By Associated Press
Fresno, Calif. — After settling one lawsuit for $1.2 million for wrongfully jailing a tuberculosis patient because she wouldn’t take her medicine, Fresno County is facing another suit filed on behalf of a woman imprisoned for six months for the same reason.
The latest lawsuit accuses the county and eight officials of illegally jailing La Vonda Mosley, a 36-year-old Fresno woman, from June to December 1998.
Lawyer Catherine Campbell, who represented TB patient Hongkham Souvannarath, who is Laotian American, in a successful lawsuit against the county, filed the legal action on behalf of Mosley, who was seven months pregnant when she was jailed.
This month, the county agreed to pay Souvannarath $1.2 million for jailing her for 10 months beginning in July 1998 after officials discovered she was not taking her medication and feared she could become contagious.
Campbell said Mosley was diagnosed with having reactivated TB in May 1998 and later failed to show up for her daily therapy. After several warnings, county officials jailed Mosley for not taking the medications.
After her baby was born in July, Campbell said, the child was taken from her and placed with a grandmother. She said officials ignored Mosley’s lengthy letters “begging to be released, promising to comply with her treatment regimen and pleading to be with her newborn infant.”
The lawsuit charges the county with engaging in a “pattern and practice of illegally jailing noncompliant tuberculosis patients over a period of years.” |
