A federal judge has shut down a Colorado inmate's negligence lawsuit against the United States over claims that prison staff ignored months of severe shoulder pain, overturning a magistrate judge's recommendation that the case go to trial. Timothy Dean Curphey, who was incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence in December 2019, had argued that officials failed to properly respond to repeated complaints of pain tied to a partially broken and dislocated shoulder.
The case, Curphey v. United States of America, centers on a dispute over whether Curphey needed expert medical testimony to prove his claim. According to Colorado Politics, Curphey sued the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a law that allows people to hold the U.S. government liable for certain injuries caused by federal employees. Curphey received an X-ray in May 2020 that revealed the shoulder damage, and he said he had requested medication and assistance for the resulting pain on numerous occasions.
Curphey's broader allegations stemmed from a December 2019 incident in which he protested alongside his cellmate over the denial of clothing and mattresses, during which prison officials allegedly deployed gas against him and assaulted him. By August 2024, Judge Nina Y. Wang had narrowed Curphey's claims specifically to allegations of medical negligence, while noting that some facts about medical treatment can be understood by ordinary jurors without expert testimony.
A Magistrate's Recommendation To Proceed
In January 2026, the United States moved to end the case without a trial, relying on its own expert's conclusion that force had not caused a shoulder injury, and arguing Curphey did not need medical care because he had no such injury and lacked expert testimony of his own. Magistrate Judge Timothy P. O'Hara acknowledged in August that Curphey had provided no evidence contradicting the government expert's conclusion about the injury itself.
Even so, O'Hara recommended that Curphey's case could proceed to trial, based on allegations that officials failed to respond to six months of severe-pain complaints. O'Hara reasoned that mocking a patient instead of treating them could breach the standard of care without requiring expert testimony — a notion tied to the case's most jarring detail, in which a prison administrator told Curphey to try acting like a man instead of a woman, according to the same report.
Curphey maintained that his claim was about a prolonged failure to evaluate or treat his repeated complaints of severe pain, not merely about the eventual shoulder diagnosis. He argued that a factfinder could assess whether a complete failure to examine or treat repeated severe pain fell below a reasonable standard of care.
Wang Sides With The Government On Appeal
The United States objected to O'Hara's recommendation, arguing it improperly created a new theory of liability and that pain complaints alone could not establish negligence. Attorney Nicholas A. Deuschle wrote in the government's objection that expert testimony was needed to establish the appropriate standard of care for shoulder pain stemming from an unknown injury.
Wang ultimately disagreed with the government on one point, finding that O'Hara had not invented a new theory of negligence and that Curphey's claim genuinely extended beyond his shoulder diagnosis. But on the central question, she sided with the government: in her September 30 order, Wang agreed that Curphey's lack of expert testimony doomed his claim regarding officials' response to his pain, finding he had not provided sufficient evidence of a clear and palpable deviation from an obvious standard of care.
As a result, Wang concluded that Curphey would not receive a jury trial on his claim that prison officials negligently refused to treat his pain, rejecting O'Hara's recommendation outright.
A Rare Reversal In Colorado's Federal Courts
Wang's decision stands out statistically. Colorado Politics reports that, according to figures compiled by Michael E. Hegarty, Colorado's district judges adopted magistrate judges' summary-judgment recommendations 88 percent of the time in 2023, and adopted recommendations in part in another 12 percent of cases. Per that same data, no district judge fully rejected a magistrate judge's recommendation that year, underscoring how unusual it was for Wang to overturn O'Hara's call entirely.
The outcome also reflects a broader legal hurdle facing inmates and other plaintiffs pursuing medical negligence claims without an expert witness. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has noted, Colorado law generally requires expert medical opinion to establish the proper standard of care in a malpractice claim, except in unusual circumstances. Separately, the Federal Bureau of Prisons acknowledges that the Federal Tort Claims Act can make the government liable for negligent or wrongful acts by its employees, while the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in United States v. Muniz, as reproduced by Justia, holds that the United States is liable under the law in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances.
