A federal judge last month rejected an attempt by El Paso County and the former medical provider for its jail to dismiss a lawsuit alleging deliberate indifference to a detainee’s serious medical needs.

Alexandro Duran, who is partially paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, entered the county jail in November 2021. While there, staff allegedly refused to provide accommodations that would prevent him from developing sores from his wheelchair or his bed. 

Ultimately, Duran experienced sores that reached into his bones and muscles. 

“As his pressure sores were open, obvious and severe, Plaintiff requested repeatedly to be transferred to a hospital to obtain proper care, but his requests were repeatedly ignored or denied,” Duran alleged in his lawsuit. “Plaintiff was only transferred to a hospital when he became septic.”

According to Duran, the director of the jail’s medical program, George Santini, was aware of the need to clean the wound and remove damaged tissue, but did not. Duran alleged the county failed to accommodate his disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act and that Santini violated his constitutional rights by being aware of a serious medical condition and withholding proper care.

He also advanced claims against the jail’s medical contractor, Wellpath, for running an “inadequate medical program.” Finally, he accused the board of county commissioners of hiring Wellpath in 2019 despite knowing about its systemic deficiencies from when its predecessor company was the jail’s medical provider prior to 2017.

All of the defendants moved to dismiss Duran’s lawsuit.

The county argued its decision to hire Wellpath was not the type of action that opened the government up to liability for Duran’s medical care. Further, Duran did not provide enough details about the alleged lack of accommodations. 

Wellpath, on the other hand, argued Duran failed to “connect the dots” between the seriousness of his infected sores and Santini’s knowledge of the problem.

In a June 11 order, U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney rejected the defendants’ arguments. She noted Duran had alleged, in detail, the risk posed from having the sores “tunneling into his flesh.”

“These wounds would be obviously alarming to a reasonable layperson, let alone a reasonable doctor, so Dr. Santini should have made the inference that these pressure sores put Mr. Duran at a substantial risk of harm,” Sweeney wrote.

Because Duran credibly alleged Santini violated his rights, Sweeney determined Wellpath could also be held liable for its own alleged role — a history of “delaying transfers to off-site medical services, maintaining backlogged medical requests, and understaffing, amounting to a custom of running an inadequate medical program.”

As for El Paso County, Sweeney pointed out Duran was not simply alleging the county board’s decision to hire Wellpath led to the constitutional violation. Instead, Duran argued the county contracted with Wellpath despite serious problems with its predecessor company in the not-too-distant past.

“The decision to contract with Wellpath, with prior knowledge of the deficiencies of that system, plausibly constitutes deliberate indifference,” Sweeney wrote.

Earlier this year, a new contractor took over for Wellpath at the county jail. KRDO reported there were 27 deaths in the jail between Wellpath’s hiring in 2019 and May 2023. Last year, the county reached a $3 million settlement with the family of a detainee who died in 2021 for medical reasons.

Sweeney has also recently refused to dismiss similar claims against Wellpath made by detainees in the Jefferson County jail, also for allegedly failing to respond appropriately to serious medical conditions.

The case is Duran v. Wellpath, LLC et al.