By Andrew Clevenger
The Charleston Gazette
CHARLESTON, W.V. — The sisters of an inmate who died in custody has sued the state Regional Jail Authority, alleging that its health-care providers failed to provide him with proper treatment for six months after he began having seizures.
Last week, the sisters of Daniel Earl Callahan filed a lawsuit in Kanawha Circuit Court, alleging that he never saw a physician, let alone a specialist, after he first reported having seizures in September 2008.
The case also illustrates that inmates receive inadequate care, according to the complaint, which asks a judge to order the Regional Jail Authority to improve its medical treatment policies.
In the suit, Tabitha Alvarez and Crystal Callahan, of Virginia and North Carolina respectively, say their brother filled out an “Inmate Sick Call Non-Emergency Request” form asking for an appointment in September 2008. Callahan, who had just turned 22, had been sent to North Central Regional Jail after he was sentenced in Monongalia Circuit Court, the suit states.
“I think I’m having seizures,” Callahan wrote. “I was setting at the table yesterday morning peeling a boiled egg and I started twitching and another inmate said my eyes rolled to the back of my head. Please see me as soon as possible because I think this is a slight emergency.”
A nurse saw Callahan on Sept. 23, 2008, and he was admitted to the jail’s medical unit five days later for “seizure like activity,” according to the suit. From that point on, the jail’s medical staff was aware of his medical condition and that if it went untreated and unchecked it could kill him, according to the suit.
The suit names the jail authority, its acting director, Joe DeLong, and Secretary of the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety Joseph C. Thornton in their official capacities as defendants. It also alleges that PrimeCare Medical Inc., a Pennsylvania-based health-care provider subcontracted to treat prisoners, its West Virginia subsidiary and Dr. Antoine Katiny and nurse Sandra Harlow breached their duty of care owed to Callahan.
The jail’s medical unit gave Callahan medication, but Katiny never saw him personally, and Callahan was never referred to a neurological specialist, the suit maintains. Over the next five months, he returned to the medical unit either to be seen by a nurse or admitted six times.
“The PrimeCare defendants knew and understood that the medication they had prescribed did not control Mr. Callahan’s seizures,” the suit states. “Nonetheless, they failed to arrange for him to be tested, evaluated, and treated by a physician with expertise in seizure disorders and were content to let his seizures to continue without any expert medical intervention.”
Finally, on March 3, 2009, Callahan was admitted following a seizure, and had another the following morning, and his condition soon deteriorated to status epilepticus, a state of constant or near-constant seizures, the suit maintains.
He was rushed to United Hospital Center in Clarksburg, but it was already too late to save his life, according to the suit. He was transferred to Charleston Area Medical Center, where a test showed his brain activity had flat-lined.
After his organs were harvested, he was taken off a ventilator and proclaimed dead two days later, the suit states.
John L. King, the Regional Jail Authority’s director of operations, declined to comment on the case on Monday, citing pending litigation.
The suit, filed by Morgantown attorney Allan Karlin, asks Kanawha Circuit Judge Jennifer F. Bailey to review how the Regional Jail Authority treats prisoners and order it to take the necessary steps to ensure adequate care.
“The manner in which medical care is provided to prisoners incarcerated in the Regional Jails of West Virginia fails to provide those prisoners with adequate medical care as required by the laws and Constitutions of the United States and West Virginia,” Karlin wrote. Because of this, “Callahan died and many other prisoners have been deprived of adequate medical care through negligence and/or deliberate indifference.”
Copyright 2011 Charleston Newspapers