Medical care delayed for weeks in custody, then a misdiagnosis

Attorney Answer

Being in custody does not remove the right to adequate medical care, but it does not extend Georgia's deadlines either — and that is the urgent part.

Georgia defines the claim broadly. O.C.G.A. § 9-3-70 reaches care “rendered by a person authorized by law to perform such service” and, separately, care rendered by a hospital, clinic or institution or its employees. The duty itself is in O.C.G.A. § 51-1-27:

A person professing to practice surgery or the administering of medicine for compensation must bring to the exercise of his profession a reasonable degree of care and skill. Any injury resulting from a want of such care and skill shall be a tort for which a recovery may be had.

A bad outcome is not enough by itself. The claim is that the care fell below what a reasonably careful practitioner would have provided, and that the shortfall caused the harm — which in Georgia ordinarily needs an expert to say so.

A delay of weeks before any examination, followed by an incorrect diagnosis, raises both halves: whether the care met the standard, and whether the delay made the condition worse than it would otherwise have been. With an eye condition the causation question is often answerable, because the progression is documented.

Incarceration does not pause the clock. Georgia's medical malpractice deadlines in O.C.G.A. § 9-3-71 run from the injury and from the act or omission, and § 9-3-73 sets out the only disabilities that change them — legal incompetency and minority. Being in custody is not among them. A claim from late 2021 may already be outside the two-year period, which makes getting advice immediately more important than getting it right in every detail first.

There may also be a separate federal route where care in custody is concerned, which runs on its own rules and its own deadlines. That is worth asking about specifically.

What you can do

1. Request every medical record and sick-call request from the facility, in writing, and keep a copy of the request itself. 2. Write down the dates: when you first reported the problem, each time you asked, and when you were finally seen. 3. Get your eye examined now by an outside provider and keep that record. 4. Ask a lawyer specifically about the deadline, because it may already be short or past. 5. Ask the same lawyer whether a separate federal claim applies to care received in custody.

⏱ Time limits apply. O.C.G.A. § 9-3-71 gives two years from the injury AND cuts off any medical malpractice action five years after the act or omission, whichever arrives first. The five-year limit is a statute of repose, so it can end a claim before the two years have even run.

A Georgia attorney can tell you quickly how the facts here line up, and most will look at a matter like this at no cost.