On January 31, 2024, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay a former prisoner and her family $9.9 million for failing to diagnose and treat her uterine cancer, leaving the disease to spread and become terminal. Unfortunately, while the settlement amount is unique, the agency’s failure to properly diagnose and care for those in its custody is not.

Paula Gardner was transferred to DOC custody in 2019 to serve a 40-month sentence for following burglary and drug-related convictions. She was originally confined at Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) in Gig Harbor.

Shortly after her arrival there on March 18, 2019, Gardner underwent a medical screening that showed she was positive for carcinogenic human papillomavirus (HPV). An ultrasound on April 9, 2019, also showed a 1.9 cm growth in the lower segment of her uterus. Both tests indicated that she was a high risk for uterine cancer and required immediate follow-up care and monitoring, which should have been recommended.

But Gardner was never informed of these test results or the need for follow-up care. Instead, she was transferred to the Yakima County Jail, which houses prisoners under a contract from the DOC due to overcrowding at WCCW. No follow-up medical imaging or treatment was done while she was there to address the mass in Gardner’s uterus.

When Gardner was eventually transferred back to WCCW in 2020, again no follow-up examinations were performed. Despite records clearly indicating that Gardner had a history of abnormal pap tests, plus carcinogenic HPV and an unidentified a mass in her uterus, the DOC failed to perform follow-up imaging or check her cervix for over 25 months. Instead, medical staff incorrectly noted that Gardner required an examination every three years.

The DOC finally performed a screening on March 17, 2021, after Gardner reported “troubling symptoms.” Medical providers then found obvious lesions on the surface of her cervix. Tissue biopsies confirmed that the lesions were cancerous. By then, the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes too. Gardner was informed that her disease was terminal.

Following her release from prison in December 2022, Gardner filed suit against the DOC in Pierce County Superior Court in Tacoma alleging that the agency violated her statutory and constitutional rights to adequate medical care. Dr. Reed Paulson, the former chief medical officer at Oregon State Penitentiary, wrote an expert report on Gardner’s behalf, opining that had DOC performed proper tests in March 2020, “more probably than not, she would have survived her cervical cancer.”

In a response to the lawsuit, an assistant attorney general representing the DOC acknowledged that prison health care had harmed Gardner and that the only jury question was determining the dollar amount to award her. DOC then settled the case on December 21, 2023, agreeing to pay Gardner and her two sons, who were also parties to the lawsuit, $9,900,000. The money will benefit Gardner, 43, for what remains of her life, as well as her two sons. They were represented in the suit by attorneys Lincoln C. Beauregard and Marta L. O’Brien of the Connelly Law Offices, PLLC, in Tacoma. See: Gardner v. Dep’t of Corr., Wash. Super. (Pierce Cty.), Case No. 22-2-10833-4.

Gardner has been receiving “palliative care” in Tacoma. Her $9.9 million settlement is more than the total amount paid by DOC in lawsuits and tort claims during any of the past six fiscal years dating all the way back to 2018, according to the state Office of Risk Management.

O’Brien, in an interview following the settlement, said she was particularly troubled by the DOC’s failure to notify Gardner about the potential cancerous growth that showed up in the 2019 ultrasound, an omission that came to light during discovery in the lawsuit. “It’s just such a basic tenet of medical care that you inform the patient what is happening to them,” O’Brien said.

“Our heart goes out to Ms. Gardner and her family,” offered DOC spokesperson Chris Wright, who added: “In recent years, the agency has focused its attention on improving health care for our incarcerated patients.” Wright pointed to efforts including hiring of a national expert in corrections health systems, implementation of a new system for reviewing unexpected prisoner deaths, and a funding request to the state Legislature for electronic health records.

However, these assertions are belied by the DOC’s recent track record, especially concerning its seeming inability or unwillingness to timely diagnose and treat prisoner illnesses. In fiscal year 2023 alone, the state paid out $8 million to settle medical claims filed by prisoners. In February 2022, it paid $3.75 million to the family of Kenny Williams, 63, after he died in prison of cancer that went untreated despite his pleas for help, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Oct. 2022, p.34.] And in 2021, the DOC agreed to pay $3.25 million to the family of prisoner John Kleutsch, 57, who died of a festering abdominal wound that was not properly treated, as PLN alos reported. [See: PLN, June 2022, p.20.]

That same year, the Office of the Corrections Ombuds (OCO) examined 11 cases of delayed cancer diagnosis and treatment for DOC prisoners during the preceding few years, concluding that the problem was ongoing. “We obviously are concerned about what we are finding,” said Joanna Carns, then-director of OCO. “We keep doing these reports because the problem doesn’t go away.”

Back then, DOC spokesperson Jacque Coe said that the agency had taken “numerous actions to improve the efficiency, accuracy and timeliness of diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients in our Department’s care.” Coe’s claims sound eerily similar to those offered by Wright after the settlement with Gardner. Yet her case indicates that the DOC has done very little to improve the diagnosis and treatment of prisoners with cancer.  

Additional source: Seattle Times

Subscribe today

Already a subscriber? Login