by Chuck Sharman

A $2.75 million settlement will help the surviving children of a detainee left to decompensate from her mental illness for seven and a half months before she died in Washington’s Clark County Jail in Vancouver. That was the result of an agreement reached in July 2025 between the Estate of Shelly Ann Monahan and officials with the County and its contracted jail healthcare provider, NaphCare, Inc.

Monahan was days away from her 28th birthday when she was booked into the lockup on felony charges on December 3, 2020. She had a history of drug use and repeatedly spent time in the jail after related arrests. During those incarcerations, jailers also became aware of her mental health struggles, placing Monahan on suicide watch the first time in 2014 and again the following year.

So it should have come as no surprise when she arrived at the jail the last time and was found to be under the influence of drugs. However, she was placed in the general population after a medical evaluation by NaphCare staff—without undergoing a mental health screening. Three weeks later, a nurse noted that Monahan “appeared disheveled, her room was a mess, and that she was mute/uncooperative,” according to the complaint later filed on her behalf. A psychiatric evaluation conducted on day 25 of her incarceration resulted in a prescription for the antipsychotic Seroquel, the same medication that she had been taking before she was jailed. She had also been asking for it since being booked.

Now that she had gone almost four weeks without it, Monahan was telling staffers that she could “see angels” and “see demons, too,” the complaint continued. Unsurprisingly, she refused the medication when it was finally offered to her. “From this point forward,” the complaint recalled, jail records “are replete with Ms. Monahan’s repeated refusals to take her medications.” Yet “no action was taken by [Defendants] to address Ms. Monahan’s deteriorating psychiatric condition.”

From Bad to Worse

By the first week in February 2021, she “was menstruating into the toilet and instead of flushing the toilet, she was using her tumbler to pour the bloody water onto everything in her cell, including herself,” the complaint noted. But still she got no emergency mental health treatment; instead, a guard wrote her up for an infraction, though he recommended leniency because “she appeared to not be aware of her actions or consequence of those actions.”

Shortly after that, Monahan began to exhibit erratic vital signs. She was placed on suicide watch, only to be taken off a few weeks later, for reasons that were not recorded. In March, she refused a psychiatric evaluation, as well as an increased dosage of Seroquel. By April, she was down 29 pounds and “floridly psychotic,” a NaphCare staffer noted. But when she threw her food tray the following month, she got only another infraction write-­up.

At the end of May 2021, a court-­ordered psychiatric evaluation for a competency determination resulted in a diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder: Depressive Type. Monahan was recommended for involuntary commitment and medication, since she was still refusing to take her Seroquel. She went back on suicide watch, but there was no transfer to a state hospital. By June, her weight loss totaled 58 pounds, and she was finally moved to a cell with a surveillance camera.

In early July, she was again taken off suicide watch, again for reasons that were unclear. NaphCare staffers carefully noted her continued refusal to take medication, as well as her vital signs indicating dehydration, not unexpected after losing so much weight so quickly. She died on July 10, 2021, of hyponatremia and hypochloremia, the result of excessive water consumption.

Legal Saga Unfolds

With the aid of Seattle attorney Jay H. Krulewitch, the suit was filed in May 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington by Dalynne Singleton, the administrator of Monahan’s Estate, on behalf of the dead woman’s husband, their four kids and her parents. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Singleton accused the County, its jailers and NaphCare of deliberate indifference to Monahan’s serious medical need, in violation of her civil rights, as well as making state-­law claims for negligence.

NaphCare moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the state Department of Social and Health Services and Western State Hospital—where Monahan was awaiting transfer for competency restoration treatment when she died—were potential tortfeasors who must be joined in the action. But the district court rejected that argument and denied the motion on January 31, 2025. Also denied was NaphCare’s motion to dismiss § 1983 claims against its employees. Nor were claims against the firm itself dismissed, since the district court found Plaintiffs adequately alleged that NaphCare “had a custom of logging sham-­refusals when medical treatment was needed”; that the firm also “had a custom of improperly monitoring and evaluating detainees”; and that NaphCare “had a practice of not escalating treatment of serious medical needs.” See: Singleton v. Clark Cty., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18052 (W.D. Wash.).

The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, asking the district court to approve it on July 8, 2025. At the hearing on August 12, however, the district court informed the parties that it had erred in granting a motion to seal the County’s part of the settlement, since it is a public entity. Counsel for the County agreed, and the agreement that was unsealed revealed that Clark County was paying $1 million to settle the case. As for NaphCare’s portion of the agreement, the district court issued an order to show cause why it should not be unsealed.

The County and Plaintiff agreed to abide by whatever the court decided. NaphCare objected strenuously, of course. But on September 22, 2025, the district court ruled that it found no “compelling reasons for secrecy that are sufficient to outweigh the public’s interest in access to court records,” and it ordered the documents unsealed with appropriate redactions. See: Singleton v. Clark Cty., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 186004 (W.D. Wash.).

As a result, it was revealed that NaphCare paid $1.75 million to settle its part of the case. Together with the County’s payout, that brought the Plaintiff’s total settlement to $2.75 million, including costs and fees for Krulewich and attorneys providing him co-­counsel from Krutch Lindell Bingham Jones PS in Seattle, including J. Nathan Bingham. See: Singleton v. Clark Cty., USDC (W.D. Wash.), Case No. 3:24-­cv-­05392. 

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