Washington jurors returned a $52 million verdict in favor of 23 plaintiffs who accused the state's Department of Corrections of allowing an active tuberculosis outbreak to fester and spread to hundreds of people at its prison facilities over nearly two years.
The King County Superior Court jury found the DOC liable Monday for damages ranging from $200,000 to $5 million for each of the plaintiffs — 21 incarcerated men who contracted TB at the facilities as well as the former spouse and infant child of a man who, according to the parties' briefs, infected the infant after he was released from custody.
The trial determined only damages in the November 2024 medical malpractice case. Court rulings in February and September this year found that the Department of Corrections owed the plaintiffs a duty to protect their health and had breached that duty. The department also said in a trial brief that "for the purposes of trial in this case only," it wouldn't contest that "the current and former inmate plaintiffs in this matter contracted TB as a result of DOC's negligence."
The outbreak began in December 2019, according to the suit, when the source patient, Clallam Bay Corrections Center inmate Dennis Oya, told medical providers that he was worried his TB had returned. Rather than test or treat him for the bacterial infection, DOC allegedly told him that his cough — which he said was so bad that it broke his ribs — was acid reflux.
Oya was transferred to another facility, Stafford Creek Corrections Center, in May 2021, and told medical staff he had a chronic cough, the plaintiffs said. A few months later, one of his roommates at the second facility allegedly developed a cough, weight loss and symptoms of pneumonia.
DOC initially failed to diagnose the roommate, Rithy Tem, with TB and instead treated him for pneumonia, according to the suit. Tem was diagnosed with TB in December 2021, the plaintiffs claimed, but the delay allegedly slowed the department's testing of other inmates.
By January 2022, hundreds of people at the facility had tested positive for latent TB, the inmates said in their trial brief. An investigation by DOC, the state Department of Health and the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ultimately identified 245 latent infections and 25 active cases at the Stafford Creek facility, the inmates claimed in the brief, with Oya as the initial patient.
The outbreak spread outside the corrections facilities after DOC released plaintiff Vinson Carter-Vincent from custody in January 2022, according to the plaintiffs' brief. Despite being aware of the infections, it says, the department failed to test him for TB. He fell ill with active TB in July 2023 while living with his infant daughter, who later developed a latent TB infection.
Jurors in Monday's verdict awarded Oya $5 million in damages, Tem $3 million and Carter-Vincent $2.5 million. Carter-Vincent's daughter, identified as BCV, was awarded $550,000. The total verdict for all 23 plaintiffs totaled $52,390,000.
DOC's negligence caused plaintiffs who contracted active TB significant harm, they claimed, including permanent scarring and other damage to their hearts and lungs, as well as mental trauma. Infected inmates broke ribs from coughing fits, the plaintiffs said, and one fell into a vegetative state after TB spread to his brain and spine. Another allegedly died of suicide while in solitary confinement.
"DOC controls where incarcerated people sleep, eat, and recreate; it controls their medical care; and it controls their communications with family and friends," the inmates said in their complaint. "Given this total control … DOC has a duty to protect its wards. It failed, and plaintiffs and their families are forced to live with the consequences."
A DOC representative told Law360 in an email Wednesday that the department doesn't typically comment on litigation but is currently "analyzing the verdict and weighing options for appeal."
Counsel for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The plaintiffs are represented by Micah R. LeBank, Marta L. O'Brien, Colin G. Prince and John B. McEntire IV of Connelly Law Offices PLLC.
The Department of Corrections is represented by John R. Nicholson and Kaylynn What of
Simmons Sweeney Freimund Smith Tardif PLLC.
The case is Jesus Ancheta et al. v.
Washington State Department of Corrections, case number 24-2-25808-6, in the King County Superior Court.
--Editing by Michael Watanabe.
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