William L. Hubbard v. MICHAEL MITCHEFF and KIMBERLY HOBSON

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted November 9, 2022 *
Decided December 2, 2022
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge
DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
No. 22-1578
WILLIAM L. HUBBARD,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
MICHAEL MITCHEFF and KIMBERLY
HOBSON,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Southern District of
Indiana, Terre Haute Division.
No. 2:20-cv-00227-JPH-MG
James Patrick Hanlon,
Judge.
O R D E R
William Hubbard, an Indiana inmate, sued two medical officers after he missed
doses of injections that he typically received monthly to prevent loss of vision.
Asserting violations of his Eighth Amendment rights, Hubbard named a prison doctor
with the power to approve requests for these injections and a nurse whom he accuses of
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. FED. R. A PP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with FED. R. A PP. P. 32.1

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mishandling a complaint about the missed injections. The district court granted the
defendants’ motion for summary judgment. Because it rightly concluded that neither
defendant consciously disregarded a risk to Hubbard’s health, we affirm.
In reviewing summary judgment de novo, we construe the record in Hubbard’s
favor. See Petties v. Carter, 836 F.3d 722, 727 (7th Cir. 2016) (en banc). Hubbard has an
eye condition that has required monthly injections since 2018 to avert the risk of vision
loss. An offsite doctor administers the injections after a prison doctor approves that
specialist’s request for each set of them. This case concerns missed injections in
November 2019, January 2020, and July 2021.
In November 2019, Hubbard’s offsite doctor submitted a treatment request to
Dr. Michael Mitcheff, a regional medical director and one of the prison’s doctors who
could approve such requests. Mitcheff promptly approved this request, which sought
approval only for Hubbard’s visit to the offsite doctor that month. Another (related)
request sought approval for the injections that the specialist wanted to administer at the
visit. But that request went to a different doctor at the prison (not a defendant), who did
not approve it in time for Hubbard to receive his injections in November.
Hubbard complained to Kimberly Hobson, a nurse, about missing his injections
in November. After investigating the matter, she replied (inaccurately) that he did not
receive the injections because the offsite specialist had not requested them.
The next missed injections occurred two months later, in January 2020. Mitcheff
had received a request from the outside specialist for that round of injections. To
determine how best to respond to this latest request, about a month before Hubbard’s
January appointment, Mitcheff asked the prison’s onsite optometrist for updated
information about Hubbard’s eyes. He wanted to know the optometrist’s clinical
findings and how many injections Hubbard had received since he began his doses over
a year earlier. The optometrist (also not a defendant) failed to supply Mitcheff with that
information before the appointment date. As a result, Mitcheff did not approve or deny
the request, and Hubbard received no injections in January.
Afterwards, the prison received a report from Hubbard’s offsite doctor. The
specialist explained that the injections “need to be done every 4 weeks to prevent
permanent vision loss and to keep the condition from worsening.” Hubbard received
his injections the next month, and his offsite doctor reported that Hubbard’s eyes were
doing well: He was “achieving stability with excellent vision in both eyes.” The doctor

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restated that Hubbard needed “to maintain timely treatment.” And Hubbard timely
received his injections each month for over a year.
The third set of missed injections occurred in July 2021. Medical staff told
Hubbard that the prison’s change to a new medical provider had delayed his treatment
request. The record is silent about whether Mitcheff was involved in processing that
request.
This suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, asserting that Mitcheff and Hobson deliberately
ignored Hubbard’s serious medical needs in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights,
came next. In entering summary judgment, the district court ruled that no evidence
showed that Mitcheff ignored Hubbard’s medical needs during the three months in
question. Mitcheff approved the request that he received in November 2019, he
reasonably asked for updated medical information in response to the January 2020
request, and no evidence suggested that he delayed the July 2021 request. The court also
explained that, although Hobson inaccurately replied to Hubbard’s complaint about the
first set of missed injections, no evidence showed that her response affected Hubbard’s
care.
On appeal, Hubbard contends that he presented a triable claim that these two
defendants violated his Eighth Amendment rights. To stave off summary judgment, he
had to present evidence from which a factfinder could reasonably conclude that the
defendants were deliberately indifferent to a serious medical condition. See Estelle v.
Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104 (1976); Petties, 836 F.3d at 727–28. The defendants do not
dispute that Hubbard’s eye condition was serious, so we ask whether the evidence
suggests that they consciously disregarded his condition. See Estelle, 429 U.S. at 104. No
evidence suggests that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to it.
We begin with Mitcheff. A reasonable jury could not find that Mitcheff
consciously disregarded Hubbard’s eye health in November 2019. No evidence
contradicts Mitcheff’s statement that he timely approved the one request related to the
injections that he received that month. And Hubbard does not appear to argue
otherwise on appeal.
As for January 2020, Hubbard argues that, because Mitcheff decided to seek the
most current information about Hubbard’s eye health rather than approve immediately
the injection request, Mitcheff consciously ignored Hubbard’s health. He cites Arnett v.
Webster, 658 F.3d 742, 753 (7th Cir. 2011), to contend that Mitcheff impermissibly

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“overruled” the offsite doctor’s request by asking an onsite optometrist for information.
Hubbard is correct that a prison doctor’s refusal to follow a specialist’s orders may
evince deliberate indifference. See id. But, as the defendants point out, Mitcheff did not
refuse to follow a specialist’s orders. Rather, Mitcheff reasonably sought the most
current data about Hubbard’s treatment history before he answered the specialist’s
request. And by seeking that information from the prison’s optometrist a full month
before the scheduled injections, Mitcheff timed his request reasonably.
Hubbard replies that Mitcheff is culpable for allowing the inquiry to the
optometrist to go unanswered for a month. But nothing in the record suggests that
Mitcheff wanted the optometrist to ignore his request, did not care whether the
optometrist responded in time, or was even aware that his inquiry went unanswered.
Furthermore, so far as the record shows, only after Hubbard missed this set of injections
did the specialist warn the prison’s doctors that Hubbard’s eye health could be
jeopardized by missed injections. And after that warning, Hubbard’s monthly injections
proceeded smoothly for the next year and half. In light of this record, Hubbard’s
deliberate-indifference claim fails. See Petties, 836 F.3d at 728 (a plaintiff must show that
a defendant “did not just slip up, but was aware of, and disregarded, a substantial risk
of harm.”).
Finally, Hubbard also faults Mitcheff for the missed July 2021 injections, but no
evidence links Mitcheff to that request. In particular, the record is devoid of evidence
suggesting that he was assigned to evaluate it or that he caused the delay in approval.
Before concluding our discussion about Mitcheff, we note another defect in
Hubbard’s claim. To present a triable case of deliberate indifference, Hubbard had to
present evidence that Mitcheff harmed him. See Lord v. Beahm, 952 F.3d 902, 905 (7th Cir.
2020); Gabb v. Wexford Health Sources Inc., 945 F.3d 1027, 1032 (7th Cir. 2019). But
Hubbard did not offer evidence showing that his condition worsened because of the
missed injections. To the contrary, although Hubbard’s offsite doctor reported that
Hubbard needed monthly injections to avoid the risk of damage, the doctor stated that
after two missed injections Hubbard still had “excellent vision in both eyes.”
Lastly, we briefly address the claim against Hobson. Hubbard contends that her
inaccurate reply to his complaint about his missed his injections in November 2019
reflects deliberate indifference. It does not. Hobson investigated his complaint, which is
all that the Eighth Amendment demands of prison staff handling grievances. See Burks
v. Raemisch, 555 F.3d 592, 595 (7th Cir. 2009). True, she arrived at the wrong answer. But

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to overcome summary judgment, Hobson had to show that she did so by ignoring his
complaint, interfering with the investigation of it, or otherwise acting in bad faith.
See id. He has not supplied such evidence. Nor has he shown that Hobson’s inaccurate
response exacerbated his eye condition. See Lord, 952 F.3d at 905; Gabb, 945 F.3d at 1032.
AFFIRMED

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