by Chuck Sharman

A preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on June 30, 2026, ordered Commissioner Daniel Martuscello III and other officials with the state Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) to immediately begin providing prescribed treatment to state prisoner David Blanding for his bladder cancer, which had never been provided since initial surgery to remove a tumor six years earlier—causing recurring tumors and surgeries since then. Worse, Blanding, 61, had in the interim developed prostate cancer, which no one at DOCCS or Green Haven Correctional Facility had ever even bothered to tell him, much less offered to treat.

In a memorandum opinion issued on July 22, the district court explained the reasoning for the injunction in the plainest terms possible—that the prisoner “is a very sick man” whose suffering “has been aggravated and his life placed at greater risk through the deliberate indifference to his serious medical needs by the defendants at Green Haven and DOCCS.”

Those Defendants attempted to argue that Blanding had received adequate care and was not entitled to “perfect treatment or the best treatment or a state-of-the-art treatment that he would desire in the private world.” But the district court was unpersuaded. “The trial record in this case demonstrates that the defendants … largely and in many cases deliberately have failed to provide Blanding with the urgently needed and potential life-saving care to which he constitutionally is entitled,” a record of “deliberate indifference” that was “inexcusable.”

A Seven-Year History
of Denied Care

Blanding’s ordeal began in 2019 at Green Haven, where he is still serving an 18-year term after violating conditions of his parole from an aggravated burglary conviction, according to the DOCCS. Diagnosed with bladder cancer, he had a tumor surgically removed in an operation conducted the following year. But a six-week course of immunotherapy that was ordered at the time was never provided. Nor did he undergo cystoscopies that were also ordered to detect new tumor growth. Unsurprisingly, he found blood in his urine in December 2021.

It took another six months to get surgery to remove new tumors. But immunotherapy that was again ordered was again never provided. Regular follow-up cystoscopies were also ordered, but he got only the first. So once more, in July 2024, Blanding found blood in his urine. He had surgery the same month to remove more tumors; a stent was also placed in one of the valves from his kidneys to assist with drainage that the tumor growth impaired. He was told to return for pathology in two weeks and undergo a six-week chemotherapy regimen, at the end of which he needed to return to have the stent removed. But Blanding was not brought back “to review his pathology report within two weeks, was not given mitomycin as prescribed, and did not have his stent removed until five months later,” the district court noted, emphasizing the delay.

The unremoved stent quickly began to cause the prisoner “significant pain.” Worse, blood reappeared in his urine in September 2024. Fortunately for Blanding, attorneys at the Center for Appellate Litigation (CAL) got involved and interceded on his behalf with DOCCS officials, begging repeatedly for the treatment he needed. Unfortunately, their pleas were ignored or met with finger-pointing at one another. When appointments were finally scheduled, Green Haven failed to transport him, so his stent wasn’t removed until December, leaving him to “endur[e] months of unnecessary pain.”

In April 2025, CAL attorneys got an outside internal medicine specialist, Dr. Barbara Ogur, to review Blanding’s chart in preparation to draft a request for medical parole. It was Ogur who found a pathology report from the previous July that indicated the cancer had spread to Blanding’s prostate. Nine months after he should have heard it from the DOCCS, the prisoner “was told about his prostate cancer diagnosis, for the first time, by his attorneys at CAL,” the district court wrote.

The pathology report pegged the cancer at two out of five on the Gleason scale of severity. But it was already nine months old, and DOCCS officials took another six months to get Blanding’s prostate biopsied, during another cystoscopy of his bladder. Three months after that, the results were finally shared with him: the prostate cancer had progressed to the level of five in severity. The cystoscopy also revealed new tumor growth, with was removed the following month, in January 2026. But the prisoner suffered a pulmonary embolism during surgery and had to be put on a blood thinner.

Blanding’s oncologist ordered additional surgery to place a fiducial marker needed for regular radiation therapy. Meanwhile, Green Haven officials failed to transport the prisoner to two more medical appointments that were missed in February and March 2026. The last was with his cardiologist, but during a trip to the Green Haven medical unit in April, Blanding saw a prison cardiologist who ordered his blood thinner tapered off in preparation for surgery to place the marker. That didn’t happen, either, so the surgery was aborted when he showed up for it in May.

Suit Filed, Injunction Granted

With the aid of his attorneys, Blanding filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on June 12, accusing DOCCS officials of deliberate indifference to his serious medical need, in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights. Three days later, after still more blood appeared in his urine, Blanding was taken to a hospital for a CT scan that revealed “multiple tumors in his bladder requiring urgent surgical intervention,” the district court recalled. But CAL attorneys got nothing from the DOCCS official who should have scheduled this but an automated “out-of-office” reply.

The district court took notice of such failed efforts by attorneys with CAL and Rickner Moskovitz LLP, Blanding’s counsel of record. They got no response, or another automated message—or, eventually, a demand for the prisoner to sign an authorization for his medical records to be shared, as required under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA). The attorneys had already provided such authorization, but they dutifully resent it.

Blanding was still waiting on radiation therapy—because he was still waiting for surgery to place the marker—when the district court held a preliminary injunction hearing on June 15. Defendant DOCCS officials attempted to dispute whether he had chronic kidney disease, as Dr. Ogur noted from his records. They also said that surgery was aborted in May not because of failure to taper his blood thinner but because of a “gold allergy.” Otherwise, the DOCCS offered no excuse, the district court noted.

As a threshold matter, the court looked at grievances filed by the prisoner in November 2025 and February 2026, noting that he followed up on both and was promised review at the prison system’s Central Office Review Committee (CORC). However, “nothing in the record indicates that CORC has responded.” That was sufficient to find that Blanding exhausted his administrative remedies prior to filing suit, as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e.

Next, the court determined it was likely that Blanding would prevail on the merits of his deliberate indifference claim because his condition is objectively “sufficiently serious” and “defendant’s acts and omissions evince ‘a conscious [subjective] disregard of a substantial risk of serious harm,’” the district court said, quoting Darby v. Greenman, 14 F.4th 124 (2d Cir. 2021) (quoting Charles v. Orange Cty., 925 F.3d 73 (2d Cir. 2019)).

“The prison’s treatment of Blanding has been nothing short of disgraceful,” the district court declared. Defendants “have not offered any medical justification for their failure to deliver the cancer care sought by Blanding,” meaning “[t]his was not mere negligence.” Rather, “officials knew that Blanding’s health was at substantial risk yet still repeatedly disregarded doctors’ orders and recommendations or otherwise failed to provide him care.” Given the likelihood of irreparable harm, and balancing the equities involved—while also ensuring that the order was “narrowly drawn,” as the PLRA requires—the court then issued its preliminary injunction. See: Blanding v. Martuscello, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 164109 (S.D.N.Y.).  

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