Family sues Arapahoe County, private health care contractor for 2014 jail death

The private medical staff that cares for inmates inside the Arapahoe County Detention Facility allowed a 37-year-old man to die on the floor of his cell in a pool of blood and vomit after ignoring his rapidly declining health, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week.

Jeffrey Lillis died on Dec. 14, 2014, from sepsis caused by bacterial pneumonia after complaining for days that he didn’t feel well, recording an escalating fever and coughing up blood. His death involved a rare “cadaveric spasm,” in which the entire muscular system stiffens at death and is “usually associated with violent deaths happening under extremely physical circumstances with intense emotion,” according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado.

“It is awful,” said Erica Grossman, who is one of the lawyers representing Lillis’s children. “Jeffrey Lillis was only 37 and died of an entirely treatable infection because no one would get him medical care.”

The lawsuit names Arapahoe County, Correct Care Solutions LLC, Correctional Healthcare Companies, Great Peak Healthcare Services, Correctional Healthcare Services, Maxim Healthcare Services, a doctor and six nurses as defendant.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/14/family-sues-arapahoe-county-2014-jail-death/