Washington County Pays $300,000 to Jail Detainee Denied Treatment for Kidney Stone
Under a settlement with Washington’s Walla Walla County, a now-released state prisoner took a $300,000 payment to resolve claims that he was denied treatment for a kidney stone while in pretrial detention in the County jail. After he signed the agreement on January 28, 2025, Ryan Kelty’s motion to dismiss his lawsuit was granted by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington on March 31, 2025.
Kelty, then 36, was diagnosed at a hospital emergency room with a 12-millimeter (about ½ inch) kidney stone in his urethra on October 10, 2020. He was prescribed medication and told to follow up with a urologist if the stone did not clear. But before that could happen, he was picked up by Umatilla County authorities, who promised he’d get treatment when he got to the Walla Walla County lockup.
There, he continued to suffer from symptoms “including back and kidney pain, blood in urine, intermittent fevers, and inability to pass urine,” according to the complaint he later filed. He submitted a grievance over the lack of treatment on October 31, and another treatment request on November 5. Jailers responded by blaming Kelty for his own suffering, saying that he had days between his trip to the emergency room and his arrest in which he should have seen a urologist.
He was transferred on December 18 to the Columbia County Jail, where a medical provider issued another urology referral. But Kelty was instead transferred on January 18, 2021, back to Walla Walla County, where the jail had a new medical provider, Blue Mountain Heart-to-Heart. Still no urology consult had yet occurred on March 17, almost two months later, when his cellmate alerted guards that Kelty was in medical distress. Taken to a hospital, he was diagnosed with “severe infection, sepsis, hypoxia, and bilateral pneumonia,” the complaint continued.
It was over a month before doctors got the infection under control and were able to surgically remove the kidney stone. Meanwhile, they “were concerned that he would not survive, and his mother and father were invited into his hospital room to say goodbye to their son.” After release to recover at home, Kelty returned to ask Blue Mountain Physician’s Assistant Nadean Pulfer to renew his suboxone prescription; she refused, saying she could no longer be his medical provider since he was “probably going to be suing.”
With the aid of attorneys with MacDonald Hoague& Bayless in Seattle, Kelty filed his complaint in December 2023. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, he accused the County, its jailers and medical contractors of deliberate indifference to his serious medical need, in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights. The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, which included costs and fees for Kelty’s attorneys. See: Kelty v. Walla Walla Cty., USDC (E.D. Wash.), Case No. 4:23-cv-05165.
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Related legal case
Kelty v. Walla Walla Cty.
| Cite | USDC (E.D. Wash.), Case No. 4:23-cv-05165 |
|---|---|
| Level | District Court |