Nicholas Overfield: Deceased inmate’s family sues California jail staff for denying him HIV medication

PLACERVILLE, CALIFORNIA: The family of Nicholas Overfield, who died in El Dorado County Jail, has filed a lawsuit against the prison healthcare provider, Wellpath, and El Dorado County, as per Norcalrecord .

The suit alleges that the man's death was preventable and resulted from a ‘viral infection’ after he was denied necessary HIV medication for two months.

What happened to Nicholas Overfield? 

38-year-old Overfield couldn’t stand or speak and was in a wheelchair when his mother visited him at the El Dorado County Jail on April 22, 2022.

After being moved from the jail to two hospitals and a hospice, he died a few months later. Wellpath Community Care, LLC, the jail's healthcare contractor, and El Dorado County are named in the case, which was submitted on Tuesday, January 16, to a federal court in California.

Patrick Buelna, civil rights attorney with Oakland-based Pointer & Buelna LLP, said in a news release, “Nick’s case is a harrowing example of Wellpath’s failure to provide basic human rights and medical care to detainees.”

Adding, “His unnecessary suffering and death highlight a disturbing pattern by Wellpath, the largest provider of jail medical services in the nation, of disregard for the health and well-being of those in the custody of our justice system. This lawsuit aims not only to seek justice for Nick and his family but to ensure that such inhumane treatment is never repeated in California or anywhere else.”

Attorney Ty Clarke, also with Pointer and Buelna LLP, said Overfield’s isn’t the only such case in California.

"In California alone there are several other documented incidents of Wellpath failing to provide HIV positive individuals with their prescribed medication while in jail,” Clarke said.

“Nick’s blood is on Wellpath’s hands and we should all be furious that Wellpath continues to rake in hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars nationwide while providing levels of medical care that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.”

How did Overfield's health deteriorate?

Court documents detail out about the case that started when Overfield was arrested in February 2022 and booked into the Northern California jail, about 135 miles northeast of San Francisco. He was taken into custody for a failure to appear in court.

He disclosed to police that he was HIV positive and that he would require his prescribed antiviral medication during his detention.

According to court filings, his mother, Lesley Overfield, gave the medication to the officers, who then took it with them. However, according to court filings, per Law and Crime that cite medical records, he never got his prescribed medication throughout the two months he was detained at the facility.

By April 22, 2022, his health had spiraled, court documents said. Too weak to walk, he was brought into a visiting room in a wheelchair for a visit with his mother.

The next day, his mother contacted a jail nurse about her son’s condition. She was informed he was in the infirmary because he had “lost control of his bowels,” the lawsuit said.

According to court filings, he was taken from the jail that evening to Barton Memorial Hospital in South Lake Tahoe due to "progressive weakness" and a changed mental state. He had been unable to move for a few days due to his frequent falls.

A jail nurse told a hospital nurse he “has not had access to his HIV medications since taken (sic) into custody in February,” the complaint says, citing a medical record dated April 24, 2022.

The seriousness of his health required him to be moved from the Lake Tahoe hospital to a San Francisco hospital for additional care. “Tragically (because this was all preventable), he was placed into hospice care soon after and died on June 21, 2022,” court documents said.

The death certificate cited the immediate cause of death as encephalitis varicella-zoster virus.

“Defendants were either unaware of or, worse, ignoring the severity of Nick’s general health and medical condition until they were forced to confront those things by his mother,” the lawsuit continued.

“This is a shocking failure to provide even the bare minimum of medical care to a pretrial detainee who was HIV positive.”