Riverside County to Pay $1.25 Million in Prisoners Suit

Riverside County supervisors signed off this week on a $1.25 million payment to a Berkeley-based law firm that represented former inmates in a class-action lawsuit that was settled with the county earlier this year.

In a 5-0 vote without comment on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors agreed to disburse the funds to cover the Prison Law Office's court costs and attorney fees. The board also approved disbursing $450,000 over the next three years to ensure compliance with terms and conditions specified in the legal settlement.

All of the payments will be drawn from the county's general fund.

The federal suit, filed in May 2013 on behalf of convicted felon Quinton E. Gray and others inmates, stemmed from alleged deficiencies in medical care provided individuals housed in one of the county's five detention facilities.

The Prison Law Office founded its case on a 2012 report by the Riverside County Grand Jury, which found that the jail system had too few medical practitioners, and the staff who were managing inmates' medications and handling other healthcare needs were not attentive or consistent.

The plaintiffs' attorneys attempted to ferret out instances of medical neglect, but as the county's legal team noted in an answer to one brief, the Prison Law Office regularly cited examples that referred to "unidentified people at an unidentified jail at an unidentified time."

Gray, a repeat offender whose most recent conviction was in February for misdemeanor theft, claimed that the county had failed to meet "some medical conditions that required care."

Another plaintiff in the suit, Angela Nicole Patterson, claimed she did not receive anticoagulant and other medications after she was transported from Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs to the jail ward at Riverside County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley.

Patterson killed two of her passengers and seriously injured another after crashing into a tree on the southern end of Joshua Tree National Park in June 2009. The then-22-year-old defendant was intoxicated -- and heading to a court hearing in San Bernardino County to answer a misdemeanor DUI charge in that jurisdiction.

She suffered moderate injuries in the Joshua Tree wreck. In 2013, she was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The Prison Law Office alleged that all of the plaintiffs were subjected to Eighth Amendment "cruel and unusual punishment" violations under the U.S. Constitution while jailed in Riverside County.

County officials characterized the suit as opportunistic. Efforts were made last fall to have the class-action status de-certified based on "lack of information and belief." However, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips denied the request, and the county settled the case soon afterward.

As part of the consent decree, the county will have to institute a range of detention health reforms that will cost an estimated $40 million a year, potentially aggravating its structural budget deficit and making it necessary to divert funds from other programs.

– Reported by: City News Service.

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Image of the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning, Calif. Patch file photo.