SAN DIEGO (CN) — Imperial County, California, a nurse and a company that provides medical services must face wrongful death claims brought by the family of an arrested man who fell into a coma and died after law enforcement officers took him to a hotel instead of a hospital while he was having health problems.
In a suit filed in federal court in April 2024, the daughter and widow of Marine veteran Delbert Essex say that he was taken to the Imperial County Jail in El Centro by a California Highway Patrol officer when he was found inebriated behind the wheel of his pick-up truck after driving into a man-made river bed on June 22, 2023.
A nurse at the jail named Rosemary Doherty examined Essex — who was an insulin dependent diabetic with a seizure disorder — and said he was was dehydrated, had a tachycardic heart rate, high respiration rate and high blood pressure, dangerously high blood sugar levels and possibly had kidney or liver disease and heart issues.
Instead of offering insulin, IV hydration, or Essex’s own insulin, which was confiscated when he was arrested, Doherty ordered Essex to be transported by a squad car to a nearby medical center, the family says.
But two officers instead took Essex to a motel called the Ocotillo Inn in El Centro and issued him a “certificate of detention only” before releasing him, according to the family. Essex died in a motel room later that night of complications due to ketoacidosis shock and hypoglycemic shock. Motel staff discover his body the next morning.
In their suit, Essex’s family claim Doherty and the officers violated the Fourteenth Amendment by being deliberately indifferent to Essex’s serious medical needs. They further claim that Imperial County and Naphcare Inc, a company the county contracts with to provide medical services at the jail, also violated the Fourteenth Amendment by failing to train jail nurses and deputy staff members and knowingly maintaining policies and practices of deliberate indifference.
California Highway Patrol officer J. Roman and a number of employees of the jail are also listed as defendants.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge M. James Lorenz denied the county, Doherty, and Naphcare’s motions to dismiss the family’s claims.
“Plaintiffs alleged that the county and Naphcare had a policy, practice, or custom of inadequately training their employees such as arresting officers and jail nurses, who came into contact with medically unstable detainees. Given the jail’s otherwise inadequate resources to care for such detainees, the need for training jail staff regarding the assessment, monitoring, and transport of medically unstable detainees was obvious,” the Bill Clinton appointee wrote in his order denying the defendants’ motions to dismiss. “Further, plaintiffs alleged that prior jail deaths put defendants on notice of the inadequacy of their policy, practice, or custom. This is sufficient to allege deliberate indifference to the constitutional rights of medically unstable detainees.”
Essex’s family’s claims, Lorenz added, are sufficiently specific to give the defendants notice to prepare their defense.
In her motion, Doherty argued that she referred Essex to hospital care with his best interests in mind.
Lorenz rejected that argument, ruling that Doherty didn’t give full credit to Essex’s family’s claims and that they sufficiently alleged that she knew he needed insulin and that he should have been transported to a hospital by an ambulance, not a squad car.
“Her decisions under these circumstances to not administer insulin and choose transport by squad car placed Mr. Essex in greater danger than he was in before his arrest, when he could use his own insulin medication,” Lorenz wrote. “This theory of endangering Mr. Essex’s life and health is independent of the allegations that the officers subsequently abandoned Mr. Essex and are sufficient to state a claim even if the nurse could not have foreseen that the officers would abandon him. Accordingly, plaintiffs have adequately alleged a claim under the state-created danger doctrine against the nurse.”
Imperial County had a policy requiring that medically unstable inmates be transferred to a hospital after being seen by a doctor. The county argued in its motion that its policies were not relevant to Essex because he was never booked into jail.
“This argument is unavailing. Whether Mr. Essex was booked into jail or not, he was in county custody from the time he was arrested until he was released by the officers. Furthermore, the county’s argument is negated by its own policy,” Lorenz wrote.
Naphcare and Doherty also argued that Essex’s family’s punitive damages claims should be dismissed, because they didn’t claim how their actions were malicious, reckless or fraudulent.
Lorenz denied their argument, writing that Essex’s family does claim that they acted with reckless indifference and callous disregard for Essex’s constitutional rights.
According to California’s Correctional Health Care Services, 15 people have died in custody in Imperial County since January 2024.
Attorneys for Essex’s family, Imperial County, Doherty and Naphcare did not immediately respond to requests for comment.