Vanguard News Desk Editor
WEAVERVILLE, CA – Civil rights attorney Mark Merin Friday said he’s filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Eastern District, on the behalf of the parents of a man found dead at the Trinity County Jail earlier this year—one of three people, added Merin, who have died at the jail in the past two years.
The law firm said 32-year-old Joshua Garbutt died Jan. 14 this year “in the Trinity County Jail as a result of failure of the jail to provide assistance for his Fentanyl withdrawal despite repeated calls for help from Joshua and fellow inmates.”
Brian Garbutt and Stacy Pohlmeyer engaged Merin to file their civil rights complaint against Trinity County, the Sherriff’s Office, Sheriff Tim Saxon, and nine named deputies and medical personnel, along with numerous unnamed “does” responsible for “the deliberate indifference to Joshua’s medical needs which led to his death.”
In the first amended civil and constitutional rights complaint filed in Sacramento Federal Court, among the 10 claims are “deliberate indifference,” “failure to summon medical care,” “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” “wrongful death” and “negligence.”
Merin’s office, in a statement, said Garbutt was arrested Jan. 11, and told authorities he had “he had recently taken Fentanyl and, while withdrawing, would need Suboxone to treat his withdrawal.”
However, the plaintiff’s attorney added, “Although classified in the highest risk class by the jail, the physician assistant who was contracted to provide medical services…could not be reached and Joshua was housed in a general population dorm where his vomiting and diarrhea alarmed” other incarcerated.
The lawsuit maintains Garbutt was “[p]rovided only a bucket into which to vomit…(and) screamed in pain and vomited for two days until he was transferred to a solitary cell (‘the hole’) because his projectile vomiting and diarrhea was fouling the communal dorm.”
Apparently, the complaint states, Garbutt didn’t touch his food trays, and was not given withdrawal medical, “nor any medical attention for seizures he experienced,” and was found by deputies lying in his own vomit and diarrhea a few days later “gargling fluids” and “choking.”
Garbutt was declared dead just a few hours later on Jan. 14.
The defendants “exhibited deliberate indifference to (Garbutt’s) safety and serious medical needs,
where an intentional decision was made with respect to the conditions of his confinement and his serious medical condition which put (Garbutt) at substantial risk of suffering serious harm, and reasonable available measures to abate those risks were not taken, including obtaining an informed
medical opinion from a medical professional,” said the complaint.
The pleading noted that Garbutt was completely ignored, and didn’t receive help, despite “yelling” and continuous diarrhea and vomiting, as well as complaints by other incarcerated that Garbutt needed immediate aid.
Others in the cell block, the complaint notes, had to clean up Garbutt’s vomit, and Garbutt was ”vomiting so frequently that he was forced to move to a lower bunk, to prevent the inmate underneath him from being covered in vomit.”
