A negligence lawsuit against a Washington county jail, revolving around a respective inmate’s death, has been granted permission to proceed at the trial court level. This decision was confirmed last week by a state appellate panel. The court’s decision was based on the principle that the county could not claim total immunity, as it had a responsibility to ensure and safeguard the inmate’s welfare during his time in custody. This break in the case was brought forward following the Washington Court of Appeals’ stand against the county’s attempt to seek dismissal by motion for summary judgment.
The county had previously defended its position using the umbrella of Washington’s felony defense statute and comparative fault statute. However, the court, emphasizing the county’s duty to protect Mr. Batton, deemed that applying these defenses to grant immunity would dismiss the county’s obligation towards the inmate’s safety. The court upheld that any relaxation in the requirement for a jail to ensure its inmates’ protection from reasonably foreseeable self-injury would undermine the jail’s duty.
Hence, the court ruled against the stance that a jail could relinquish its obligation because of an incident involving an inmate that the jail was initially designed to protect him from. Such an approach, according to the court, is ‘unsupportable from a policy perspective’. The case is now set to progress further at the Kittitas Superior Court.