$325,000 Paid to Former Wisconsin Prisoner Whose Cancer Biopsy Was Delayed by Previously Disciplined Doctor
On September 19, 2024, Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Mary Kathlin Sickel put the final signature on an agreement paying $325,000 to former state prisoner Darnell Price, settling his claims that a state Department of Corrections (DOC) physician ignored a mass on his leg which later proved to be cancerous. By then, Price was so ill that the DOC granted him compassionate release from the sentence that he was serving for a financial crime—even though he was only 52.
Price was held at Stanley Correctional Institution (SCI) in January 2021, when he sought treatment for the mass from the DOC Health Services Unit (HSU). He reported to RN Jean Felber and a fellow nurse named Dorn that he first noticed the mass about five weeks earlier. They measured it to be “about 4 cm x 2 cm,” noting that “was firm, non-fluid filled, non-tender, and there was no redness present,” according the complaint that Price later filed. In response to their further queries, he said it had not resulted from an injury and was causing him no pain. It also had not grown, he said.
The complaint alleged that their “training and experience” should have alerted the nurses to three possibilities: “evidence of an infection, a relatively harmless lipoma, or a potentially cancerous lesion or tumor.” They did not send Price to a doctor, though, returning him to his cell and dismissing the mass as one of the first two possibilities—but failing to mention the last, more serious possibility. If it got worse, they said he should return to the HSU.
Price did so in May 2021. This time, another nurse referred him to a doctor. However, scheduling snafus prolonged his wait until November 2021, when he was seen by Dr. Jean Hannula. She suspected lipoma but ordered an ultrasound. That was done, and the report returned two weeks later called for a biopsy to confirm the initial diagnosis. However, Hannula didn’t order one. Instead, she ordered a follow-up ultrasound three months later.
When that was conducted in March 2022, the mass was measured at “7.6 x 4.5 x 8 cm”—nearly 274 cubic centimeters, or about the size of a lawnmower engine. Again the report called for a biopsy, and once again, Dr. Hannula failed to order one.
Price sent a request for follow-up to the HSU in June 2022. But nothing was scheduled before November 2022, when he was transferred to Oakhill Correctional Institution. Medical staff there ordered another ultrasound, this time following up with an MRI. In February 2023, that measured the mass at “16.5 x 10.6. x 9.1 cm”—almost 1,600 cubic centimeters, which is about the size of the engine in a typical compact car.
A biopsy was finally ordered, which the following month revealed the reason for the explosive growth of the mass: It was a “high-grade myxoid liposarcoma,” an “aggressive cancer” which by that point had metastasized to Price’s “liver and peritoneum,” the complaint recalled. Diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, he was treated with chemotherapy, which arrested the cancer but did not cure it. By the time he filed his complaint in January 2024, he had been released and given just two to three years to live.
Filed with the aid of Waunakee attorney Jeff Scott Olson in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, the complaint accused Dr. Hannula and other HSU staffers at SCI of violating Price’s Eighth Amendment rights with their deliberate indifference to his serious medical need. The parties finalized their settlement agreement some nine months later. Under its terms, the $325,000 payout to Price included costs and fees for his attorney, Scott, but no admission of wrongdoing by the DOC or Dr. Hannula. See: Price v. Hannula, USDC (W.D. Wisc.), Case No. 3:24-cv-00009.
Hannula, who is now in private practice, was no stranger to malpractice allegations. According to Wisconsin Watch, she had surrendered her medical license in California in 2004, pleading guilty to a charge of drug possession and no contest to an additional charge of forging a prescription. For his part, Price struck an understandably bitter note.
“I did my time,” he said. “But they took the rest of my life.”
Additional sources: New York Times, Wisconsin Watch
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login
Related legal case
Price v. Hannula
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (W.D. Wisc.), Case No. 3:24-cv-00009 |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Settlement |