LeMoon v. California Forensic Medical Group, Inc.

Background

The case concerns Jeremey Conaway’s detention and incarceration at the Solano County Justice Center Detention Facility from March 4, 2019, through April 10, 2019, when he died by suicide in his cell. The opinion describes Conaway’s history of substance abuse, homelessness, depression, prior incarceration, and prior suicidal statements. During his detention, he was placed under mental-health observation, was seen repeatedly by California Forensic Medical Group (CFMG) staff, and requested medication in writing on April 8. A CFMG employee created an urgent “priority 1” task for medication assessment, but Dr. Donald Purcell did not respond before Conaway’s death.

The operative complaint asserted claims against County defendants, including Sheriff Thomas S. Ferrara and the County, and against CFMG defendants, including CFMG, Wellpath, LLC, and individual medical personnel. The claims included civil-rights claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, state-law medical-care and negligence claims, a California civil-rights claim, disability-discrimination claims, and a wrongful-death claim.

County Defendants’ Motion

The court granted in part the County defendants’ motion for summary judgment. As to Sheriff Ferrara in his individual capacity, the court granted summary judgment on the deliberate-indifference claim and the substantive-due-process claim. The court found that Ferrara had not interacted with Conaway, did not know Conaway was at the jail until after his death, and therefore could not have known of or disregarded Conaway’s health risks. The court also granted qualified immunity to Ferrara on those claims because the record did not establish a constitutional violation.

The court separately considered eight alleged policies, practices, or omissions asserted as bases for County and supervisory liability. It determined that six did not survive the County defendants’ motion. Those six involved alleged policies or omissions concerning mental-health observation, staff training, the lack of a separate CFMG mental-health-observation policy, psychological consultations, housing suicidal inmates in cells with bunk beds and sheets, and the handling of “priority 1” tasks as urgent.

The court found that two alleged CFMG practices could potentially support liability at trial: treating “priority 1” tasks as routine rather than urgent, and failing to require staff to review an inmate’s prior medical records. The court stated that a reasonable jury could find these practices amounted to deliberate indifference to Conaway’s serious medical needs and caused his death. It did not complete its ruling on whether Ferrara could remain liable in a supervisory or official capacity for constitutional violations by CFMG defendants, whether the findings about the eight policies applied to the CFMG defendants, or whether the County remained a defendant on all claims involving the CFMG defendants.

CFMG Defendants’ Motion

The court denied the CFMG defendants’ motion for summary judgment. It concluded that the defendants had not met their burden on any of the arguments presented because their briefing did not adequately connect the claims to the cited law and facts. The court also noted that the defendants did not provide a declaration explaining or authenticating the evidentiary materials submitted with their motion.

Other Motions and Further Proceedings

The court sustained LeMoon’s objection to unauthenticated exhibits submitted with the CFMG defendants’ motion and struck exhibits A, B, E, H, I, J, and K. It struck the portion of the CFMG defendants’ reply brief exceeding the court’s ten-page limit. It granted LeMoon’s motion to substitute corrected excerpts of Michelle Bowie’s deposition transcript. It denied the County defendants’ motion to seal the intake classification questionnaire and denied LeMoon’s motions to provisionally seal the same questionnaire. The court found that certified transcripts from three California Superior Court proceedings were properly subject to judicial notice as public records.

Judge Hamilton ordered the parties to submit simultaneous supplemental briefs by December 30, 2021, on the unresolved County, Ferrara, and CFMG issues. The court vacated the pretrial filing dates, the pretrial hearing, and the February 7, 2022 trial date, stating that it would set a scheduling conference after receiving the supplemental briefs.