By Tim Hrenchir
Topeka Capital-Journal
SHAWNEE COUNTY, Kan. — An April 2 jury trial date has been set in a lawsuit linked to the 2002 suicide of Shawnee County Jail inmate Anthony Stapleton.
Records posted on the Shawnee County District Court website indicate District Court Judge Larry Hendricks scheduled the trial Monday in the suit against Shawnee County and David Tipton and Matthew Biltoft, who were employees of the jail at the time Stapleton committed suicide by hanging.
The trial is expected to last five days, according to the district court website.
Hendricks set the trial date after the Kansas Supreme Court last month ordered him to reconsider his 2007 dismissal of a lawsuit seeking damages from Shawnee County, Tipton, Biltoft and Elizabeth Gillespie, then director of the Shawnee County Department of Corrections.
Stapleton’s mother, Cathy Thomas, initially sued in a federal case that was dismissed in 2005.
Her subsequent state district court suit alleged that Tipton, a guard on duty, and Biltoft, an assistant supervisor on duty, were negligent in supervising and observing Stapleton before he hanged himself with a bedsheet in the jail’s Close Observation Unit on Nov. 29, 2002.
Thomas’ suit also named Gillespie as a defendant and noted that six inmates in her department’s custody — five adults and one juvenile at the juvenile detention center — committed suicide between December 1998 and October 2003.
Hendricks ruled in favor of the defendants in a 2007 summary judgment that found no evidence of negligence, and he further ruled that the defendants were immune under the Kansas Tort Claims Act.
But the Kansas Court of Appeals subsequently concluded the district court erred in its summary judgment for Tipton and Biltoft. That ruling was subsequently upheld last month by the Kansas Supreme Court.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court judgment in favor of Gillespie, and Thomas chose not to appeal that.
The high court in last month’s unanimous decision upholding the Court of Appeals ruling said Tipton and Biltoft weren’t immune from the lawsuit under the Kansas Tort Claims Act. It also held that the Shawnee County Commission, as employer of the jail employees, remained a defendant in the case.
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