Davis County fights $8M jury verdict over woman who died in jail

After the fall, Miller told a jail nurse who came to check on her, Marvin Anderson, that she was withdrawing from meth.

FARMINGTON — Hitting back after a jury’s $8 million judgment over Heather Miller’s death in the Davis County Jail, attorneys for the county have requested a new trial while injecting a new element of blame against the woman.

Miller, 28, a misdemeanor arrestee who suffered a severed spleen and died of massive internal bleeding after falling from her bunk on Dec. 21, 2016, did not tell a jail intake screener that she was withdrawing from methamphetamine, an attorney wrote in the new-trial motion.

“Had Miller truthfully responded she was experiencing withdrawal, she would have been assigned a lower bunk and not a top bunk, and not fallen, ruptured her spleen and died as a result,” wrote Jesse Trentadue, a private attorney representing the county.

After the fall, Miller told a jail nurse who came to check on her, Marvin Anderson, that she was withdrawing from meth.

In response to the motion, an attorney for Miller’s mother noted the county is raising “the novel defense that Miller induced bad medical care by alerting Anderson to potential meth withdrawal.”

A U.S. District Court jury in July found that Anderson and the county violated Miller’s constitutional rights by the nurse’s “deliberate indifference” to the inmate’s health after the fall. Jurors awarded $8 million in damages to Miller’s estate, represented by her mother, Cynthia Stella.

Anderson did not check Miller’s vital signs and had her put in a different cell, where she slowly bled to death over the next three hours without further checks by nurses. Two jail deputies alerted the medical unit to Miller’s worsening condition, but they were told “not to think too hard about it.”

The county’s motion contends that the evidence did not justify a verdict of civil liability. It also asserts that Judge Jill Parrish made several errors during the case, including her finding after the trial that Anderson did not meet the standard for qualified immunity from civil liability.

In an interview, Stella said the county’s try for a new trial is “frustrating.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that Heather died,” she said. “It doesn’t change the fact that (Anderson) didn’t help her. I don’t know what they expect.”

Tad Draper, Stella’s attorney, said the county is plowing no new ground. “What we have here is they are unwilling to accept the answer they have received over and over and over,” Draper said. “Cloaked in various types of clothing, it’s the same arguments.”

Stella filed the suit in 2018. A year later, Parrish ruled that two other defendants, then-Sheriff Todd Richardson and jail nursing supervisor James Ondricek, qualified for civil immunity, but that Anderson’s actions must be decided by a jury. The county appealed to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Parrish’s ruling.

In the trial, jurors decided “by a preponderance of the evidence that Anderson was aware that Miller faced a substantial risk of serious harm” and that he “consciously failed to take reasonable measures to address the substantial risk of harm” despite his knowledge of that risk.

In her post-trial ruling on the legal question of qualified immunity, Parrish wrote that the evidence showed that “Miller’s symptoms were sufficiently serious that a layperson could have easily recognized her need for medical attention.”

The judge referred to jail security video that showed Miller needed help walking from her cell to the top of the stairs, she had to scoot down the staircase on her posterior, and after standing she “fell into the wheelchair that Anderson retrieved for her.”

During Anderson’s assessment of Miller in the upstairs cell, she complained of pain in her side. The nurse was aware she had fallen several feet onto a concrete floor. In his trial testimony, Anderson said he should have taken Miller’s vital signs because failing to do so in such a situation creates a “pretty obvious risk” that he might miss something important that could change his treatment decisions.

The county also is challenging a request by Stella’s legal team for $759,000 in legal fees.

The county’s legal defense is handled by the Utah Counties Indemnity Pool. Damages awarded will come from the pool, not directly from county coffers. The county pays an annual premium to the pool.

Miller’s was one of a record 25 deaths in Utah county jails in 2016. The toll sparked a public accounting that led to state-ordered annual reports on jail deaths, their causes and efforts to help inmates with addiction or mental health issues.