ST. JOHNSBURY — An inmate at Northeast Correctional Complex is suing officials and the state’s prison medical contractor over being denied access to medication he says treated nerve pain from a fall decades ago.
Benjamin Gaughan, who has been at the St. Johnsbury prison since 2018, filed the lawsuit Nov. 5.
The suit names interim Corrections Commissioner Jim Baker, prison superintendent Nora Quinn and VitalCore — the medical provider that the state hired in July to serve its prison system. Gaughan is representing himself in the civil case.
Rachel Feldman, a spokesperson for the corrections department, declined to comment, citying pending litigation. VitalCore CEO Viola Riggin did not respond to a call seeking comment Thursday.
Gaughan, 39, wrote that in 1993, he fell four stories through a barn shaft and onto a concrete floor, and has had chronic nerve pain ever since.
After the accident, Gaughan wrote in the lawsuit, he tried various medications to treat his ailments but became addicted. Before his incarceration, he wrote, he had begun using a medication called Lyrica, which is used to treat nerve-related pain.
The medication worked for Gaughan “without (the) accompanied drug haze” of narcotics he had tried previously, he wrote this summer, in a grievance filed with the Department of Corrections.
“Lyrica has been the only medicine that gave me relief without doping me up,” he wrote.
But VitalCore refused to give him Lyrica, records filed in the case show.
“At this time, the provider advises that cognitive therapy and stretching are the first-line treatment,” a corrections employee wrote.
Gaughan appealed the decision in August, records show, asserting that cognitive therapy and stretching would not be enough to manage his pain.
But his appeal also was denied. “Prescribing decisions rest with the provider,” Department of Corrections nursing director Heidi Fox wrote in an October response to Gaughan, advising him to submit a sick slip if he continued to experience pain.
“The defendants’ position of passing the buck leaves the plaintiff suffering with chronic pain, crippling him and leaving him bed-ridden,” Gaughan wrote in his legal complaint. He is asking the Caledonia Court to review government action.
Judge Mary Miles Teachout held a hearing on the matter Monday.
According to state records, Gaughan is serving time on 2018 charges of larceny, burglary, unlawful mischief and driving a vehicle without the owner’s consent. He is eligible for release next August, though his maximum sentence could last until 2030.
VitalCore, the prison medical provider, was awarded a state contract in July after the death of an inmate in 2019, whose complaints that he couldn’t breathe went ignored by corrections and health care staff before he died, according to a state investigation. VitalCore replaced the medical provider at the time, Centurion Managed Care.
But VitalCore, too, has been accused of faulty medical care leading to an inmate’s death in New Mexico.
