LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – California attorneys have asked for and received more than $1.1 million for bringing a class action lawsuit over the medical and mental health care in Santa Barbara County jails.
Los Angeles federal judge George Wu on Feb. 1 approved the request of lawyers at Prison Law Office in Berkeley and King & Spalding in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Their request for $1,132,809 was unopposed by the defendant.
The order signed by Wu says the lawyers spent about five years investigating and litigating the case.
“Plaintiffs sought to address the medical and mental health care provided to people in Defendants’ jail facilities including discrimination against people with disabilities, suicide prevention policies and practices, the misuse and overuse of solitary confinement and deficiencies in the jail’s overcrowded, understaffed and unsanitary facilities,” the order says.
“The Stipulated Judgment does just that, and includes a comprehensive Remedial Plan that requires Defendants to implement specific policies, procedures, and practices intended to ensure minimally adequate mental health and medical care, to ameliorate or eliminate the risks of harm caused by dangerous solitary confinement practices, remedy deficient environmental health and safety conditions, and to ensure that people with disabilities receive reasonable accommodations and equal access to the programs, services, and activities that Defendants offer in the jail facilities.”
The lawyers used a lodestar method to calculate their fees. Their suit was brought on behalf of inmates at Santa Barbara County Jail and sought to remedy allegedly dangerous and unconstitutional conditions.
Along with Disability Rights California, the lawyers filed their case in December 2017. The complaint said the county jail was old, dilapidated, severely overcrowded and understaffed. It said staff failed to maintain adequate health care records and violated confidentiality records.
“(T)wo of the three wash basins and one of the three toilets in South Tank (which houses prisoners with mental illness) were not in working order, and the sole shower was missing tiles and had a visible mold,” the lawsuit said.
“In the South Dorm, there was mold in the lavatory and shower area, and on the walls of the wash basin area. Air vents were covered with caked dirt. Housing units regularly exist in a filthy condition and with a foul smell, including the isolation cells housing prisoners with serious mental illness.”
In isolation units, toilets overflowed and poured feces and urine onto cell floors, the suit says.