HARTFORD, Conn. _ A lawsuit filed by an inmate who was forced to give birth to her baby in the toilet of her cell at the York Correctional Institution has survived a major legal challenge by the state and can proceed toward trial.
Tianna Laboy's case is at least the fourth lawsuit alleging malfeasance or wrongful death against the Connecticut Department of Correction in the last six months to clear an early but crucial legal hurdle. Collectively, the cases are demanding more than $15 million in damages.
In Laboy's case, Attorney General William Tong's office argued that her lawsuit should have been thrown out because she failed to file the required grievance with authorities after the February 2018 incident and did not exhaust her remedies.
But U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall made quick work of the argument in a 14-page ruling issued Friday.
"Under the circumstances of this case, there was no 'available' remedy," Hall wrote.
After Laboy's baby was born, "there was nothing she or the prison could do to change the facts surrounding its birth, which remain in dispute."
Laboy "had no opportunity to grieve" the failure to provide her medical care "until after the harm ... was complete and could not be undone by the defendants," the judge ruled, adding that an inmate in Laboy's position "had nothing to gain from filing a grievance."
Hall also unsealed a key report that Tong's office had wanted to keep out of the public domain _ the Department of Correction's own internal inquiry into the birth of Laboy's baby inside the prison cell.
The judge said there was "a strong presumption" against withholding such court documents from the public.
In the report, the DOC's investigator, Dr. Jennifer Benjamin, found that the medical staff at York had committed a series of missteps and had violated the terms of a consent decree that required reforms in medical care. Among other lapses, Benjamin found that nurses never connected Laboy's complaints of abdominal pain to preterm labor, failed to share changes in her condition with OB/GYN experts, failed to seek guidance on how to handle Laboy's treatment and failed to send her to a hospital emergency room. Benjamin said the treatment Laboy received fell below the community standard of care and revealed gaps in training and management of pregnancies at the state's only prison for women. In addition, Benjamin noted that Laboy had been diagnosed with a high-risk pregnancy.
Lawyers Kenneth Krayeske and DeVaughn Ward contend in the lawsuit that what happened in the aftermath of the birth of Laboy's baby was far more effective than any grievance could have been.
Laboy, the lawyers say, received a personal visit from then-Correction Commissioner Scott Semple, who apologized to Laboy, told her an internal investigation was underway and said two medical-staff employees had been walked off the property.
The episode also prompted legislation meant to provide better treatment for incarcerated women. The bill, signed into law by then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy in May 2018, prohibited prisons from using leg and waist restraints or shackles on women while they are pregnant or in the postpartum period and prohibited all restraints during labor and delivery. It also required state prisons to provide women with the hygiene products they need free of charge.
"We argued no grievance could have accomplished that," Ward said Friday.
Laboy was 20 years old and was eight weeks' pregnant when she entered York to serve a seven-year sentence for assault in August 2017.
Her lawsuit says she experienced pain and vaginal discharge for several days in early February 2018, and told the medical staff at York of her symptoms. Laboy, in turn, was told she couldn't be treated because she hadn't filled out a medical form. A few days later, she was told she should return to the prison's clinic when her contractions were less than two minutes apart.
She spent the night of Feb. 13, 2018, lying awake in pain, the lawsuit says. She asked for medical attention at 4:30 a.m. and was told a doctor would see her at 7:30. Around 6:30 a.m. Laboy delivered her child into the toilet in her cell, the lawsuit says.
The infant hit her head as she fell into the toilet bowl, according to the lawsuit.
Laboy pulled the baby out of the toilet and, at the urging of her cellmate, "patted her on the back to get all the fluid out." According to the lawsuit, that is when the baby then began to breathe.
An ambulance took Laboy and her baby to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London, where she was shackled to a bed by her ankles during her four-day stay.
Laboy's daughter, referred to as Baby N in the lawsuit, spent 14 days in the neonatal intensive care unit due to low birth weight, poor feeding and being more than five weeks' premature, according to the lawsuit.
