Corizon Health and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office are facing a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the daughter of Raymond Herrera, a former inmate who died while in custody at the Main Jail on June 15.
Sharayah Herrera initially filed the lawsuit in Santa Barbara County Superior Court on Oct. 15, however the case was re-filed in federal court on Nov. 20.
In the lawsuit, Herrera alleges several complaints, including negligence, cruel and unusual punishment, and failure to provide medical care to a prisoner.
Herrera, 52, was finishing the final stretch of a 10-day jail sentence for a nonviolent probation violation when he began to convulse in his jail bed. He later died at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
His death was the result of a ruptured spleen caused by cirrhosis of the liver, according to a coroner’s report obtained by the Sun in July, which also notes that Herrera was diagnosed with hypertension, hyperlipidemia (abnormally high concentration of fats in the blood), hepatitis C, and chronic back pain.
Corizon is a Tennessee-based company contracted with the county to provide medical services for inmates at the jail. The company faces several lawsuits across the country—including two separate lawsuits in Santa Barbara County—for providing substandard medical care to inmates.
In a previous statement provided to the Sun, Corizon Director of External Affairs Martha Harbin said that a lawsuit is not “indicative of quality of care or any wrongdoing.”
Defendants in the lawsuit include the cities of Santa Barbara and Goleta, Santa Barbara County, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
This article appears in Dec 17-24, 2015.