by Chuck Sharman

The story repeats with depressing regularity. It begins with a man struggling with drug dependency, acquired from a prescription for pain medication. Depressed, he makes suicidal threats. His frightened partner calls sheriff’s deputies. They take him to the county lockup. There, his family blithely trusts that “if he’s in jail, he’s safe.” But the jail fails to maintain him on suicide watch. Its medical contractor monitors him only for withdrawal symptoms, not a potential suicide attempt. Unsurprisingly, he suffocates himself and dies. After several years of litigation, the county and its contractor pay a multi-million-dollar settlement to the dead man’s family without admitting any liability. No one is criminally charged. The worst that might result is the contractor might cut its ties with the jail.

That’s what happened after Nick Rapp, 34, ended up in a cell on New Year’s Eve 2019 in Washington’s Kitsap County Jail, where NaphCare, Inc. held the contract to provide detainees with healthcare. Two days later, he was in a hospital on life support after making a suicide attempt in his cell. Four days after that, on January 6, 2020, he was dead.

His parents, John and Judith Rapp, told the Kitsap Sun that their son “was not in a good place” but they “had a fair amount of confidence that [the jail] would get it right.” His partner, Megan Wabnitz, worked as a nurse for NaphCare at the jail, so she took pains to tell cops responding to her call after their altercation that he was suicidal and had recently made an attempt on his own life. Yet when she arrived at the jail for her shift the following day, she found that he was not on suicide watch. Wabnitz alerted her supervisor. But another NaphCare nurse, Ripsy Nagra, performed only Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol (CIWA) and Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Score (COWS) assessments to monitor Rapp’s withdrawal symptoms, according to the complaint later filed on his behalf.

After Rapp died, his father became personal representative of his Estate and retained counsel from attorneys Ryan D. Dreveskracht, Gabriel S. Galanda, Corinne Sebren and Matthew J. Slovin of Galanda Broadman PLLC in Seattle. They filed suit in October 2021 against the County and its contracted NaphCare staffers in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. But first the attorneys wrote the Defendants in January 2020 to demand preservation of video evidence—a demand that jailers failed to fully heed. Instead, as the district court later recalled, a guard “determined, apparently unilaterally, that the relevant ‘event’ for purpose of information preservation was Mr. Rapp’s suicide.”

On May 31, 2023, the district court agreed with Plaintiffs that this amounted to spoliation of evidence and sanctioned the County with default judgment. Defendant County officials asked for reconsideration, supported by Defendant NaphCare officials who argued that any discrepancy between their logs and the video evidence could have been explained by the jail’s spotty wifi. On July 19, 2023, the district court refused to reverse its earlier spoliation finding. But it amended the sanction, striking any default judgment and ordering a jury instruction that the spoliated evidence may be presumed to favor Plaintiffs’ theory of the case. See: Rapp v. NaphCare, Inc., 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 94785 (W.D. Wash.); and 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124560 (W.D. Wash.).

Motions for Summary Judgment, Qualified Immunity

The parties proceeded to file cross-motions for summary judgment, and the district court issued its order regarding Defendants’ motions on January 14, 2025. The motion was granted as to NaphCare personnel except Nagra and fellow Nurse Odessa McCleary, who also was accused of failing to respond to the information warning that Rapp posed a suicide risk. Summary judgment was denied for their supervisor, Nurse Erica Molina. NaphCare was granted summary judgment on Plaintiffs’ negligence and gross negligence claims, but not the County. Nagra and Molina were denied summary judgment on Plaintiffs’ claims that they showed deliberate indifference to Rapp’s serious risk of harm.

An attempt to claim Qualified Immunity by guards Andrew Hren and Brandon Rhode was also denied because they were not entitled to dismiss Wabnitz’s warnings the way they might dismiss those of a passerby, the district court said. But it did not find that Plaintiffs established a genuine issue of material fact for a jury to determine whether the County maintained de facto policies and procedures that caused Hern and Rhode’s alleged constitutional violations; accordingly, Plaintiffs’ attempt to extend § 1983 liability to the County under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978), was rejected. Requests for reconsideration by both Plaintiffs and the County were denied on April 2, 2025. See: Rapp v. NaphCare Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7268 (W.D. Wash.); and 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63380 (W.D. Wash.).

In its ruling on Plaintiffs’ summary judgment motion on January 27, 2025, the district court addressed whether Rapp contributed to Defendants’ negligence with denials that he was suicidal repeated in answer to intake screening forms. The answer, in short, was maybe so. NaphCare had already been granted summary judgment on Plaintiffs’ negligence and gross negligence claims, but not Kitsap County, under the theory that it owed a non-delegable duty of care to Rapp which could not be discharged by subcontracting it to a third party. So NaphCare may assert a contributory negligence defense, but not the County.

Incredibly, NaphCare also attempted to blame Rapp’s parents and Wabnitz for his death. But the district court said that no contributory negligence could be assigned to John and Judith Rapp because they owed no duty of care to an adult child. The court was unwilling to assign any contributory negligence to Wabnitz, either, but acquiesced because Plaintiffs agreed that she may have owed Rapp a duty as a NaphCare employee—even though she took pains to recuse herself from his care while in custody of the jail. See: Rapp v. NaphCare Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14038 (W.D. Wash.).

After that, the parties finalized their settlement agreement, which the district court approved on January 16, 2026. Of the $2,750,000 total settlement amount, Galanda Broadman PLLC received $1,000,000 in fees and another $150,752.89 in costs. $5,000 went to probate counsel and another $5,000 to the guardian ad litem for Rapp’s minor daughter, with the latter amount split between the parties. “N.D.”, the child, received 80% of the balance, with the remainder split between Rapp’s parents. See: Rapp v. Naphcare, Inc., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9256 (W.D. Wash.). 

Additional source: Kitsap Sun

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