WASHINGTON — The family of a Los Angeles-area immigrant who languished in federal detention for 10 months while a cancerous growth went untreated despite his pleas for help cannot sue government doctors for medical neglect, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The case of Francisco Castaneda had gained the attention of a judge in Los Angeles who called it shocking and “beyond cruel and unusual punishment.”
But in a 9-0 opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the high court said federal law permits claims against the U.S. government but not against employees of the Public Health Service.
A refugee from El Salvador who came to Los Angeles with his mother when he was 10, Castaneda was convicted of a drug charge in his early 30s. He was held in a state prison and then transferred to a federal facility in San Diego pending his deportation.
Over 10 months, he complained to doctors and a physician’s assistant that he had a growing wart on his penis that he thought was cancerous. They refused to order a biopsy and told him, according to a report in his files, that he needed “to be patient and to wait.”
He was given ibuprofen and an extra set of boxer shorts because the painful and growing “wart” was bleeding. Three outside specialists recommended a biopsy, but Dr. Esther Hui, his treating physician, refused.
Finally, in January 2007, another specialist recommended a biopsy, but instead immigration officials ordered Castaneda released, sparing the agency the cost of treating him. Three days later, he went to a hospital where he was diagnosed with cancer. His penis was amputated, but it was too late. The cancer had spread, and he died at his home in Los Angeles in February 2008.
Before that, he had testified before a House subcommittee that was investigating the poor medical care given to immigrants held in federal custody. He also filed a broad lawsuit against the U.S. government, California’s prison system, and Hui and a physician’s assistant at the Public Health Service who denied him treatment. His sister and his daughter continued the lawsuit after his death.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 3-0 decision last year, said public health employees could be sued for ignoring a desperate prisoner’s need for medical care.
The Supreme Court disagreed and said Congress had specifically prohibited lawsuits against employees of the Public Health Service. Sotomayor said the law governing the Public Health Service says a damage suit against the government itself is the “exclusive” remedy for victims of medical errors or negligence.
There may be good arguments for allowing plaintiffs to sue over egregious conduct, she said, but “we are required to read the statute according to its text.”
