Washington: Jail Detainee Obtains $1 Million Settlement for Spinal Injury
From Steve Horn's article in Prison Legal News (PLN)
"Bryan Telford, who was held as a pretrial detainee at the King County Correctional Facility in Seattle, Washington in September 2016, recently obtained a $1 million settlement in a lawsuit filed against the county. Telford suffers from frequent fainting – known as syncope – and suffered a serious spinal injury when he fainted and fell at the King County jail. His lawsuit, filed in state court, argued that jail officials did not do enough to treat him after that incident...
Craig M. Sandberg, a Chicago-based attorney who represented Telford in the lawsuit, explained that his client now has difficulty walking, balance problems, muscle spasticity (when muscles are continuously contracted) and nerve impairment in his neck from the spinal injury he suffered due to the fainting incident and lack of timely medical care. 'The value to the injury for prisoners generally is that I anticipate that King County is going to redouble its efforts to care for each patient individually' going forward, Sandberg told Prison Legal News. 'As a health care provider, you have the obligation to care for each individual.'...
...Telford, who resides in Pierce County, Washington, was also represented by attorneys Jason Anderson and Tyler Santiago with the Seattle law firm of Anderson Santiago, PLLC. The $1 million settlement, which included attorney fees and costs, was reached in September 2018."
Click here to read the full article on page 14 of the November 2018 edition of Prison Legal News (Nov. 2018).
For more information about Prison Legal News, check out their work at www.prisonlegalnews.org. According to its website, "Prison Legal News (PLN), a project of the non-profit Human Rights Defense Center, is a 72-page monthly magazine that reports on criminal justice issues and prison and jail-related civil litigation, with an emphasis on prisoners' rights. PLN has published continuously since 1990 and covers a wide range of topics that include prison labor, rape and sexual abuse, misconduct by prison and jail staff, prisoners' constitutional rights, racial and socioeconomic disparities in our criminal justice system, medical and mental health care for prisoners, disenfranchisement, rehabilitation and recidivism, prison privatization, prison and jail phone rates, women prisoners, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), prison censorship, the death penalty, HIV and hep C, solitary confinement and control units, and much more."