Marc Moreno

Marc Anthony Moreno was an 18-year-old resident of Franklin County, WA. On March 3, 2016, his father brought him to a county crisis response unit during a mental health crisis. According to a federal court order, crisis unit staff called the police to transport Moreno to the hospital, but, seeing that he had two outstanding misdemeanor warrants for a traffic violation, police instead took him to the Benton County Jail.

During his incarceration, Moreno was confined to an isolation cell that had no bed, toilet, sink or access to drinking water, according to the court order. A lawsuit filed by Moreno’s family, citing jail records, alleged that a social worker employed by Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, the entity contracted to deliver mental healthcare in the jail, checked on Moreno several times and noted evidence of mania and psychosis but did not refer him for further evaluation or treatment until several days later, when a colleague alerted her that Moreno had not been eating or ingesting fluids. She referred Moreno to the staff of the jail’s private provider of medical care (a company now called Wellpath), but a nurse didn’t check on him until two days later, by which point he had not ingested fluids in several days, the suit alleged. Even at that point, according to the court order, “no steps were taken to provide immediate medical assistance to Mr. Moreno.”

By March 8, Moreno was “suffering from profound dehydration in addition to malnourishment,” his family’s lawsuit alleged. On March 11, jail officers discovered Moreno dead in his cell. He weighed 179 pounds at his death. In eight days of incarceration, according to an autopsy, he lost nearly 40 pounds.

In the course of litigation, Wellpath purged the email accounts of almost all employees who worked at the Benton County Jail during Moreno’s incarceration. “This is not a case where [Wellpath] negligently forgot to stop an automatic document destruction system already in place,” the federal judge wrote in her order. “Rather, this is a case in which [Wellpath] decided to begin a new document destruction policy in the middle of litigation over a teenager’s death.”

Wellpath declined to comment on the specifics of Moreno’s case, but the company’s Director of External Communications and Reputation Management stated that “Wellpath is unwavering in its commitment to delivering quality, compassionate care to thousands of patients across our partner facilities. We are deeply proud of the impactful work our teams provide to vulnerable, underserved patients in the correctional setting and the consistent evaluation of our processes and procedures to enhance our patients' care.” (Wellpath settled the case for $4.5 million, but did not admit wrongdoing.)

A lawyer for Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital noted that the hospital reached a confidential settlement in the civil suit. “The settlement was for purely economic reasons, and it was [the hospital’s] position at all times that the actions of its provider were entirely appropriate,” the lawyer told the Lab.

A full account of the lawsuit—including the estate’s allegations against Correctional Healthcare Companies, Correct Care Solutions and others, as well as each party’s response—is available through PACER (Case 4:18-cv-05171, Eastern District of Washington).

• IN THE NEWS (Warning: Disturbing Contents)
  • Article One
• LITIGATION (Warning: Disturbing Contents)
  • Complaint