State Supreme Court revives disabled former inmate’s case

CARSON CITY -- Nevada prison officials can't claim immunity from lawsuits when a disabled inmate is released to a home or other location that may not be properly set up for the convict's care, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Justices said a lower court judge erred in granting a state Department of Corrections request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by former inmate George Butler, left a brain-damaged quadriplegic following a 1997 attack by other Southern Desert Correctional Center inmates.

Two years later, prison officials came up with a plan to release Butler to his former girlfriend, who said she'd try to care for him but wasn't sure she could make necessary preparations such as equipping her trailer with a ramp, hospital bed and other equipment.

When Butler finally was released, prison employees brought him to the trailer, saw that the necessary changes hadn't been made, voiced doubts that the ex-girlfriend, Sheila Woods, could move him around but left him there anyway.

Woods called 911 two weeks later because Butler had become ill. He remained in a hospital for months and eventually was sent to a nursing home. Butler's guardian, David Biller, followed up with a negligence lawsuit against the state in Clark County District Court.

A district court judge dismissed the suit, but Chief Justice Bill Maupin said a jury should determine whether the claim of "negligence by abandonment" was valid.

The lower court's summary dismissal was improper because the way in which authorities released Butler "could lead a jury to reasonably find that some of (Butler's) injuries were a foreseeable result of the manner in which he was released," Maupin wrote.

"Regarding the duty of care when prison officials release disabled inmates, we conclude that general negligence standards apply, so that prison officials have a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid foreseeable harm in releasing a disabled inmate," Maupin said.

Butler also contended that prison officials had a duty to protect him from attack by other inmates, but justices said he never told authorities that he feared for his safety and guards weren't otherwise on notice of an imminent attack.

Butler had been involved in a racial brawl at the prison and had thrown rocks at others involved in the fight that broke out during a quarrel over a drug debt. The next morning, he was attacked in his cell by other inmates.