Phosy v. Centurion Medical of Tennessee et al

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE
COLUMBIA DIVISION
LAKKY PHOSY, #461438,
Plaintiff,
v.
CENTURION MEDICAL OF
TENNESSEE, et al.,
Defendants.
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No. 1:25-cv-00019
Judge Trauger
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Pro se plaintiff Lakky Phosy, an inmate of the Turney Center Industrial Complex (TCIX),
filed a civil rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (Doc. No. 1 (“the Complaint”)) and an
application for leave to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP). (Doc. No. 5.)
This case is before the court for ruling on the plaintiff’s IFP application and for initial
review of the Complaint under the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 28 U.S.C. § 1915A.
I. PAUPER STATUS
Subject to certain statutory requirements, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(1)–(2), (g), a prisoner
bringing a civil action may be permitted to proceed as a pauper, without prepaying the $405 filing
fee. Because the plaintiff’s IFP application complies with the applicable statutory requirements
and demonstrates that he lacks the funds to pay the entire filing fee, his IFP application (Doc. No.
5) is GRANTED.
Nevertheless, prisoners bringing civil lawsuits are “required to pay the full amount of a
filing fee.” 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(1). Where the prisoner proceeds IFP, the fee is $350 instead of
$405, see id. § 1914(a)–(b) & Dist. Ct. Misc. Fee Schedule, provision 14 (eff. Dec. 1, 2023), and
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may be paid in installments over time via an assessment against his inmate trust account. Id.
§ 1915(b)(1)–(2).
Accordingly, the plaintiff is ASSESSED a $350 filing fee. The fee will be collected in
installments as described below.
The warden of the facility in which the plaintiff is currently housed, as custodian of his
trust account, is DIRECTED to submit to the Clerk of Court, as an initial payment, the greater of:
(a) 20% of the average monthly deposits to the plaintiff’s credit at the jail; or (b) 20% of the
average monthly balance to the plaintiff’s credit for the six-month period immediately preceding
the filing of the Complaint. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(1). Thereafter, the custodian shall submit 20% of
the plaintiff’s preceding monthly income (or income credited to the plaintiff for the preceding
month), but only when the balance in his account exceeds $10. Id. § 1915(b)(2). Payments shall
continue until the $350 filing fee has been paid in full to the Clerk of Court. Id. § 1915(b)(3).
The Clerk of Court MUST send a copy of this order to the warden of the facility in which
the plaintiff is currently housed to ensure compliance with that portion of 28 U.S.C. § 1915
pertaining to the payment of the filing fee. If the plaintiff is transferred from his present place of
confinement, the custodian must ensure that a copy of this order follows the plaintiff to his new
place of confinement, for continued compliance with the order. All payments made pursuant to
this order must be submitted to the Clerk of Court for the United States District Court for the
Middle District of Tennessee, 719 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37203.
II. INITIAL REVIEW
A. Legal Standard
In cases filed by prisoners, the court must conduct an initial screening and dismiss the
Complaint (or any portion thereof) if it is facially frivolous or malicious, if it fails to state a claim
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upon which relief may be granted, or if it seeks monetary relief against a defendant who is immune
from such relief. 28 U.S.C. § 1915A; 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c). Review under the same criteria is also
authorized under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2) when the prisoner proceeds IFP.
To determine whether the Complaint states a claim upon which relief may be granted, the
court reviews for whether it alleges sufficient facts “to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its
face,” such that it would survive a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure
12(b)(6). Hill v. Lappin, 630 F.3d 468, 470–71 (6th Cir. 2010) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S.
662, 678 (2009)). A viable claim is stated under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 if the Complaint plausibly
alleges (1) a deprivation of a constitutional or other federal right, and (2) that the deprivation was
caused by a “state actor.” Carl v. Muskegon Cnty., 763 F.3d 592, 595 (6th Cir. 2014).
At this stage, “the Court assumes the truth of ‘well-pleaded factual allegations’ and
‘reasonable inference[s]’ therefrom,” Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of Am. v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 181 (2024)
(quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678–79), but is “not required to accept legal conclusions or unwarranted
factual inferences as true.” Inner City Contracting, LLC v. Charter Twp. of Northville, Michigan,
87 F.4th 743, 749 (6th Cir. 2023) (citation omitted). The court must afford the pro se Complaint a
liberal construction, Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007), while viewing it in the light most
favorable to the plaintiff. Inner City, supra.
B. Factual Allegations
To treat his Type 2 diabetes and neuropathy, the plaintiff is prescribed metformin (for
diabetes) and gabapentin (for neuropathy). (Doc. No. 1 at 3.) These diagnoses and prescriptions
have been in place since 2009. (Id.) The plaintiff takes metformin twice a day and is allowed to
keep this medicine on his person, to administer to himself. (Id.) He has to go to “the pill line
counter at callout” three times a day to receive the gabapentin (also identified under the trade name
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Neurontin). (Id.) A nurse first crushes the medicine, then dilutes it in water, then dispenses the
water for the plaintiff to consume. (Id. at 3–4.) Nurse Dawson and Nurse Grey, both defendants to
this lawsuit, were among the nurses who dispensed gabapentin to the plaintiff, and they did so
without asking for identification or reading his chart. (Id. at 4.)
At the end of February 2024, after the plaintiff had returned to TCIX following a court
proceeding and resumed the process of obtaining his gabapentin (Neurontin) at the pill line counter,
he became seriously ill. (Id. at 3–4.) On March 10, 2024, the plaintiff asked Nurse Grey to examine
his prescriptions. Nurse Grey “pulled several cards of the meds out of the cabinet,” then told the
plaintiff “to wait while she goes to ask the nurse-in-charge why [he] has been taking the wrong
meds (Metformin) three-times a day.” (Id. at 4.) Another defendant, Doctor Hancock, “was called
and advised of the mistake[.]” (Id.) The plaintiff was told not to take metformin again until he was
seen by Dr. Hancock. The next day, March 11, 2024, Dr. Hancock examined the plaintiff and
ordered lab work. (Id.)
As a result of taking metformin five times a day for twelve days, the plaintiff suffered
fatigue, nausea, and diarrhea. (Id. at 5.) In response to the plaintiff’s grievance, the Tennessee
Department of Correction (TDOC) Health Services Administrator, Defendant Kevin Rea, agreed
that the plaintiff had been given metformin that “was incorrectly identified as ‘Neurontin’” (id.),
but stated that no further action was necessary. (See Doc. No. 1-1 at 3.) This response to the
plaintiff’s grievance was sustained on appeal. (Doc. No. 1 at 6.)
C. Analysis
The plaintiff claims that the temporary failure to provide his correct prescription
medication violated his Eighth Amendment right to not be subjected to cruel and unusual
punishment. (Doc. No. 1 at 6.) He claims that Defendant Centurion Medical of Tennessee, LLC
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(“Centurion”), the corporate employer of Nurses Dawson and Grey, is to blame for its employees’
“reckless and negligent conduct” because that conduct establishes Centurion’s deliberate
indifference to the plaintiff’s health as “the necessary effect of [the] policy of deficiencies in
procedures” that led to his injury. (Id. at 7.) He claims that Defendant Rea is liable because he is
charged with “executing the official policies, decisions, practice and customs of Centurion,” and
“Centurion’s policies or customs were the direct and proximate cause of the violation of Plaintiff’s
rights.” (Id. at 8.) Centurion is also claimed to be liable due to their policy of failing “to adequately
train and supervise” Nurses Dawson and Grey, whom it also failed to reprimand or otherwise
discipline. (Id. at 10.)
A claim of deliberate indifference to serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth
Amendment has both an objective and subjective component. The objective component requires
that the plaintiff’s need for metformin in a certain dose and gabapentin in a certain dose be
sufficiently serious. See Rhinehart v. Scutt, 894 F.3d 721, 737 (6th Cir. 2018). In other words, the
need must be one “that has been diagnosed by a physician as mandating treatment or one that is so
obvious that even a lay person would easily recognize the necessity for a doctor’s attention.”
Harrison v. Ash, 539 F.3d 510, 518 (6th Cir. 2008) (citation and quotation marks omitted). Then,
the subjective component of the claim requires that the defendants understood yet consciously
disregarded the plaintiff’s need for treatment in those doses. See Rhinehart, 894 F.3d at 738.
Deliberate indifference has thus been described as “something approaching a total unconcern for
[the inmate’s] welfare in the face of serious risks, or a conscious, culpable refusal to prevent harm.”
Slone v. Lincoln Cnty., Ky., 242 F. Supp. 3d 579, 591 (E.D. Ky. 2017) (quoting Duane v. Lane, 959
F.2d 673, 677 (7th Cir. 1992)).
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Even affording the Complaint a liberal construction and viewing its allegations in the light
most favorable to the plaintiff, it plainly does not support a plausible claim that his providers at
TCIX were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs. As the Complaint itself recognizes in
various places, the heart of the plaintiff’s claim is that the nurse defendants were negligent in
failing to recognize that the medication they’d recently distributed to him was metformin rather
than gabapentin. When they realized their “mistake” (Doc. No. 1 at 4), they immediately called
Dr. Hancock, who ordered lab work to assess the plaintiff’s condition and ordered him to cease
taking metformin in the meantime. After the mistake was realized and Dr. Hancock examined the
plaintiff and his lab work, and following the twelve-day duration of symptoms related to the
metformin overdose (see id. at 7), the plaintiff presumably resumed his longstanding course of
treatment for diabetic neuropathy.
At best, the plaintiff’s allegations support a claim of medical negligence that is not
cognizable under Section 1983. See Dominguez v. Corr. Med. Servs., 555 F.3d 543, 550 (6th Cir.
2009) (quoting Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106 (1976)) (“[T]hat a [medical professional] has
been negligent in diagnosing or treating a medical condition does not state a valid claim” under
§ 1983.). The plaintiff does not assert any state-law negligence claim in his Complaint, and his
federal constitutional claim fails. Moreover, because the constitutional claim against Centurion
employees fails, the Complaint’s claim based on Centurion’s alleged corporate policy of failing
properly to train its nurses also fails. See Martinez v. Wayne Cnty., Michigan, 142 F.4th 828, 844
(6th Cir. 2025). This case must be dismissed.
III. CONCLUSION
For the reasons discussed above, this action is DISMISSED pursuant to 28 U.S.C.
§§ 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii) and 1915A(b)(1), for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.
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The court CERTIFIES that any appeal from this dismissal would not be taken in good faith. 28
U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3).
This is the final order in this action. The Clerk SHALL enter judgment. Fed. R. Civ. P.
58(b)(1).
It is so ORDERED.
____________________________________
Aleta A. Trauger
United States District Judge
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