Jury Awards $82 Million To Family Of Woman Who Died In Tulsa County Jail

A federal jury has awarded $82 million dollars to the estate of a woman who died while in custody at the Tulsa County Jail in 2013.

The jury said the jail's private medical provider, Correctional Healthcare Companies, violated Gwendolyn Youngs civil rights by refusing to get her the medical help she needed.

The attorney for the Young family said this is the largest civil rights verdict in U.S. history. He said taxpayers paid Correctional Healthcare $41 million to provide medical care to people in the jail and the jury doubled that amount with their verdict.

Court documents said Gwendolyn Young died of a heart attack in the jail in 2013. Documents said young had a prior history of heart problems and while in jail, complained about nausea, vomiting and back and stomach pain the morning she died.

Dan Smolen is the attorney for the Young family and he said there were clear signs for at least a week Young needed to go to the hospital, but the medical provider didn't do that.

"Miss Young was one of the many people housed in the Tulsa County jail that unfortunately lost their lives based on how horrific the medical care was,” said Smolen.

Smolen said they were able to show the jury evidence of other inmates who died while under the care of Correctional Healthcare Companies.

The evidence showed the company promised they were going to start sending inmates to the hospital, but didn’t keep those promises, Smolen said.

"They had been warned, over and over and over, the way you are approaching inmate healthcare is dangerous, people are going to die, they are dying, because of the way the private healthcare company was approaching the medical delivery services at the jail,” said Smolen.

Smolen said the company didn’t want to have to pay for the outside care because they wanted to make more money.

He said people dying in jail isn’t something new, but he hopes this monumental verdict exposes the problems.

"I think it is the civil rights violation of our generation that is not going recognized and I think many, many, many people are dying torturous deaths on a daily basis and it is just a matter of time before the industry is exposed,” said Smolen.

The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office sent us a statement saying: “This incident occurred in 2013, under the leadership of TCSO’s previous administration. This is the last lawsuit that remained unresolved from that era. Since Sheriff Regalado took Office in 2016, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office has changed jail medical providers, instituted the use of new technology and mandated additional training to ensure the proper medical and mental health care of inmates at the Tulsa County jail.”

News On 6 reached out to Correctional Healthcare Companies but they declined to comment.