Carranza-Reyes v. Park County

Civil rights lawsuit on behalf of Mexican immigrant who was never charged with any crime and whose one-week detention in a squalid Colorado jail that denied him sanitary housing and adequate medical care resulted in an infection that cost him a leg, part of a lung, and nearly cost him his life.

Lawsuit charged a for-profit county jail, its officials, and medical staff with violating the plaintiff’s federal constitutional rights to adequate medical care and sanitary housing conditions. Lawsuit also charged the jail’s medical staff with medical negligence under state common law.

Park County’s insurers paid $1.5 million to Mr. Carranza-Reyes in December 2007 to settle the case.

Lead counsel were Lloyd Kordick of Lloyd C. Kordick & Associates in Colorado Springs and Bill Trine of Trine & Metcalf, P.C., in Boulder. Co-counsel were Joseph Archuleta of Archuleta Law Office in Denver and Public Justice’s Adele Kimmel.