Trial begins in suit over death in jail

Jace Radke

Tuesday, May 4, 2004 | 10:18 a.m.

The death of Karl Robert Kurfis was caused by the denial of his HIV medication while in the Clark County Detention Center, attorney Robert Langford said during opening arguments in a federal trial Monday.

A lawsuit originally filed on Kurfis' behalf and now listing his mother as the plaintiff seeks $10 million in punitive damages from Metro Police and Prison Health Services Inc., the medical contractor for the Clark County Detention Center.

"Karl Kurfis died because of a system that does not care about the detainees who arrive and get sick at the Clark County Detention Center," Langford said. "This trial is about a system that isn't working. A system that does not provide medical care to citizens when they are detained at the detention center."

Bruce Alverson, representing the defendants in the case, who also include former Sheriff Jerry Keller and Dr. Harvey Hoffman, the jail's medical director, countered that Kurfis did not die because of mistreatment at the jail, but because of his own unwillingness to take his medication.

"The plaintiff refused to take his HIV medication," Alverson said. "Why? Because he abused methamphetamine and it has been shown that drug abusers lack the responsibility to take care of themselves."

Kurfis, 34, died on June 3, 2002, of a strain of pneumonia that often attacks AIDS patients. Kurfis had been arrested in February 2000 on a burglary charge, and was held until September of that year. Kurfis only received his HIV medication for 14 days during the incarceration, Langford said.

The suit alleges that Hoffman took Kurfis off the medications without consulting with Kurfis' doctors, and that Keller and Metro Police should have been inspecting what Prison Health Services and Hoffman were doing at the jail.

Langford told the jury Monday that Hoffman discontinued Kurfis' medication soon after he was booked into the jail, and that in a deposition Kurfis testified that Hoffman told him that he didn't deserve his medication because he was a drug addict.

Alverson said that Hoffman did take Kurfis off his medication when he first arrived at the jail because he wanted to get the depressed Kurfis "emotionally and physically straightened out" before putting him on new medication.

Patients who don't consistently take HIV medication develop immunities to the drugs, and have to have new medicines prescribed, Alverson said.

"There is no evidence that he was taking his medication before he was booked into the jail," Alverson said.

Kurfis was sent to the Lakes Crossing Center in Sparks to be mentally evaluated in May 2000, after being in the detention center for about three months. At Lakes Crossing a new HIV medication was prescribed for him, and when he returned to the detention center he was given the new medication

"Kurfis only took his medication when he was in a controlled environment like prison or jail," Alverson said, adding that Kurfis died nine months after he was released from the detention center.

Prison Health Services, a Brentwood, Tenn.-based company, serves more than 400 jail and prison sites around the country. Prison Health Services has provided medical care at the jail since January 1999, when the company purchased EMSA Correctional Care, the previous provider.

The company has been penalized in New York for failing to meet standards in 12 city jails there. The Clark County Detention Center gets between 50 and 200 medical inquiries a month from inmates, the majority involving the inmates failing to receive perscribed medicine, Langford said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada is co-counsel on the Kurfis case.

"We have seen a variety of cases, far too many cases, where Prison Health Services has taken the position of not providing people with necessary medication, to their physical detriment," Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the ACLU of Nevada, said.

"It is neither cost-effective nor sound policy to refuse medication to prisoners who then get sicker and end up in the emergency room at UMC at a much greater cost to the taxpayer than if they had been given proper treatment to begin with," he said. "It is one of the problems endemic to privatization of prison health care where the profit motive can override sound medical decisions."