Privately owned prison and jail healthcare provider PrimeCare Medical has managed to keep details secret of payouts to settle lawsuits filed over injuries or deaths of prisoners, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2022, p.1.] One of those agreements in Pennsylvania was revealed in July 2023, when a federal court ordered the case unsealed, and now two more settlements in other Pennsylvania suits involving PrimeCare have been unsealed, revealing an additional $1.2 million in payouts for prisoners’ wrongful deaths.

When Veronique A. Henry, 42, was booked into York County Prison in September 2016, intake staff recommended that she be placed on suicide watch. PrimeCare employees, however, felt that was unnecessary, so she was instead put in a regular cell. Henry wasn’t seen by a psychologist or psychiatrist before she hanged herself the next day using a bedsheet. Rich Reilly, the administrator of Henry’s Estate, filed suit in federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in September 2018 against the County and its jail medical contractor. York County settled its share of the claims for $5,000, while PrimeCare’s settlement agreement was placed under seal in April 2021.

Five months later, the County let its $7.4 million annual contract with the company expire. The York Daily Record later filed an unopposed motion to unseal the settlement that the Estate made with PrimeCare, which the district court granted on August 5, 2022. The documents revealed that the firm had paid $200,000 to settle the case, including $43,021.93 to Henry’s husband and $14,340.64 to each of her three children, as well as $20,000 to her Estate; the settlement also included $13,956.15 in costs and $80,000 in fees for the Estate’s attorneys from the Law Office of Dale E. Anstine, PC in York and the Chavez-Freed Law Office, LLC in Harrisburg. See: Reilly v. York Cty., USDC (M.D. Penn.), Case No. 1:19-cv-01803.

In a separate lawsuit, PrimeCare paid $1 million to resolve claims filed by the estate of Brittany Ann Harbaugh after she died at Bucks County Jail. Harbaugh, 26, was jailed on a probation violation on September 26, 2018. She died four days later from opiate withdrawal. She told a PrimeCare nurse she had been using heroin, and she was placed on medical watch. But she was not seen by a doctor. She also did not receive her detox medications several times, and Harbaugh complained of chest pain and symptoms consistent with withdrawal prior to her death.

After Harbaugh’s Estate filed suit in federal court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Bucks County settled the claims against it for $250,000. Again, PrimeCare’s settlement was placed under seal, where it remained until the Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic and the Pennsylvania chapter of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press moved to intervene and unseal it.

The motion was granted by the district court in November 2023. The unsealed document revealed that PrimeCare paid $1 million to settle the case, including $109,845 to each of Harbaugh’s three minor children, plus $219,691 to her estate; another $400,000 in fees and $50,774 in costs was paid to the Estate’s attorneys with Kline & Specter PC in Philadelphia. See: Harbaugh v. Cty. of Bucks, USDC (E.D. Pa.), Case No. 2:20-cv-01685.

As PLN reported, the earlier agreement unsealed in July 2023 revealed that PrimeCare matched a $337,500 settlement made by Bucks County with the Estate of Charles Freitag, who committed suicide at the county lockup in August 2018. [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p.21.] That settlement was unsealed after the Bucks County Courier Times intervened in the case. (PrimeCare continues to provide medical services at Bucks County correctional facilities under a $8.5 million annual contract.)

PrimeCare provides healthcare services at dozens of jails in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and New Hampshire. However, its business in West Virginia is apparently no longer viable. In a pending class-action brought by detainees and prisoners at Southern Regional Jail, PrimeCare filed a suggestion of bankruptcy in January 2024, notifying the court that it would be liquidating its assets to pay off creditors, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.59.]

Although companies like PrimeCare are paid with taxpayer funds to provide medical care in publicly funded prisons and jails—thus making them the functional equivalent of public agencies—their settlement agreements are often kept confidential in order to conceal their litigation payments. It’s up to media organizations to sue and unseal the court records to ensure public accountability.

PLN has been at the forefront of such efforts, filing successful suits to obtain records from private prison companies and medical contractors in Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and other states.  

Additional sources: Bucks County Intelligencer, York Daily Record

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