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Final Action: Approved
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Consent Agenda Item #
Board of County Commissioners Public Hearing date:
Board Summary Report
Date:
December 23, 2016
To:
Board of County Commissioners
Through:
Ronald Carl, County Attorney
From:
Jed Caswall, Deputy County Attorney
Subject:
Approval of a resolution authorizing legal representation and indemnification in
pending litigation filed against former employees of the Arapahoe County
Sheriff’s Office.
Purpose
A civil lawsuit, The Estate of Jeffrey Scott Lillis v. Correct Care Solutions, LLC, et al., Civil No.
16-cv-03038-KLM, was recently commenced against numerous defendants in the United States
District Court for Colorado, including four former employees of the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s
Office, arising from the death of an inmate in the Arapahoe County Detention Facility on
December 14, 2014. This memo and the accompanying resolution seek the Board’s formal
authorization to provide legal defense services and indemnification coverage for the individual
former employees who have been named as defendants in the suit.
Background
On December 14, 2014, jail inmate Jeffrey Lillis died while being housed in the Medical Unit of
the Detention Facility while awaiting trial on several relatively minor criminal charges. At the
time he was booked on August 15, 2014, Mr. Lillis was a heroin addict and suffered from
hepatitis C. After being weaned off heroin in the jail, Mr. Lillis continued to be seen by medical
personnel for an assortment of medical issues. On December 12, 2014, he was moved from the
general jail population into the Medical Unit after a nurse found his temperature had risen to a
high level and he had complained of being sick. His condition was monitored and he was given
medications that brought his fever back down, but he continued to complain of chest congestion,
body ache and a bad cough. In the early evening of December 14 he told a nurse he needed to be
placed on a drug withdrawal protocol and/or needed his anxiety medications, neither of which
had been prescribed for him. After taking his vital signs (sans his blood pressure), which were
generally within normal limits, the nurse left him to attend to other inmates with the intention of
coming back to him later. However, during the interim he was observed on a monitoring camera
to have “fallen off” the toilet in his cell where he had been sitting on and off during the evening.
(He had been on and off the floor on more than one occasion prior to this.) The nurse was not
able to go back and check on him until approximately 10-13 minutes later. When the nurse
reentered his cell, Mr. Lillis was unconscious and not breathing. Efforts to revive him failed and
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he was pronounced dead. The autopsy report prepared by the Arapahoe County Coroner
concluded that Mr. Lillis died from “sepsis due to severe lobar (bacterial) pneumonia.”
The current lawsuit has been brought by several of Mr. Lillis’s surviving family members and
seeks an unspecified amount of money damages for wrongful death and the alleged violation of
his constitutional rights. Named as defendants are the County, five private medical services
companies that had contracted to provide medical services to inmates in the jail, an on-call
physician who had been contacted by the nursing staff at one point with regard to Mr. Lillis’s
condition, and six nurses who attended to Mr. Lillis while he was a patient in the Medical Unit.
Four of nurses were ACSO employees at the time of his death. The suit essentially contends that
the various defendants were all deliberately indifferent to Mr. Lillis’s medical condition and,
thus, caused or allowed his death.
Discussion
Under the provisions of the Governmental Immunity Act, a county is obligated to bear the costs
of providing a legal defense for its employees when they are sued for acts or omissions allegedly
committed by them during the performance of their duties. Additionally, a county is obligated to
indemnify its employees for judgments or settlements that may enter against them in those suits,
excluding punitive damages (unless otherwise authorized). These obligations are generally
subject to the following conditions. First, that the conduct of an employee giving rise to the
lawsuit occurred within the scope and performance of his or her job and, second, that the conduct
of the employee was not wanton or willful, i.e., maliciously motivated or executed or taken in
bad faith.
After reviewing the facts and information currently available, the County Attorney’s Office has
concluded that the conduct of the former ACSO employees relevant to the claims in the current
litigation was not undertaken wantonly or willfully or with any intent to injure Mr. Lillis or
violate his rights. It is also apparent that all of the challenged conduct taken by the nurses was
taken by them within the scope of their job duties.
Recommendation
The County Attorney’s Office recommends that the Board adopt the proposed resolution
accompanying this memo and authorize both a legal defense and indemnification protection
(inclusive of potential punitive damages) as provided under the Governmental Immunity Act in
the above-noted litigation for the four former ACSO nurses. The defense will be conducted by
the County Attorney’s Office unless otherwise deemed necessary or appropriate by the County
Attorney. The representation may also include rendering legal assistance to the nurses with
regard to administrative licensing proceedings that have been commenced against them through
the State Board of Nursing by the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit. The
administrative proceedings, by being commenced simultaneously with the federal court case,
could potentially impact the litigation.
Alternatives
Retain outside counsel.
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Fiscal Impact
Presently unknown litigation costs. However, they could be substantial.
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