U.S. District Court Judge James E. Shadid granted summary judgment in favor of the jail’s physician assistant in Perez v. Huffines, No. 16-cv-2343 (Jan. 16, 2018). Inmate Marco Perez claimed that his constitutional rights were violated when the physician assistant refused to provide or delayed in providing him with pain medications for lower back pain. The Court found that the undisputed evidence demonstrated that the physician assistant did not act with deliberate indifference. The Court considered each occasion on which the physician assistant examined the inmate and noted that he provided the inmate appropriate care for the symptoms presented at that time, including prescribing pain medication to address the inmate’s complaints of back pain and scheduling the inmate for an examination with the jail doctor which resulted in an MRI and consultation with a pain specialist. The Court also dismissed the inmate’s claim that the physician assistant denied him a lower bunk permit because the record showed that the physician assistant prescribed the bunk change but the jail administration (not a defendant in the case) failed to switch his bunk bed. Michael Condon and Tara Grimm represented the jail physician assistant.
