The private company responsible for medical care at Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail has agreed to a $2.5 million settlement in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a dead inmate’s family.
Wellpath, a Nashville, Tennessee-based company, agreed to settle the case brought by the children of Maurice Monk, who died in the jail in November 2021.
“Maurice Monk’s children will receive some justice for the needless death of their father,” said Monk family attorney Ty Clarke. “There is simply no excuse for any medical professionals, no matter the setting, to neglect their primary duties and their Hippocratic oath.”
A spokesperson for Wellpath, whose $250 million contract with the county expires in 2027, declined to comment on the settlement.
Monk was found in his cell in a pool of bodily fluids after being dead for about three days.
His family lawyers said guards ignored his condition even as meals delivered to him piled up uneaten and Wellpath nurses simply tossed his medications into the cell.
Monk was being treated for diabetes and schizophrenia at the time.
“The settlement ends the Monk family’s lawsuit against at least nine nurses and a physician’s assistant who never intervened as they watched Monk deteriorate while in their care, yet did nothing to help him,” said lawyer Adante Pointer in a news release Thursday.
“There is simply no excuse for any medical professionals, no matter the setting, to neglect their primary duties and their Hippocratic oath.”
Ty Clarke, Monk family attorney
In addition to the lawsuit, criminal charges were filed in 2024 against seven Alameda County sheriff’s deputies, two former deputies and a pair of civilian Santa Rita Jail employees. All defendants have pleaded not guilty and the cases are still pending, according to court records.
Monk was in jail for about a month prior to his death, having been arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct for allegedly refusing to get off an Alameda-Contra Costa Transit bus and failing to appear on a misdemeanor warrant for another alleged altercation on a bus, according to prosecutors.
His public defender said that he missed his court date because he was turned away at the door and was unable to pay the $2,500 cash bail once he was arrested.
In 2023, Alameda County agreed to a $7 million settlement with Monk’s family, an agreement that also requires the Sheriff’s Office to improve the ways in which it conducts observation checks of inmates.
Guards must now undergo an annual training course on how to assess “emergent issues related to the physical and mental health of incarcerated persons, including deterioration in quality of life.”
Also, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors is considering putting the jail’s medical care contract out to bid in order to possibly replace Wellpath when its contract expires in 2027.
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