Family Sues Texas Jail for Wrongful Death, Medical Malpractice

August 11, 2009

On January 12, 2008, a 44-year-old inmate by the name of Margarita Saavedra died while she was in the custody of the Harris County jail in Texas. She was being held in the jail’s medical clinic because she had injured her knee in her cell. She was a diabetic woman who was taken to the hospital for an MRI.

While she was at the hospital, doctors and nurses refused to medicate her because they believed that she was faking her pain to manipulate them into giving her painkillers. She died not much later of an untreated blood infection. Now the family of the woman is suing the jail for not monitoring the health of their relative.

According to the family’s attorney, the woman’s daughter learned of her mother’s death from an inmate who called two days after the incident. The family claims that the woman could have been saved if her condition was caught earlier and treated properly.