On December 23, 2024, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, affirmed the grant of qualified immunity (QI) to defendant officials with the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) in the claim of a now-dead Georgia prisoner who suffered epileptic seizures and injury after his medication was withheld at Walker State Prison.
The panel’s decision followed a rehearing of Plaintiff’s earlier appeal in the case by the full Eleventh Circuit sitting en banc on July 10, 2024. Though the ruling marked the beginning of the end for the Estate of the prisoner, David Henegar, the Court’s decision is nonetheless important for other prisoners in the Eleventh Circuit in that it announced a new framework for demonstrating the subjective component of a deliberate indifference claim.
Henegar, then 39, was diagnosed with epilepsy and then denied prescribed anti-seizure medication over four consecutive days in August 2016, leaving him to suffer two seizures and permanent brain damage. He filed suit against DOC officials, but the federal court for the Northern District of Georgia granted Defendants QI and dismissed his claim, a decision affirmed by a panel of the Eleventh Circuit in 2023—only to be withdrawn later that same year …
