CHEYENNE, Wyo. (Legal Newsline) - Inmates who claim they were injected with the wrong COVID-19 vaccine have no case against the state of Wyoming, the state’s highest court ruled, citing a federal law that sharply limits the ability to sue over emergency medical procedures.
Chester Bird, Ryan Brown and Richard Dague were serving sentences at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in 2021 when prison officials announced they would administer COVID vaccines. The prison distributed information about vaccines and began vaccinating “high-risk” inmates with the Moderna vaccine.
In March 2021 the plaintiffs signed a consent form that didn’t specify which vaccine they would receive, but which referenced the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in a statement located in the middle of the form.
The day before the plaintiffs received their vaccine, prison staff published a notice on the inmate television channel specifying which COVID-19 vaccine was being offered to the inmate population. The plaintiffs said they didn’t see the notice, however, saying they “do not pay any attention to the facility television channel because it is routinely off the air, the material is outdated, and/or the material is illegible due to poor formatting or other issues.”
The plaintiffs were vaccinated on March 19, 2021 and didn’t realize they received the Janssen vaccine until three days later. They sued in federal and state court, claiming they never consented to being injected with the Janssen vaccine.
The federal court dismissed their complaint, ruling it was “devoid of facts to support a finding that [d]efendants acted with deliberate indifference to their right to refuse treatment.” The Tenth Circuit upheld the dismissal in 2022
The plaintiffs fared no better in state court. A trial court dismissed their case and the Wyoming Supreme Court upheld it in a Oct. 26 decision. The federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, triggered in a public health emergency, shielded the state, the court ruled.
“We find the State is immune from suit and liability under federal law because Appellants’ claims are causally related to the administration or distribution of a vaccine, used to treat, diagnose, cure, prevent or mitigate COVID-19,” the court concluded.