A federal court has dismissed claims that New Hampshire’s Hillsborough County, along with the nurses and outside medical providers for the county’s Valley Street Jail, are liable in the death of an inmate who experienced alcohol withdrawal and later died.
The late Robert Martel’s wife alleged that the municipality, its prison employees and medical providers, individually and collectively, provided constitutionally inadequate medical care that resulted in her husband’s death.
However, U.S. District Judge Joseph N. Laplante has ruled that the allegations did not meet the standards required to find “deliberate indifference” or purposeful denial of adequate care.
“The allegations at most show a disagreement as to Martel’s course of treatment, as opposed to purposeful denial of care, delayed care, lack of care intended to punish Martel, or care so inadequate that it amounts to a refusal of care. Disagreements over appropriate medical care, and ‘misjudgment, even negligent misjudgment,’ are not deliberate indifference,” Laplante wrote.
Further, since the plaintiff’s “unsupported legal conclusions” and “speculation” failed to establish that the underlying care amounted to a constitutional violation, the municipal liability claims against the county, including for inadequate supervision, also fail.
On May 7, 2021, Martel was ordered to serve a 10-day sentence at Valley Street Jail in Manchester, where the county houses detainees and inmates and employs correctional officers, nurses, and other staff and had contracted with American Institutional Medical Group (AIMG) to provide medical care.
On May 10, Martel reported to Valley Street to serve his sentence and began experiencing alcohol withdrawal symptoms soon thereafter. After receiving medical treatment from the jail’s nursing staff, Martel was later found unresponsive in his cell and died unexpectedly.
An autopsy by the state medical examiner determined that Martel died as a result of hypertensive heart disease, with coronary artery disease and chronic ethanol abuse as significant contributory factors.
Martel’s estate filed suit against Hillsborough County, three county nurses who treated Martel during his incarceration, a correctional officer who briefly interacted with Martel, and the jail’s outside medical provider, AIMG.
The individual defendants moved to dismiss the plaintiff’s complaint, arguing that the allegations did not support claims for deliberately indifferent — and thus constitutionally inadequate— medical care. The county further argued that absent an underlying constitutional violation by one of its employees, the plaintiff’s municipal liability claim was unsustainable.
As to the negligence claim, the nurses argued that they were immune under state law, while AIMG asked the court to decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the claims it faces.
The court noted that the defendants did not dispute that Martel had a serious medical need, which is one of the elements the deliberate indifference test requires.
However, the court continued, in order to prove deliberate indifference that violates constitutional rights, Martel’s estate was also required to show that the prison officials “possessed a sufficiently capable state of mind” that indicated they intended to deny care as a punishment or sought to provide care that was “so clearly inadequate as to amount to a refusal to provide essential care.”
Also, to prove a collective responsibility of the defendants, Judge Laplante wrote that the relevant inquiry was not whether the individuals were liable based on their collective actions. Rather, the question was whether each defendant, through his or her own individual actions, has violated the Constitution.
The court reviewed the factual allegations against each individual defendant against this standard and found that while there were some questions about what care to administer, all participants acted reasonably and none showed a deliberate indifference that violated the Constitution.
Disagreement as to the appropriateness of treatment cannot form the basis for a deliberate indifference claim, the opinion states.
In dismissing the federal claims, the court left the plaintiff the option to refile certain claims concerning the nurses and AMG under state law in the appropriate state court.
Topics New Hampshire
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