A Vermont judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by the estate of a man who died by suicide at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport in 2017.
In the lawsuit, the family of Joshua Bittner claimed his death resulted from a “failure to communicate” among those responsible for his care, including the Vermont Department of Corrections and its contracted health care provider at the time, Centurion Managed Care.
Judge Samual Hoar in Franklin County Superior civil court in St. Albans recently issued a 14-page ruling granting summary judgment to the defendants in the case — the corrections department, Centurion, and several individual employees from each entity, named as defendants.
In his decision, Hoar wrote that the defendants “are entitled to judgment as a matter of law on all claims.” The ruling was made in July but posted to the Vermont Judiciary website only last week. Renee Bittner, the administrator of Joshua Bittner’s estate, brought the lawsuit.
David Sleigh, the attorney representing Bittner’s estate, said Tuesday there are no plans to appeal Hoar’s ruling to the Vermont Supreme Court at this time.
“The case was litigated for years,” Sleigh said. “We believe there were contested facts that warranted a trial, the judge felt otherwise, and of course we respect the orders of the court.”
Haley Sommer, a spokesperson for the state corrections department, said Tuesday the department will not comment on the ruling.
“The Department, as per policy, does not comment on ongoing litigation,” Sommer said in a statement. “We are, however, committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all individuals in our care and custody, and we take these claims with the utmost seriousness.”
Bittner, 26, was found hanging in a cell in the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport on the night of March 2, 2017, according to court records. He died the next day at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, filings stated.
Prior to his time at the Newport prison, Bittner was held at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.
“When he was taken into custody, he had a long history with (the Department of Corrections).
They had extensive knowledge of his mental health problems,” Sleigh said in an interview.
Sleigh also said at that time that it’s not clear why prison officials transferred Bittner from one prison to another, and “somewhere in the transfer, the folks at Northwest did not tell the folks at Northern about Bittner’s mental problems, his prior suicidal ideations and various other things.”
Bittner’s mental health issues went untreated and he “deteriorated and killed himself,” Sleigh said.
According to Hoar’s ruling, “the undisputed record indicates that the transfer paperwork does include communication between NWSCF (St. Albans prison) and NSCF (Newport prison) concerning Mr. Bittner’s mental health.”
“The transfer paperwork classifies Mr. Bittner as ‘M2,’ signifying that he had a mental health diagnosis and was on medication,” Hoar wrote. “While Ms. Bittner faults the transfer paperwork for not including an additional alert concerning Mr. Bittner’s mental health status, Mr. Bittner was not then on checks or suicide watch, so the notation of ‘none’ in the ‘alert’ section of the form appears accurate.”
It’s the latest and apparent final blow to the case for the estate of Joshua Bittner.
In 2021, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that a medical expert was needed to support the allegations in the lawsuit brought by Bittner’s estate before certain claims could move forward. The lawsuit included one count of medical negligence, which generally requires a certificate from a medical expert providing a basis for the claim.
Sleigh pressed forward on the lawsuit’s other claims, including allegations that the defendants were “deliberately indifferent” to Bittner’s serious mental health needs and that they acted “outrageously, exacerbating his mental illness.”
Vermont dropped Centurion as its health care provider 2020. The corrections department now contracts with Wellpath LLC to handle health services in the state’s prisons.
