A medical corporation and its employees may be held liable for the 2020 suicide of a man in custody at the Fremont County Detention Center, after a federal judge declined to dismiss the claims against them.

NatCore Healthcare Industries, Inc. formerly provided health care services to detainees in Fremont County, and its employees were reportedly aware that 47-year-old Clint Long was experiencing mental health struggles and self-harm while at the jail. Long’s son, Gage Long, has alleged NatCore showed deliberate indifference to his father’s serious medical needs, which culminated in Clint Long hanging himself on April 2 of last year.

On Dec. 15, U.S. District Court Judge Christine M. Arguello rejected NatCore’s request to dismiss certain allegations against the company and its employees. Gage Long is seeking a jury trial for his claims as well as monetary damages if he prevails.

Leading up to Clint Long’s death, the lawsuit alleged a long string of red flags that NatCore failed to address. Throughout his incarceration in 2018 and 2019, Long reportedly submitted multiple requests to NatCore staff seeking mental health treatment. On one such occasion, he said he heard “men talking in my head again.”

In August 2019, Fremont County jail employees allegedly tried to contact NatCore after finding Long bleeding from his face, but were unable to immediately reach anyone. Later that month, jail staff also encountered Long vomiting blood in his cell. Their call to NatCore went to voicemail.

On other occasions, NatCore allegedly placed Long on a medical watch, requiring a check on him every thirty minutes. According to the lawsuit, that did not happen in multiple instances. When Long harmed himself by sticking something in his ear, a NatCore employee offered him an ice pack and time alone to “calm down,” rather than provide mental health care.

Less than two weeks before Long’s suicide, Adam Beaty, a NatCore worker, allegedly reviewed jail footage after Long was found bleeding. Beaty reportedly discovered that Long had injured himself, but Beaty did not place Long on suicide watch or provide mental health care.

On March 24, 2020, Daniel Vaught, the chief executive of NatCore and a nurse practitioner, testified in Fremont County District Court that Long was bipolar. He also said that even though he wanted Long to see a psychiatrist the week earlier, that had not happened because the “psychiatrist had to leave early and … so forth.”

Long hung himself on April 2, 2020. Reportedly, he sent an email to a member of his criminal defense team minutes before with the subject line, “my mindnismgone and im sick.” Despite a video camera in his isolation unit with a live feed, jail officials allegedly failed to notice him for over 30 minutes.

At the time Long was jailed, he was facing charges for assault and harassment.

Long’s son sued NatCore, the individual employees and Fremont County for his father’s death. The lawsuit alleged a pattern among NatCore of failing to provide adequate mental care to detainees at Fremont County Detention Center. Lawyers for Gage Long portrayed his father as begging for psychiatric help in the lead-up to his death.

“Unsurprisingly, NatCore proved incapable of providing constitutionally-adequate medical care to people in FCDC custody. During 2020, NatCore was short staffed at least 74% of the time,” the lawsuit claimed.

NatCore argued that there was no plausible constitutional violation alleged in the complaint. Knowing that Clint Long had a history of mental health issues did not necessarily mean he was at risk of suicide.

“An inmate himself causing a bloody nose or ear may very well be attempting to provide a reason for transport to the hospital, or engaged in drug seeking behavior, and not suicidal,” attorneys for the company wrote. “The Constitution does not require a healthcare entity providing services to a jail to have someone with specific credentials available to evaluate inmates for potential suicide risk.”

In September, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty recommended against dismissal of the claims involving NatCore, Beaty and Vaught. He found the allegations were plausible enough to show that the defendants knew Long faced a substantial risk of suicide and disregarded it.

“Here, Defendant Beaty witnessed and recorded on two separate occasions the harm Mr. Long inflicted on himself,” Hegarty wrote. “Further, they followed years of kites [communications] indicating Mr. Long’s mental health battles, including hearing voices in his head. Defendant Beaty did not connect Mr. Long with a mental health care professional or otherwise place him on suicide watch.”

As for Vaught, Hegarty pointed out Vaught had not only heard about Long’s self-harming behavior, but also allegedly took Long off of medical watch. The magistrate judge credited the lawsuit’s allegations that understaffing at NatCore could have been a contributor to Long’s suicide.

“Due to that practice, NatCore was unable to adequately monitor Mr. Long or provide him with mental health care. Failing to do so was a direct causal link,” Hegarty wrote.

Arguello adopted Hegarty’s recommendation entirely. The ruling also dismissed the claims of deliberate indifference against the NatCore employee who received Long’s note shortly before his death about seeing dead people. Arguello conceded that the employee’s alleged failure to act after receiving the note may constitute negligence, but was not enough for a constitutional violation.

Beginning in January 2021, Fremont County contracted with a different health care provider for people in the jail.

“Our current health care provider, NatCore, was struggling to meet their contractual obligations,” said Sheriff Allen Cooper at the time, according to The Cañon City Daily Record. “Due to the size of their organization and the impact of the pandemic, they were only able to staff our facility 75% of the time and some of those staff were only EMTs.”

The lawsuit over Long’s suicide also claims Fremont County jail staff were liable for failing to intervene and obtain adequate medical care for Long.

Months prior to Long’s death, a jury in federal court found Fremont County and its former sheriff were not liable for another recent detainee death in the jail: that of John Patrick Walter in 2014, who died from withdrawal after staff withheld his prescription medication.

The case is Estate of Clint Long v. NatCore Healthcare Industries et al.