Date: 11-14-2022

Case Style:

Thomas B. Ireland v. Bill Prummell, et al.

Case Number: 10-10539

Judge: Lagoa

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on appeal from the Middle District of Florida

Plaintiff's Attorney: Civil Rights

Defendant's Attorney: Defense

Description: Tampa, Florida personal injury lawyers represented Plaintiff, who sued Defendants on civil rights violation theories under 42 U.S.C. 19083.

Thomas Ireland, Gregg Ireland’s father and the personal representative of Gregg Ireland’s estate (“Ireland’s Estate” or “Estate”), appeals the district court’s grant of summary judgment for the named Defendants. This appeal stems from the circumstances surrounding Gregg Ireland’s detention at the Charlotte County Jail and Ireland’s eventual death. After a careful review of the record, and with the benefit of oral argument, we affirm the grant of summary judgment for the Sherriff of Charlotte County, the jail’s health care provider, and the jail’s medical personnel. We also affirm the grant of summary judgment for the jail’s corrections officers.

On August 22, 2015, at about 2:25 a.m., Gregg Ireland was arrested by a Charlotte County Deputy Sherriff for driving under the influence of alcohol and taken to the Charlotte County Jail. Ireland stood five feet, six inches tall and weighed 322 pounds. A deputy at the jail administered an alcohol breath test to Ireland, and Ireland’s blood alcohol content registered at 0.314, nearly four times the legal limit of 0.08. Following that alcohol breath test, Ireland was taken from the jail directly to the local hospital—Charlotte Regional Medical Center—and arrived at around 4:30 a.m.1

When Ireland arrived at the hospital, he smelled of alcohol but was in “no apparent distress” and was described by nurses as “cooperative” and “quiet.” Around 5:22 a.m., the emergency room physician wrote a disposition summary and diagnosed Ireland with “alcohol abuse” and “hypokalemia,” i.e., low blood potassium. Ireland’s blood potassium level was 2.7 at 5:41 a.m., with the normal range being 3.5 to 5.1. The emergency room physician prescribed Ireland potassium chloride to be taken every twelve hours for the next fifteen days for Ireland’s low blood potassium level. Ireland received his first dose at 5:59 a.m. at the hospital. Ireland subsequently left the hospital at 6:13 a.m. after he was discharged.

Ireland returned to the jail but did not undergo a medical intake screening for more than five hours after his arrival. At 11:35 a.m., a nurse finally completed the screening. But she lacked access to Ireland’s hospital records and therefore did not see his diagnoses or that he had been prescribed potassium chloride. That said, she did notice that Ireland had come from the hospital and thus assigned him to the jail infirmary with instructions for staff to monitor him for alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Over the course of the rest of the day, Ireland was monitored by nurses in the jail. And at no time did he show any signs of alcohol withdrawal, up through 9:00 p.m. on August 23—the next day.

At around 1:30 p.m. on August 23, a nurse informed the jail’s on-call physician, Dr. Adamar Gonzalez, of the hospital’s recommendation that Ireland take potassium chloride. Corizon2—the Charlotte County Jail’s health care provider—however, had a policy not to honor prescriptions from other doctors. Rather than prescribing Ireland the potassium chloride that the hospital recommended, Dr. Gonzalez ordered a blood draw, which was scheduled for August 24, to find out whether Ireland was still suffering from hypokalemia.

Late during the night of August 23, at around 11:00 p.m., Ireland started causing a commotion, and other inmates testified they heard him screaming and shouting. During the early morning of August 24, at around 3:00 a.m., Ireland became increasingly agitated, and a physical altercation ensued with his cellmate, who claimed that Ireland had poured water on him while he was sleeping. Officer Brandon Swartzentruber reported that, at around that time, he heard a loud noise coming from Ireland’s cell and that he went to inspect the cell.

After opening the door to the cell and observing water on the uniform of Ireland’s cellmate, Officer Swartzentruber decided to move the cellmate to another cell. At around the same time, Officer Swartzentruber observed Ireland “sweating profusely and [seeming] anxious.” As the cellmate exited the cell, Officer Swartzentruber asked Ireland to move towards the rear of the cell and to have a seat, so Swartzentruber could collect the cellmate’s belongings. Ireland refused. Officer Swartzentruber then made the same request several more times, but Ireland continued to refuse. As Officer Swartzentruber reached down to grab the cellmate’s “boat”—a plastic bed—at around 3:26 a.m., Ireland reached down and attempted to push it towards Officer Swartzentruber. Officer Swartzentruber ordered Ireland to sit down. According to Officer Swartzentruber, Ireland “tensed and took a step towards” him. This led Officer Swartzentruber to deploy his taser (a fivesecond cycle) at 3:27 a.m. With Ireland now incapacitated on the ground, Officer Swartzentruber requested emergency backup and ordered Ireland to lay flat on his stomach and to place his arms behind his back. Ireland refused and attempted to stand up, leading Officer Swartzentruber to continue to deploy his taser. At some point, Ireland managed to remove one of the prongs of the taser. Around the same time, Officer Swartzentruber’s requested backup officers arrived at the scene.

As relevant to this appeal, in addition to Officer Swartzentruber, Officers Michael Wiles, Robert Sledzinski, Alan Schwocho, William Garlick, and Albert Burrows were present in the cell at points during the attempt to restrain Ireland.3 Additionally, Officer Tabbatha Carter monitored the encounter from the jail’s control room, as the watch officer on duty. At some point during the encounter, Officer Wiles sat on Ireland’s back to try to get him into handcuffs, while Ireland’s hands were underneath his stomach, and struck Ireland twice. Officer Sledzinski also tased Ireland. The other named officers in the cell all played roles in attempting to restrain Ireland at points, as he continued not to comply with their attempts. Because they were first unable to get Ireland into handcuffs and shackles and to comply with their commands, they continued to apply physical force to Ireland while Ireland was on his stomach. At some point, one of the cellmates in the proximate area overheard Ireland saying, “I can’t. I just got tased,” and another cellmate heard Ireland say, “I’m not resisting,” in response to the various officers’ commands. During the encounter, various officers reported that Ireland also tried to spit on and bite the officers, which caused the officers to eventually put a spit mask on him. All in all, the officers had to shackle Ireland’s legs, tase him nine times, apply a spit mask, and place him in handcuffs to restrain him. During the encounter, Ireland’s Estate contends that Ireland was unable to effectively comply with the officers’ commands, due to the combination of alcohol withdrawal symptoms (delirium tremens), such as seizures, and the side effects associated with being tased and the application of physical force. The Estate claims that many of Ireland’s physical movements and reflexes were attributed to seizures because he lost control of his motor functions. The Estate further attributes Ireland’s inability to submit to being restrained to the physical nature of the force that the officers applied to Ireland, like Officer Wiles’s decision to sit on Ireland, thereby prolonging the officers’ use of physical force and the application of the taser because Ireland could not roll over and submit to being handcuffed. The Estate attributes Ireland’s thrashing and spitting in the cell to noncontrollable reactions to the application of physical force by the various officers that made it hard for Ireland to breathe.

After the officers restrained Ireland, the officers called a nurse to check on him—Nurse Margaret Bracy. Before she arrived, Ireland had become unresponsive. Because of the crowding in the cell by the various officers, Nurse Bracy was not initially able to “properly assess” Ireland. By the time Nurse Bracy entered the cell, Ireland had come to, was lying face down, bleeding from a laceration to his forehead, and swearing. After observing Ireland, Nurses Bracy and Zackary Heavener tried calling Dr. Gonzalez for advice USCA11 Case: 20-10539 Date Filed: 11/14/2022 Page: 8 of 49 on how to proceed, but Dr. Gonzalez did not pick up the phone despite being called four times. Eventually, the nurses reached a different doctor (Dr. Nicholas Delgado), who prescribed Valium for Ireland. That Valium, however, was never administered.

The officers then moved Ireland to a second cell—where the camera did not work—and then again to a third cell for observation. At some point during these moves, Ireland became unconscious; though, it is unclear when he lost consciousness. The officers contend that Ireland did not lose consciousness until after he was moved to the third cell. But Ireland’s Estate contends that he lost consciousness shortly after the altercation ended in the first cell. Ireland’s Estate also contends that Ireland was repeatedly dropped during his moves between the cells.

It is undisputed that, after being moved to the third cell, the officers were aware that Ireland was unconscious and they requested EMS support. Officers Swartzentruber and Wiles also performed CPR on Ireland. Nurses Bracy and Heavener then entered the room, began performing CPR, and attempted to use a defibrillator on Ireland, but their efforts to revive Ireland failed.

When EMS arrived at about 4:27 a.m., they took over the CPR efforts and transported Ireland to the hospital via ambulance. On arrival to the hospital, Ireland’s potassium level registered 3.0. Twelve hours after Ireland’s admission to the hospital, his potassium level registered 3.1, but it subsequently decreased to 2.9 at the fourteen-hour mark. At the hospital, Ireland was diagnosed with severe sepsis caused by infection, which transgressed into septic shock and multi-organ failure. During his time at the hospital, Ireland was unresponsive and intubated. By 7:10 p.m. on August 24, his prognosis was poor. Less than a day later, Ireland was pronounced brain dead and removed from life support.

On August 21, 2017, Ireland’s Estate brought a seven-count complaint against the named Defendants. Ireland’s Estate sued Corizon (the jail’s health care provider and employer of the nurses and doctors involved in this case) in Count 1, Dr. Gonzalez in Count 2, and Nurses Bracy and Heavener in Count 3 for deliberate indifference actionable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 because of these parties’ alleged failure to treat Ireland during his pretrial detention. In

Count 4, Ireland’s Estate sued Sheriff Bill Prummell, the Sheriff of Charlotte County, in his official capacity for deliberate indifference under § 1983. In Count 5, Ireland’s Estate sued the relevant corrections officers for deliberate indifference, excessive force, and failure to intervene to prevent the use of excessive force under § 1983. In Count 6, Ireland’s Estate sued Sheriff Prummell in his official capacity under a state-law theory of wrongful death. And, in Count 7, Ireland’s Estate sued Corizon under a state law theory of wrongful death. On November 1, 2019, Corizon, Dr. Gonzalez, and Nurses Bracy and Heavener moved for summary judgment. On that same day, Sheriff Prummell and the corrections officers also filed motions for summary judgment. On January 23, 2020, the district court granted each of the summary judgment motions in full, finding that Ireland’s Estate failed to present evidence sufficient to raise a genuine issue of material fact on any of the claims, and entered final judgment for the Defendants. This timely appeal ensued.

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