He was hurt at the Pierce County Jail, and the medical records are gone, lawsuit says

A former inmate at the Pierce County Jail has sued the county, alleging he was hurt at the jail and that his medical records no longer exist.

The lawsuit says 41-year-old Sebastian Gonzalez has “extreme difficulty waking on his own,” because he has multiple sclerosis, and that he was hurt when he fell down stairs at the jail from his second-level cell several years ago.

Sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said the county will not comment on the lawsuit before officials are formally served.

As for the jail’s medical records, Troyer said the jail’s former medical provider turned over records of some, but not all inmates when its contract ended. The county is working to get the other records, he said.

Gonzalez’s lawsuit seeks unspecified damages; a claim for damages, filed as a precursor to the suit, sought $500,000.

The lawsuit, filed Aug. 31 in Superior Court, gives this account of Gonzalez’s time at the jail:

He was booked June 12, 2015, after being charged in District Court with first-degree negligent driving earlier that month.

He was “housed on the lower tier of the jail, assigned to a lower bunk, and authorized wheel chair transportation, per intake notes.” A few days later, he was released on bail.

He was booked back into the jail July 1, 2015, after a violation of his electronic-home monitoring.

This time, he was housed in a second-level cell, which meant “he was forced to move himself up and down a long flight of stairs in order to obtain meals while housed in the Pierce County Jail, thus causing him extreme pain and discomfort,” his lawsuit states.

Gonzalez fell down those stairs July 8, 2015, as he was walking down to return his meal tray. After the fall he was in “extreme pain and discomfort,” according to the lawsuit.

Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to first-degree negligent driving, and was released from the jail July 14, 2018. After his release he went to several area hospitals for medical care.

Gonzalez alleges he got insufficient medical care at the jail after the fall, and that the county violated public records law by failing to maintain records related to the incident.

ConMed, a division of Correct Care Solutions, provided medical and dental care at the jail in 2014 and 2015.

According to Gonzalez’ lawsuit, “CCS destroyed all of the records it held, or otherwise disposed of them, when their contract with the Pierce County Jail was terminated. ... The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department also failed to maintain or preserve any of the medical records related to this incident.”

Asked whether medical records under the former provider are gone, Troyer said in a statement:

“ConMed only provided us records of some – not all – of the inmates after the ConMed contract was terminated. ConMed claimed they provided everything, but it appears they only gave us records of those inmates who were in custody at the time. This is an issue that is continuing to be resolved.”

The county ended the contract with CCS in August 2015, after alleging the company had been performing poorly and failing to improve.

“It is my understanding that all of the records from the provider are no longer in existence,” Gonzalez’s attorney, Leah Altaras, told The News Tribune.

She said that, under state law, jail medical records are to be kept for six years.

“If you have a lawsuit against the jail, or something happened in the jail related to medical treatment or an injury, the poof of that, of course, is in the records,” Altaras said. “If there are no longer records, how can you prove it?”

An inmate might also want such records for ongoing medical care, she noted.

“Pierce County has appeared to have lost a significant amount of medical records,” Altaras said. “Those are important records, especially for the people that those records were about.”

This story was originally published September 18, 2018 at 1:25 PM.