Judge declines to toss suit over ex-NFL player who died in LA County custody

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The family of Stanley Wilson Jr., the former Detroit Lions cornerback who died three years ago while in custody, can proceed with their wrongful death lawsuit against Los Angeles County.

LA County Superior Court Judge Richard Fruin on Wednesday denied the county’s bid to throw out the family’s fourth amended complaint for failure to go through the proper claim procedures before filing suit.

The county argued that the family has changed its theory of how the 40-year-old Wilson, who suffered from mental illness, died in its amended complaint, from excessive force while he was being restrained on Feb. 1, 2023, to inadequate medical treatment while he was incarcerated at the Twin Towers Jail in downtown LA.

However, the county maintains, when the family initially filed a claim in 2023 with the county — as a legally required step before bringing a lawsuit — they only argued Wilson died of unconstitutional excessive force in the hours before his death. They didn’t argue at the time that Wilson’s death was caused by medical negligence as they now do in their amended complaint, and the county didn’t investigate this theory before rejecting the family’s claim in 2023, the county argued.

“Each theory must be included in a government claim,” Chandler Parker, an attorney for the county argued at the hearing. “This a completely different theory, not an elaboration.”

According to the attorney, the county went through great length in 2023 to investigate whether Wilson’s death was the result of concealed excessive force by sheriff deputies, including reviewing many hours of video evidence, but not medical negligence because the family wasn’t claiming that at the time.

The judge wasn’t persuaded by the county’s argument and adopted his tentative decision that denied the motion for judgment on the pleadings.

“Even if the operative [fourth amended complaint] no longer relies on the excessive force allegations referenced in the government claims and instead focuses on medical negligence and unconstitutional conditions of confinement, the crux of the government claim remains applicable: that the county’s policies and practices related to the treatment of mentally ill inmates wrongfully caused decedent’s death,” Fruin said in his tentative.

The former NFL player had multiple run-ins with the law after an injury ended his career in 2008. In August 2022, he was arrested for property-related offenses, reportedly after he had entered a Hollywood Hills home during a psychotic episode, and jailed in the downtown jail.

He was found incompetent to stand trial, and the court ordered him to be committed to Metropolitan State Hospital no later than Dec. 5, 2022.

But despite this court order, the county failed to comply with deadline and denied Wilson the immediate and emergency medical care he required for his serious and deteriorating health issues, the family claims.

It wasn’t until Feb. 1, 2023, that Wilson was transferred to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead the same day. His cause of death was determined to be pulmonary thromboembolism, or a blood clot in his lungs.

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