Mullins v. Morgan
- David Schultz
- 0:23-cv-01855
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 8
In Mullins v. Morgan, Magistrate Judge Schultz recommended dismissing Mullins’s constitutional medical-care claims against three federal prison medical providers.
Gary Mullins Jr. and the three individual defendants named in Count II: Dr. Mark Morgan, Karin Parsons, and Rachel Wolfe. The recommendation would dismiss Mullins’s claims against Parsons and Wolfe without prejudice and against Morgan with prejudice, subject to district court review.
What happened
Gary Mullins Jr., who represented himself while imprisoned, sued the United States and several Federal Bureau of Prisons employees over medical treatment after staples remained in his forehead. This recommendation concerns his constitutional claim against Dr. Mark Morgan, P.A. Karin Parsons, and Nurse Rachel Wolfe.
Mullins alleged that seven staples were placed in his forehead, but Wolfe removed only five and said all had been removed. After two staples were discovered, Morgan and Parsons removed one; the last required surgery about 15 months after the initial removal. Mullins claimed the delay caused pain, disfigurement, emotional distress, and other harm. The defendants argued that the constitutional claim did not adequately allege deliberate indifference.
Magistrate Judge David T. Schultz recommended granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss and granting Mullins’s motions to dismiss Morgan. He recommended dismissing the claims against Parsons and Wolfe without prejudice and dismissing the claim against Morgan with prejudice. The document is a recommendation, not a final district court order, and it states that the parties may file objections.
The detailed version
- Mullins v. Morgan · No. 0:23-cv-01855
- David Schultz
- Dec. 30, 2024
Background
Gary Mullins Jr., proceeding without a lawyer, sued the United States and several Federal Bureau of Prisons employees. His Second Amended Complaint asserted an Federal Tort Claims Act claim against the United States and a constitutional claim under Bivens against Dr. Mark Morgan, Physician’s Assistant Karin Parsons, and Nurse Rachel Wolfe. The constitutional claim alleged deliberate indifference to serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Mullins later voluntarily dismissed a separate Minnesota medical-malpractice claim.
Mullins alleged that he injured himself at FMC-Rochester on January 11, 2020, and a physician closed a wound above his left eye with seven staples. He alleged that Wolfe later removed only five staples but told him that all staples had been removed. After he experienced swelling, pain, and headaches, imaging approximately four months later revealed two staples beneath his skin. Morgan and Parsons tried to remove them and succeeded in removing one. Mullins alleged that surgery to remove the final staple did not occur until April 16, 2021, and that he suffered pain, irritation, facial disfigurement, emotional distress, embarrassment, and medical expenses.
Legal standard
The defendants moved to dismiss the deliberate-indifference claim for failure to state a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). At this stage, the court accepts well-pleaded facts as true and asks whether they plausibly state a claim. For an Eighth Amendment deliberate-indifference claim, a plaintiff must plausibly allege both an objectively serious medical need and that the defendant actually knew about the need but deliberately disregarded it. Deliberate indifference requires more than negligence or medical malpractice.
Analysis
The recommendation concluded that Mullins did not plausibly allege that Wolfe knew two staples remained. The complaint alleged that Wolfe believed she had removed all the staples and that only five had been present. The recommendation therefore treated the alleged failure to verify the number of staples as, at most, carelessness or negligence, which was insufficient for deliberate indifference.
The recommendation reached the same result for Parsons. The complaint alleged only that Parsons helped Morgan try to remove one of the remaining staples. It did not allege that Parsons caused, was responsible for, or knew about the 15-month delay before surgery. Without facts connecting Parsons to that delay, the recommendation found the claim speculative.
As to Morgan, Mullins voluntarily moved to dismiss the deliberate-indifference claim but did not specify whether the dismissal should be with or without prejudice. Morgan requested dismissal with prejudice, and Mullins did not object. Based on that record and Mullins’s earlier request for a without-prejudice dismissal of another claim, the recommendation proposed dismissal of the claim against Morgan with prejudice.
Recommended disposition
The Report and Recommendation proposed that:
- The defendants’ motion to dismiss be granted.
- Mullins’s motions to dismiss Morgan from Count II be granted.
- Mullins’s deliberate-indifference claims against Parsons and Wolfe be dismissed without prejudice.
- Mullins’s deliberate-indifference claim against Morgan be dismissed with prejudice.
The document states that it is not a district court order or judgment and is not directly appealable to the Eighth Circuit. It provides that the parties may file written objections within the specified period.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.