$1 Million Settlement Reached in Jail Suicide of Maryland Detainee Whose Emergency Hospitalization Order Was Ignored
by Chuck Sharman
On February 17, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland granted dismissal to the mother of a detainee who committed suicide five years earlier at the Dorchester County Detention Center (DCDC), after she accepted $1 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed over jail officials’ failure to abide by a judicial order to send him to a hospital for evaluation.
Plaintiff Cindy Kleger became concerned in January 2021 when her son, Wyatt Allan Young, 28, stopped going to work. Her fears that he had relapsed into drug abuse only grew after his car was found wrecked and abandoned on a highway a few days later. She obtained an emergency order from a state court directing any law enforcement personnel who came in contact with him to transport him to a hospital for evaluation within six hours. The following day, Young was involved in another wreck, this time in a stolen vehicle, and he was arrested by Maryland State Police (MSP). But he wasn’t taken to a hospital; instead, Young and his emergency order paperwork were delivered to the DCDC.
When Kleger heard of her son’s incarceration, she phoned the DCDC five times to plead with officials—including, perhaps, guard Sgt. David Batson; it was unclear to whom she spoke—asking them to obey the emergency order, or at least protect Young from suicide. But guard Arthur Nelson did not place Young in a suicide-resistant cell. Rather, because Young tested positive for marijuana, methadone, and morphine, he was isolated in “detox segregation,” where he was supposed to be checked every 30 minutes. Except that didn’t happen, either. The very next morning, on January 10, Young’s body was found dangling in his cell from a torn bed sheet that he had tied to a door hinge and used to hang himself. Emergency responders pronounced him dead at the scene. A subsequent review of surveillance footage found that guard Marquet Robinson had fraudulently recorded cell checks that he never made.
With the aid of attorneys Cary J. Hansel III and Kristin M. Mack of Hansel Law in Baltimore, Kleger filed suit in the district court as representative of her son’s Estate. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, she accused the County and its jailers of violating his federal civil rights and the Maryland Declaration of Rights by failing to protect him from an obvious risk of suicide. Her complaint also made claims for negligence, gross negligence, wrongful death, survivorship, and negligent supervision.
The guards requested qualified immunity, but the district court largely denied their request on January 7, 2026, finding there was a genuine dispute for a jury to resolve whether they had knowledge of Young’s suicide risk. For the same reason, the guards were also denied public official immunity on the common-law tort claims. Dorchester County was also denied summary judgment on claims, except those under § 1983; they had already been dismissed because a municipality cannot be held liable thereby except with a claim that it maintained a policy or custom that gave rise to an alleged constitutional violation, as laid out under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978)—and Plaintiff lodged no such Monell claim. See: Kleger v. Dorchester Cty., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2909 (D. Md.).
That was enough to get Defendants to the settlement table, and the parties then reached their agreement. Under its terms, Plaintiff accepted the $1 million payment in exchange for dismissal of all her claims, including costs and fees for her attorneys. However, as Hansel told the Baltimore Sun, nothing in the agreement prevents Kleger from filing suit against the MSP for its officers’ failure to abide by the emergency order and transport Young to a hospital, rather than to the DCDC. See: Kleger v. Dorchester Cty., USDC (D. Md.), Case No. 1:24-cv-00095.
Additional source: Baltimore Sun
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Related legal case
Kleger v. Dorchester Cty.
| Year | 2026 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (D. Md.), Case No. 1:24-cv-00095 |
| Level | District Court |