FD, nurse, civil rights activist, and president of the Hayward, California, branch of the NAACP sued two Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputies and Prison Health Services, Inc. for violations of her First Amendment rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. She claimed that she was harassed and retaliated against by the deputies after she spoke out about how some of the nurses were being treated by the management at Prison Health Services at the Alameda County jail in Dublin.
The Plaintiff worked as a nurse for Prison Health Services, administering medical care for the inmates at the jail. Ms. Davis was subsequently disciplined and set up to be fired or possibly injured, which forced her to walk away from her $70,000-a-year job that she had held since 1990 and seek psychological counseling. She also sued Prison Health Services, who disciplined and wrote her up and ultimately moved her into an undesirable mental health unit at the jail.
FD also testified that she began having trouble at her job beginning in 2006 when she complained that Prison Health Service’s director of nursing “demonstrated a pattern of racist and sexist behavior toward her at work.” Premier Law Group settled with Prison Health Services for FD for $528,957. The other defendants denied wrongdoing. The award came with fees and costs, and the matter eventually settled for 1.3 million dollars.