New Jersey Federal District Court Judge Georgette Castner has issued a decision allowing a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by the estate of Jennifer Ross, a 31-year-old mother of two children, who died of a fentanyl-related overdose in the Monmouth County Jail in September 2022, to proceed against Monmouth County and the officials who ran the jail—the Monmouth County Sherriff and Undersheriff, and the jail’s warden.
In a 76-page opinion, Judge Castner found that the factual allegations in the complaint filed by Ms. Ross’s mother, Michelle Trussell, “plausibly describe a facility in which inmates had unfettered access to illicit drugs” that “resulted in a pattern of seventeen detainee overdoses, and three deaths, in 2022–2023.” According to the Court, the complaint’s allegations “plausibly indicate that officials failed to respond to the ongoing drug problem” and that despite the introduction of a full-body X-ray scanner in 2016, “drugs were still being smuggled into the [jail] by [jail] staff, inmates, and others through various methods (such as through the mail and hidden in potato chip bags).”
The Court highlighted that even after “[jail] employees and detainees operated two drug smuggling rings” in 2020–2021, seventeen drug overdoses occurred in 2022–2023. Judge Castner concluded that, based on the complaint’s allegations, not only did Monmouth County fail to protect Ms. Ross from a serious risk of harm in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, but also that the named policymaking defendants failed to train, supervise, and discipline the corrections officers working at the jail. The Court rejected Monmouth County’s arguments that its efforts to limit access to drugs in the Monmouth County Jail were sufficient to satisfy its obligation to protect vulnerable detainees in its custody, like Ms. Ross.
The Court noted that there were two overdoses in the 30-day period immediately preceding Ms. Ross’s death and two more overdoses in the two-week period following her death. Monmouth County jail officials allegedly also failed to report to the New Jersey Department of Corrections that a detainee died of an overdose from a fatal fentanyl cocktail while in custody at the jail under the pretext that the detainee died in the hospital, where he had been taken. The Court found that the Complaint adequately alleged facts that the jail’s policymaking officials had “knowledge of the risks of a fatal overdose for inmates struggling with drug addiction and withdrawal.”
The Court further held that negligence claims against Monmouth County could go forward. The complaint’s negligence claims against the former medical provider at the Monmouth County Jail, CFG Health Systems, are also being litigated.
Michelle Trussell, who is now raising her daughter’s two young children, stated the following: “I am gratified that the lawsuit against Monmouth County will now proceed. When my daughter was taken to the County Jail to await an appearance in Drug Court, I thought she was in a safe place, where she would be protected while on the path to recovery. I did not imagine that she would be put in a facility infested with drugs and die of an overdose just three days later. I hope that this lawsuit will lead to the improvement of conditions in county jails and to a measure of justice for my family—and ensure that another mother does not get a knock on the door announcing the overdose death of a son or daughter while in the custody of jail officials.”
The Lowenstein team is led by Barry T. Albin, a former Associate Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, and includes Natalie J. Kraner, Wayne Fang, Markiana J. Julceus, Pati Candelario, Cassandra Essert, and Parth M. Parikh.
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