On July 23, 2010, a prisoner at Stateville Correction Center filed this lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The plaintiff sued Wexford Health Services and the Illinois Department of Corrections under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiff, representing himself pro se, asked the court for monetary damages and injunctive relief. The plaintiff claimed that the defendants were deliberately indifferent to his medical needs resulting from Type 1 Diabetes, violating Stateville Correction Center's medical policy and depriving the plaintiff of his rights under the Eighth Amendment. Later in an amended complaint, the plaintiffs requested class certification and cited chronic understaffing as a root cause of the systemic problems with medical care, and that when prisoners were seen by clinicians, the care was substandard. The case was assigned to Judge Ruben Castillo. On August 10, 2010, the court appointed private counsel to represent the plaintiff, and on November 10, the plaintiff filed a first amended complaint.

On October 7, 2011, the plaintiffs submitted a second amended complaint with counsel from Uptown People's Law Center joining the case. The plaintiffs sought class certification for a class of all people who were or will be confined in Illinois adult correctional centers that had not received adequate medical treatment due to misconduct of Wexford or its staff. The complaint included two subclasses: first for those who required but were not receiving a medically necessary diet, and second for those who were not receiving prescribed medical treatment in a timely manner. The complaint also added claims for violations of Illinois state law, including the state fraud and deceptive trade practices act and breach of contract.

On January 9, 2012, the defendants filed motions to dismiss all counts against them. They claimed that the plaintiffs presented a "mishmash" of claims against unrelated defendants, that the plaintiffs class claims were overbroad, and that sovereign immunity protected the defendants from suit on the claims under state law. In December 2011, the case had been referred to Judge Morton Denlow for settlement conferences. But in light of the motion to dismiss, the parties indicated they were no longer interested in settlement until the issue of class certification had been decided.

After acquiring multiple extensions for time and compelling discovery from the defendants, on October 31, 2012, plaintiffs filed a third amendment complaint. They requested certification of a new class of all present and future prisoners in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Moreover, they cited Wexford's private contract for flat payment to provide medical care for the entire Illinois prison population as the company's economic incentive to take short cuts on medical care. The plaintiffs removed the state law claims, leaving only the class-wide and individual claims of deliberate indifference under § 1983. By this complaint, the Roger Baldwin Foundation of the ACLU had joined as counsel for the plaintiffs.

On December 20, 2012, defendants filed another motion to dismiss all counts for failure to comply with the PLRA. That same day, the parties filed an agreement to assure compliance with HIPAA. On January 10, 2013, the court denied the motion in open court without an order or opinion. Subsequently, the parties began settlement discussions. But in October 2013, the case was reassigned to Judge Sarah Ellis, which vacated all of the previously set dates to confer and hearings on discovery issues.

In November 2013, the parties agreed to appoint an independent medical expert to evaluate the constitutionality of the medical care provided in the Illinois correctional system. On December 18, the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the class-wide claims against Wexford without prejudice, leaving remaining claims against individual officers. In June and July 2014, the expert completed site visits.

While waiting for the expert's reports, the defendants moved for summary judgment. In January 2015, the case was again reassigned to Judge Jorge Luis Alonso. In March 2015, the parties were unable to reach a settlement after multiple conferences.

On May 19, 2015, the court-appointed expert's final report was filed with the court, describing that the health care program for prisoners in the State of Illinois was not meeting the minimal constitutional standard. On June 16, 2015, the court denied the defendants' motion for summary judgement. The court found that a reasonable fact-finder could conclude that the defendants acted with deliberate indifference toward the plaintiff's serious medical needs—in particular when the defendants knew that the plaintiff was an insulin-dependent diabetic but still ignored his requests for insulin (in one case, while the plaintiff was lying on the floor of his cell). 2015 WL 3777551. One of the defendants requested reconsideration of the decision, which the court subsequently denied in August.

On December 7, 2015, plaintiffs filed a Fourth Amendment complaint, requested to bifurcate class claims from individual claims, and filed a new motion to certify class. The new alleged class was all prisoners in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) with serious medical or dental needs. On January 19, 2016, the court denied the plaintiffs' request to bifurcate the claims.

On April 18, 2016, a plaintiff in another case about Wexford's medical care services filed to relate to this case (Everett v. Hardy, Docket No. 1:13-cv-04697). But because that case had been ongoing for three years, Judge Alonso denied the motion to relate the cases. The parties continued discovery as they waited on the court's decision as to class certification.

On January 26, 2017, the court held a hearing on the motion to certify the class, and granted the motion on April 28, 2017. The court certified an injunctive relief class of all prisoners in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections with serious medical or dental needs. 2017 WL 1545672. In July, the individual plaintiff again requested to bifurcate his claims from the class claim, which the court this time granted. In August, the defendants and the individual plaintiff reached a private settlement. On March 24, 2017, the plaintiff dismissed the individual damages claims, which dismissed a handful of named defendants with prejudice.

In December 2017, the court appointed another expert to determine whether any of the systemic deficiencies identified in the first expert’s report from 2014 existed within IDOC. Throughout 2018, the parties continued to vigorously litigate discovery issues, including motions for sanctions against the defendants. In the fall of 2018, the parties began submitting pretrial motions and documents, as well as settlement conferences.

On November 14, 2018, the second expert filed a report with the court. The expert found that overall, conditions had not improved since the first expert's report. Staff vacancies continued to be high and Wexford had not hired credentialed physicians, in both the medical and dental departments. And outdated systems like paper filings contributed to substandard care, in addition to poorly sanitized clinical areas. On November 16, 2018, the plaintiffs submitted proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to the court.

On December 6, 2018, the plaintiffs requested a preliminary injunction to create a staffing plan with the expert. But on January 3, the parties filed a joint motion for approval of a class action settlement and consent decree (mooting the motion for preliminary injunction). The settlement included provisions for minimum qualifications for staff and employ new healthcare administrators. The defendants also agreed to provide sanitary clinical spaces and to revise and improve the dental program. The settlement also appointed a monitor to implement and oversee the staffing plan. The defendants also agreed to provide detailed reports to the monitor and to plaintiffs' counsel every six months for the first two years, and then every year thereafter. The court would retain jurisdiction over the agreement for a minimum of three years and a maximum of ten years after its approval.

Hundreds of class members subsequently filed objections to the settlement with the court. On March 29, 2019, the court appointed a third-party monitor. On May 9, the court approval the final consent decree.

On November 24, 2019, the expert drafted the first report per the decree's terms, which was filed with the court in January 2019. Reporting and compliance with the decree is ongoing.

David Smellie - 02/10/2017
Chelsea Rinnig - 01/16/2020


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