$5 Million Paid by Colorado County for Jail Detainee’s “Gruesome” Death from Untreated Ulcer; Claims Proceeding Against Southern Health Partners
by Chuck Sharman
Under the terms of a settlement reached on April 16, 2026, Colorado’s La Plata County agreed to pay $5 million to the estate of Daniel Foard, 32, whose death in the County lockup was both “gruesome and preventable,” according to the complaint filed on his behalf. Claims that the agreement did not resolve against Tennessee-based Southern Health Partners (SHP), a private firm that still holds the contract to provide medical care at the Durango jail, are still pending.
When Foard was booked into the jail on failure to appear warrants on August 11, 2023, he admitted to taking fentanyl pills. An SHP nurse had him placed in a detox unit. Five days later, on August 16, his associated vomiting and diarrhea had subsided, but his heart rate, breathing and blood pressure remained elevated. Nevertheless, he was given a body scan in preparation to rejoin the jail’s general population (GP), collapsing repeatedly during the process. Guards allegedly mouthed to one another that he was “faking,” and SHP nurse Ashley Box eventually cleared him for GP early the following morning.
Later that day, after vomiting several times, Foard asked to return to the medical unit. But when guards opened his cell door and he stepped out, the detainee immediately collapsed again. SHP nurse Sierra Snooks was summoned, and she dutifully recorded Foard’s complaints of “[t]en-out-of-10 sharp, shooting, and persisting abdominal pain,” the lawsuit said. She also ruled out appendicitis because the location of the pain he reported was not consistent with that diagnosis—something a registered nurse (RN) like Snooks was unqualified by licensure to do.
Snooks had Foard moved to a holding cell where he could be monitored, though she neglected to explain this to guards, who remained largely unaware of her concerns. Nor did she order them to make periodic checks on the detainee. Foard soiled Holding Cell 4 with so much vomit that he had been moved to Holding Cell 5 by the time Box relieved Snooks that evening. Before long that cell, too, became too full of vomit, and Foard was forced to make his way to Holding Cell 6, crawling and falling along the way. Surveillance video captured his pleas for help as he told guards that he was “in a lot pain” and “vomiting blood.”
“I’m gonna die,” he cried.
But all that he got from Sgt. Randall Clark, allegedly, was advice to “try to hit that drain” when he next had to vomit because guards “can’t keep switching you out to [a] clean [cell].”
What was happening was that Foard was suffering from a perforated duodenal ulcer—“unquestionably an emergency medical condition,” the complaint explained, resulting when “leaking of gastric juice and gas into the abdominal cavity causes infection of the abdominal lining, sepsis, and death.”
Box made several “walk-bys” of Holding Cell 6 before she finally discovered Foard unresponsive that night, lying in a pool of his own bloody vomit. An autopsy found “a liter of cloudy brown fluid in his peritoneal cavity,” as well as “stomach fluid in his respiratory system, and that his stomach contained dark brown fluid,” the complaint noted. Traces of fentanyl were also found, but his death was blamed solely on the untreated perforated ulcer. As pathologist Mike Arnall told the Durango Herald, “the greater problem was a belly full of pus.”
“We spend a lot of time thinking about deliberate indifference and it’s a really, really hard concept to explain,” attorney Dan Weiss, who represented the Estate, told USA Today. “This case right here is one of the clearest illustrations of that concept we have ever seen.”
Joined by fellow attorneys Anna C. Holland-Edwards and Erica T. Grossman of from Holland Holland Edwards & Grossman P.C. in Denver, he filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado in July 2025 on behalf of Foard’s Estate and its personal representatives Jim Foard and Susan Gizinksi, the detainee’s parents. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 they accused the County, Sheriff Sean Smith and his jailers, as well as SHP and its staffers, of deliberate indifference to Foard’s serious medical need, in violation of his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
SHP was also accused of deliberately understaffing the jail medical unit to cut corners, leaving providers dependent on untrained guards to observe the medical condition of sick detainees—a common complaint in lockups where medical care is contracted to the lowest bidder, who is then left scrambling for ways to contain costs.
The County Defendants proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, which included costs and fees for the Estate’s attorneys, its $5 million payout made by the County’s insurer. The agreement also included a covenant by the County to cooperate as the Estate litigates its remaining claims against SHP and its staff—including a promise to make County employees available as witnesses, as well as facilitating a site visit by Plaintiff’s counsel. Those remaining claims are pending, and PLN will continue to update case developments. See: Est. of Foard v. Southern Health Partners, Inc., USDC (D. Colo.), Case No. 1:25-cv-02223.
Additional sources: Durango Herald, USA Today
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Related legal case
Est. of Foard v. Southern Health Partners, Inc.
| Year | 2026 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (D. Colo.), Case No. 1:25-cv-02223 |
| Level | District Court |