Anjoure Teele was pregnant in January 2011 when she was booked into the Gwinnett County jail for armed robbery. One month later, she had a miscarriage in the back seat of a Sheriff’s patrol car en route to the hospital, with her wrists handcuffed and shackled to her waist.
Teele’s fetus, 18 weeks in gestation, was pronounced dead on arrival at Emory Eastside Hospital in Snellville.
Now Teele, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence in state prison, is in the midst of a wrongful death lawsuit filed in 2011 against the Gwinnett County jail’s medical provider, Corizon Health, which has had similar claims of malpractice made against it in jails and prisons all over the country. Several other parties also are named in the suit, including Gwinnett Sheriff Butch Conway, his department, two other health care providers along with individuals at the jail.
The lawsuit says that neglect from a series of those individuals — mainly deputies and Corizon medical employees — led to Teele's body expelling the fetus as the cruiser driven by Deputy Thomas Maloy pulled into the hospital parking lot.
“Upon arrival at the hospital, Teele told Maloy that her baby had been born and was in her jumpsuit and that her shackles were too tight,” the lawsuit says. “Maloy ordered her out of the car, forced her to sit in a wheelchair (and on the baby) and made her wait until he moved his car.”
Teele’s lawyer, Romero Pearson, said in a 2011 letter to Gwinnett County commissioners and the other parties being sued that damages would be “no less than $10 million.”
A Corizon spokesman said the company does not comment on pending litigation, and Conway also declined to comment on the suit. Likewise, Pearson said he would not comment until the suit is resolved.
Wrongful death and medical malpractice lawsuits against Corizon are familiar stories at correctional facilities across the country. The company has been sued from Maine to California, Minnesota to Florida, accused of substandard care in the deaths and injuries of inmates in local jails and state prisons.
Corizon has paid inmates who have sued them in 91 of the 355 lawsuits it has resolved over the past five years, according to a litigation history the company provided in June to officials in Broward County, Fla. There are an additional 305 suits against Corizon still pending.
“It serves as compelling evidence of our strong, effective professional liability risk management program that Corizon has only elected to settle approximately 91 (26 percent) of the closed lawsuits after careful evaluation of the costs associated with continued litigation,” the document says.
But Corizon didn’t settle all of those cases. In a Florida case from 2011, a jury found that Corizon was “deliberately indifferent” to Brett Fields, an inmate in the Lee County jail who was paralyzed after medical officials there failed to treat an infection. In awarding Fields $1.2 million, a verdict that has since been upheld on appeal, the jury also found that Corizon “acted with malice or reckless indifference.”
Greg Lauer, Fields attorney, said Corizon’s failures are systematic.
“This is business that goes to the lowest bidder,” Lauer said. “When you come in and pinch the bottom dollar, you end up with … people who are not trained and then on top of that cut back on every service. Unfortunately, you can get away with that a lot more with people who are in jail, because who is going to listen to them?”
Dr. Marc Stern, a professor of Public Health at the University of Washington who has studied and produced reports on the delivery of inmate health care for federal courts, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, said it’s difficult to know whether the number of lawsuits against Corizon is abnormally high. That’s because there are few companies that do the work, and the suits must be analyzed in the context of the number of facilities in which the companies operate, the number of inmates under their care, the types of claims being made and the amounts of damages sought.
“Corizon is the biggest company, so it’s not surprising they have a large number of suits,” Stern said. “Whether it’s in proportion really requires looking at all of those things. I’ve never done it, and I’m not aware of anyone else who has.
“There are problems with the way health care is delivered to inmates at facilities all over the country, whether it’s provided by a private company or the state.”
Teele’s lawsuit claims that she was mocked by deputies and ignored by Corizon’s medical staff while having a miscarriage in the days following an amniocentesis, a test that is most typically used to determine the odds of a baby having Down syndrome.
After Teel had the procedure at an outside medical facility, the deputies who escorted her that day were given written instructions for her post-procedure care, which included calling a doctor if she experienced cramping, heavy bleeding or fever. Teele began cramping almost immediately upon her return to jail, the lawsuit says.
She went largely untreated for three days, except for being given Tylenol and Motrin, until Corizon nurse Maile Cavender determined that she was having contractions on Feb. 17, 2011, according to the lawsuit.
“Despite her own declaration that (Teele) was experiencing contractions, Cavender … gave her a glass of water and locked her in a medical room” where she remained for another four hours.
Teele complained to another nurse, Tony Martinez, but didn’t get any attention for hours, until she pushed an intercom buzzer to advise that she was bleeding and that her water had broke.
At that point, Martinez contacted the jail’s doctor, Lee Grose, by telephone and was instructed that Teele should be taken to the emergency room “by deputy car rather than by ambulance,” the lawsuit says.
“Because he was making the diagnosis by telephone, Grose failed to recognize the urgency of Teel’s condition and the dangers of the situation,” the lawsuit says.
Chad McCoy, a Louisville, Ky., attorney representing the family of a 27-year-old girl who died in the Louisville jail after not being given insulin shots for her diabetes, said one of the problems with inmate health care is that the contracts give providers a flat-rate fee. In Gwinnett County, Corizon is paid about $7 million a year for health care provided at two facilities. Corizon also provides health care services in Fulton County, where it it paid about $15 million a year.
Seventeen inmates have died in the Louisville jail since 2008, and Corizon has been the provider there for that entire period. The company did not seek a renewal of its contract, which expires next month.
“Medical is outsourced at a flat rate, and at that point they create an incentive to provide the cheapest medical care they can,” McCoy said.
Mark Bolton, director of the jail in Louisville, said there are only a handful of companies that provide inmate health care and they all face the same challenges — and lawsuits. Bolton said Corizon made significant changes to the way they operated in Louisville and will leave “in good standing.”
“We book 44,000 people a year and most of them don’t take very good care of themselves,” Bolton said. “They’re not very apt to say, ‘Hey I’m detoxing from heroin or cocaine or I’ve been shooting meth for nine days straight.’ Most are medically high-risk, and the last time they saw a doctor was the last time they were in jail.”
McCoy acknowledged that is true and also said many inmates will lie about symptoms so they can go to the medical unit or to the hospital. He said those facts don’t excuse a lack of care.
“Every inmate wants to go to the hospital,” McCoy said. “But that’s a known, and it just means you have to be more on guard, rather than just writing them off in your mind.”
Although Corizon officials wouldn’t comment on any of the lawsuits filed against it, a company spokesman did respond through email after being asked if the company has made any management changes in response to the lawsuits.
“As with any large health care provider, litigation does arise from time to time,” the email from company spokesman Brian Fulton says. “However, the vast majority of lawsuits filed against Corizon are without merit and (are) dismissed with no findings of wrongdoing. In situations where it is determined that clinical care should be improved, Corizon takes the appropriate steps to ensure such improvements are made.”
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