Prisoner's constitutional rights claim is reinstated where medical care so deficient it represented "deliberate indifference" to risk

In Shadrick v. Hopkins Cnty., the Sixth Circuit reinstated a prisoner's family's section 1983 claim against a private for-profit medical services corporation. Their decedent, Butler, was serving a short-term sentence for a misdemeanor violation when he died from complications of an untreated MRSA infection.   The trial judge had granted summary disposition to the defendants, despite evidence documenting that the nurses charged with providing proper medical care were unaware of, and did not understand, the written medical treatment protocols they were purportedly to follow.  The Court seemed particularly influenced by the fact that the on-site nursing manager testified that she was "not familiar with the SHP policies she was specifically designated to enforce."