Jury Awards Family

A federal jury has decided Orange County should pay $2,617,000 to the family of a man who died in the county jail in October 2011. The jury returned the verdict today after a week of testimony during a trial in Beaumont. 41-year-old Robert Montano died in the Orange County Jail five days after he was arrested for public intoxication.
Attorneys for Montano’s family told the jury he had been held in a medical cell for five days without food or water. At the time of the death, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office reported Montano had been on so-called “bath salts,” a concoction of chemicals that create hallucinations.
The family filed a lawsuit in October 2013 with the rebuttal that Montano was showing signs paranoid schizophrenia and did not receive medical care. The suit, filed by the Bernsen Law Firm of Beaumont, said Montano died from ketoacidosis, a metabolic state common in people who have been fasting. The condition includes dehydration.