For immediate release:
On October 29, 2024, Judge Beth Labson Freeman of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California entered an order approving a stipulation filed by the parties in Hernandez v. County of Monterey, et al. requiring the California Forensic Medical Group (“CFMG”, also known as “Wellpath”) to pay civil contempt fines for failing to come into compliance with its Court-ordered obligations regarding the provision of medical, mental health, and dental care to people incarcerated at the Monterey County Jail (the “Jail”). The full amount of fines has yet to be determined, but will range between $250,000 and $1,000,000.
Plaintiffs have proposed that the fines, which initially must be paid to the Court, be directed to grants to Monterey County nonprofit organizations for the purposes of supporting formerly incarcerated people, the children and families of individuals who are currently incarcerated at the Jail, as well as people at risk of incarceration in Monterey County.
“This is an important victory for the people of Monterey County,” said Caroline Jackson, Senior Counsel for RBGG. “Individuals incarcerated at the Jail have faced shocking levels of healthcare neglect since this case was first filed in 2012, leading to preventable harm and even deaths. We hope this stipulated order requiring Wellpath to pay monetary fines for its non-compliance will coerce the company to provide high-quality care to incarcerated individuals in the Jail.”
As background, Judge Freeman issued an order on September 26, 2023 finding CFMG/Wellpath in civil contempt due to its longstanding failure to come into compliance with forty-three requirements of the Settlement Agreement and Wellpath Implementation Plan. In that order, Judge Freeman directed CFMG/Wellpath to come into immediate and sustained compliance or pay fines in the amount of $25,000 per requirement. The Court gave Wellpath six months to purge the contempt by coming into substantial compliance with each and every one of the forty-three requirements. The Court-appointed neutral monitors’ issued compliance findings after the conclusion of the purge period establishing that Wellpath was largely out of compliance with the forty-three requirements identified in Judge Freeman’s September 26, 2023 order.
CFMG/Wellpath initially opposed the imposition of contempt fines, claiming in a brief filed on August 16, 2024, that it was in compliance with nearly all of the forty-three requirements. Wellpath supported its position with declarations from four experts retained by Wellpath to conduct an audit of the medical, mental health, and dental care at the Jail, who consistently found much higher levels of compliance than did the Court-appointed neutral monitors in their most recent reports.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys from RBGG and ACLU-National Prison Project conducted discovery into Wellpath’s audits including by deposing Wellpath’s expert and fact witnesses. Through these efforts, Plaintiffs developed evidence showing that Wellpath’s audits were unreliable, including that:
- Wellpath’s in-house lawyer created the experts’ audit tools rather than the medical, mental health, and dental experts themselves;
- The list of audit questions omitted numerous court-ordered requirements, preventing Wellpath’s medical, mental health, and dental experts from assessing compliance in those areas;
- Many of the allegedly random patient records provided to Wellpath’s experts were selected using criteria that artificially boosted compliance scores;
- Wellpath’s medical, mental health, and dental experts never inspected the Jail facilities, and did not observe any patient-provider interactions;
- Wellpath’s medical, mental health, and dental experts issued reports with unreliable assessments of whether Wellpath was actually in substantial compliance with its Court-ordered obligations; and,
- The audit methodology expert that Wellpath hired calculated the final compliance scores in a way that gave more weight to the audit questions where Wellpath scored highly.
Shortly thereafter, Wellpath agreed to file the stipulated order in which it “admit[ted] that it cannot meet its burden of proof to establish that it was in substantial compliance nor that it purged the contempt” as ordered by Judge Freeman. In the stipulated order, CFMG/Wellpath agreed to pay civil contempt fines for its non-compliance. Fines will be paid to the Court, which will disburse the funds after receiving recommendations from the parties.
Corene Kendrick, Deputy Director of the ACLU-National Prison Project added: “This settlement recognizes that CFMG/Wellpath cannot hide behind hired ‘experts’ to mask the deficiencies in their healthcare services. The people of Monterey deserve better. CFMG/Wellpath must significantly improve healthcare services or it will continue to face such fines.”
Plaintiffs are represented by Ernest Galvan, Van Swearingen, Caroline Jackson, Maya Campbell, and Ben Hattem of Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP as well as David Fathi, Corene Kendrick, Kyle Virgien, and Alyssa Gordon of the ACLU National Prison Project.