied our decision in McFields v. Dart, 982 F.3d 511 (7th Cir. 2020), and based its decision on too strict a standard. If the district court's approach were correct, it would never be possible to certify a class of detainees alleging that they were denied adequate medical care because medical care, by its nature, is individualized. We therefore vacate the district court's order and remand for further proceedings.

I

Cook County Jail (the "Jail") is one of the nation's largest single-site jails, housing approximately 9,500 detainees at any given time. As custodian of the Jail, the County has a constitutional obligation to provide its detainees with adequate medical care. See Daniel v. Cook County, 833 F.3d 728, 733 (7th Cir. 2016). But unfortunately, it has not always met that obligation. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") concluded after an investigation that the Jail maintained grossly deficient policies and practices that denied constitutionally adequate medical care to detainees.² The DOJ's extensive findings have since served as the basis for an onslaught of litigation brought by detainees challenging various aspects of the Jail's policies and practices. See, e.g., United States v. Cook County, 761 F.Supp.2d 794 (N.D. Ill. 2011). In 2010 the County and the DOJ entered into a consent order, in which the County agreed to allow regular monitoring by the federal government and to ensure adequate medical staff at the Jail.

That brings us to this lawsuit, which takes aim at the County's refusal for more than a decade to keep an oral surgeon on staff at the Jail. Back in 2006, the County employed four dentists and one oral surgeon to serve the Jail's detainees. The oral surgeon performed a variety of procedures that general dentists do not perform, including difficult extractions and diagnoses of other complex dental cases. In 2007, however, the County reduced the dental staff to just one dentist, whose services were limited to extractions. Although the County eventually hired more dentists, as part of its effort to comply with the DOJ's consent order, it did not fill the oral surgeon position at the Jail. By March 12, 2020—the end date of the proposed class—the County still had not hired an oral surgeon for the Jail. (The record does not indicate whether this remains the case today.) With no on-site oral surgeon, the County adopted a new practice: if an on-site dentist examined a detainee and determined that the detainee required treatment from an oral surgeon, the dentist would then refer the detainee to the oral surgery clinic at John H. Stroger, Jr., Hospital of Cook County ("Stroger Hospital").

Scott alleges that the lack of an on-site oral surgeon has caused him and other detainees to experience unnecessary pain and significant delays in receiving treatment. He has presented evidence to show that County officials were aware of the need for an on-site oral surgeon but turned a blind eye to the suffering of detainees, many of whom waited months before being transported to Stroger Hospital for treatment. For example, the Jail's Chief of Dental Services submitted a budget request in June 2011, urging that the County hire an oral surgeon to address the "constant[ ] suffer[ing]" of detainees who waited "anywhere from 2 to 3[ ] months to be treated" at Stroger Hospital. The Jail's Director of Oral Health echoed these concerns in an email in April 2016, stating that the Jail was "in DESPERATE need for a part-time oral surgeon" (emphasis in original).

Scott was housed at the Jail from June 23, 2013, to May 22, 2014. He began to experience severe tooth pain during that period. On August 6, 2013, Scott submitted a Health Service Request Form explaining that he had difficulty eating, that his tooth "throbbed all night long," and that it "hurts like hell." An on-site dentist examined Scott two days later, determined that he needed surgery to have his wisdom teeth removed, and referred him to Stroger Hospital. Three months later, Scott still had not received treatment. He submitted a grievance on November 18, 2013, complaining: "I am suffering!!! I am in pain, can't lie down and eat properly, and have frequent headaches." On December 8, 2013, Scott submitted a second grievance stating: "I have yet to see the oral surg[eon] and the pain is getting to be unbearable. I am suffering!!!" Scott finally received the treatment he needed from an oral surgeon on March 28, 2014, seven months after the dentist had referred him for treatment.

As further support for his allegations, Scott has submitted the written grievances of 11 detainees who also endured significant delays in receiving oral surgery. Each of these detainees was examined by an on-site dentist, was referred to Stroger Hospital for treatment by an oral surgeon, and experienced delays ranging from four to 19 weeks in receiving that treatment. Because these detainees' experiences are relevant to the issues on appeal, we recount a few of them. (We refer to each grievant by the initials of their first and last names because the County produced the underlying documents subject to a confidentiality order.)

J.C. submitted the following grievance on April 29, 2014:

I have wires on my mouth that I have been asking the Doctor and nurses if I can go to Stroger Hospital to have them remove because they are cutting my gums and make them bleed, and they causing me pain every time I eat. . . . On April 17, 2014, Dr. Martinez told me that he was going to send me to the specialist in Stroger but I still haven't gone.

J.C. was not taken to Stroger Hospital until August 15, 2014, more than 17 weeks after his referral was entered.

T.P. submitted a grievance on March 17, 2015, complaining:

Today I went and seen Dental, Dr. Montgomery, because I have a rotten tooth that needs to be pulled. She agreed it needs to be pulled. Yet she did not do it. She said I was being referred to a oral surgeon which would 4-6 months, which is unethical as well as deliberate medical neglect. I do not have enough pain medicine for pain. As well as I can't drink anything cold. To drink water it has to be hot. I'm having problems sleeping due to pain . . . .

T.P. was not taken to the oral surgeon until May 19, 2015, nine weeks after he was referred to Stroger Hospital.

Similarly, C.O. submitted a grievance on January 2, 2018, complaining that he was "still in tremendous pain" as he had been waiting weeks to have his wisdom tooth removed. An official at the Jail responded to C.O.'s grievance a few weeks later, telling C.O that he should continue to take the acetaminophen that he had been prescribed for his pain. C.O. appealed, reiterating that he was "still in terrible pain." On February 15, 2018, a grievance officer at the Jail issued a response stating that the "Decision stands. Appts for oral surgery can take 90 days or more."

After discovery, Scott sought to certify the following class under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3):

All persons who were detained at the Cook County Jail at any time between November 1, 2013 and March 12, 2020 and, after having been referred to an oral surgeon by a dentist at the Jail, awaited treatment at the Stroger Hospital Oral Surgery Clinic, excluding those persons who are members of the subclass certified in Whitney v. Khan, 18-cv-4475, N.D. Ill., Mem. Op. March 25, 2020, ECF No. 175.³

Although Scott has not pinpointed a definite number of plaintiffs in the proposed class, he asserts that we can estimate its size based on two spreadsheets the County provided during discovery. The first indicates that dentists at the Jail made 2,080 referrals to Stroger Hospital between February 20, 2014, and July 7, 2017; the second identifies 2,186 detainees who were scheduled to be transported from the Jail to...