Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
STAFF REPORT
Roosevelt County has agreed to pay a former Roosevelt County inmate $255,000 in a lawsuit settlement.
County officials and attorneys confirmed last month that a settlement had been reached but declined giving details until the settlement was finalized.
Ruben Lozano, 45, filed a lawsuit against the county in March after being released from the Roosevelt County Detention Center in September 2015 following more than two years of incarceration.
Lozano was one of two inmates who escaped from the jail in June 2013 and was apprehended a week later in Midland, Texas. He was sentenced to five years probation after reaching a guilty plea agreement in September 2015 for the charges of escaping jail, according to court records.
According to the settlement, the county’s insurance company, New Mexico County Insurance Authority, will pay $115,000 to Lozano’s attorneys and $1,248 monthly to Lozano for the next 10 years, with the conditions that Lozano “completely releases” the county and any of its past, present or current employees and officials from any other obligations, with Lozano also agreeing to not file any other lawsuits or complaints in the future.
In the lawsuit, Lozano makes the following claims:
• Lozano accrued injuries in the form of fractures to his pelvis and hip during his escape in June 2013. He was not allowed to be treated for the injuries by RCDC staff for more than a month, despite recommendations from a hospital in Midland that he be seen by an orthopedist “within one to two days for further evaluation and treatment.”
• Lozano did not receive treatment until it was court ordered by District Judge Donna Mowrer in July 2013.
• Lozano spent more than a year in solitary confinement, in a small cell in which he had to sleep on the floor and was not given reasons as to why and was denied in his requests to be released.
A lawsuit is still pending against Correct Care Solutions, a company that provided health care to inmates at the detention center, according to Lozano’s attorney, Adam Baker.
