Inmate appeal prevails, medical-care suit to proceed
An Arkansas prisoner’s concerns that his medical needs are being ignored to the point that he could become blind outweigh the fact that he has used up all his opportunities to file a federal lawsuit without paying a filing fee, a federal appellate panel said Thursday.
The three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis reversed a district judge’s order denying inmate Steven Pinder’s handwritten request to proceed “in forma pauperis,” or in the manner of a pauper, with a lawsuit accusing doctors and nurses at the state Department of Correction’s Tucker Maximum Security Unit of deliberately ignoring his medical needs.
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. initially granted Pinder’s request to proceed as a pauper, but later revoked it after an attorney for the medical provider, Correct Care Solutions, argued that Pinder wasn’t entitled to it because he was a “three striker” under the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
The law doesn’t allow a prisoner who is otherwise indigent to file a lawsuit without paying a $400 filing fee “if he or she on three or more prior occasions while incarcerated has brought an action or appeal in a court of the United States that was dismissed on the grounds it was frivolous, malicious, or fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted unless the prisoner is under imminent danger of serious physical injury.”
A pleading by attorney Brent Eubanks of White Hall identified four previous cases Pinder had filed in the Western District of Arkansas — three in 2002 and one in 2010 — all of which were dismissed as “frivolous.”
Eubanks acknowledged that Pinder “generally and broadly alleges that he is in imminent danger of serious physical injury,” but said the allegations failed to adequately demonstrate the claims.
According to the appellate panel’s opinion, Pinder alleged that the medical providers didn’t take him to ophthalmologist appointments, provide him glaucoma medication or allow him to see a throat doctor. Pinder also alleged that the providers discontinued his migraine medication in retaliation for grievances he filed against them.
U.S. circuit judges Roger Wollman of Sioux Falls, S.D., James Loken of Minneapolis and Kermit Bye of Fargo, N.D., said they agreed that Pinder had acquired three qualifying “strikes.” But, they said, he overrode that by adequately alleging he was in imminent danger. The judges granted Pinder permission to proceed as a pauper and vacated the dismissal of his case.