Howell v. NaphCare, Inc. et al.

Instead of providing Cornelius Howell the medical care he so desperately needed for his sickle cell disease, nurses and officers relegated him to a restraint chair and left him there for nearly four hours, resulting in his tragic death. The MacArthur Justice Center is fighting to hold jail and prison officials accountable for the pervasive—and often deadly—denials of care behind bars. 

Just one week after Mr. Howell was booked into a jail in Hamilton County, Ohio, he experienced a medical emergency associated with his sickle cell disease. He was in severe pain and unable to walk or stand. Instead of providing treatment, a jail nurse placed in him a restraint chair, where he was left virtually unattended. By the time a corrections officer checked on Mr. Howell nearly four hours later, he had died from a complication of his sickle cell disease.

Mr. Howell’s sister, Karla Howell, filed a lawsuit against the jail nurses and corrections officers who all but ignored him as he sat, dying, in the restraint chair; Hamilton County for its failure to train jail staff on how to monitor people in restraint chairs; and NaphCare, a private correctional medical contractor, for its unofficial custom of allowing nurses to place people in restraint chairs without physician approval.

The district court blocked this case from proceeding to trial, granting summary judgement to the nurses, officers, and county. The MacArthur Justice Center joined Rittgers & Rittgers on appeal in the U.S. Appellate Court for the Sixth Circuit.

UPDATE

The Sixth Circuit reversed the district court’s decision as to one nurse and one corrections officer involved in Mr. Howell’s death. In so holding, it reiterated that an objective legal standard—based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Kingsley v. Hendrickson, 576 U.S. 389 (2015)—applies to medical care claims involving pretrial detainees. The defendants then filed petitions for rehearing en banc, which the Sixth Circuit denied. Now, the defendants have filed petitions for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court.