State officials have agreed to pay a former state prisoner $250,000 after the man threatened to sue the Nevada Department of Corrections for failing to provide timely cancer screenings during his incarceration.
The settlement was approved in a unanimous vote by the Nevada Board of Examiners, which is made up of Gov. Joe Lombardo, Attorney General Aaron Ford and Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar. The board did not discuss the settlement before voting on the matter at its July 14 meeting.
Alfred Lajes, 75, was in prison from October 2014 to July 2022, according to a settlement agreement that he signed.
In the tort claim where Lajes threatened the lawsuit and demanded $900,000, he alleged that he had blood in his stool in May 2021 while he was incarcerated at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City, according to a memo in which the state attorney general’s office recommended that the board approve the settlement. Lajes was later approved to see a gastroenterologist, but he wasn’t able to see one until ten months later, the memo states.
In March 2022, a gastroenterologist recommended that Lajes undergo a colonoscopy and an upper endoscopy — a procedure that uses a camera on a long tube to examine the upper digestive system. However, both procedures didn’t occur while Lajes was in prison for “unknown reasons,” according to the settlement agreement and the memo from the attorney general.
After Lajes was released from prison, he received a colonoscopy from the Oncology Institute, and doctors found a mass of 25 centimeters in his colon. He was later diagnosed with stage four colon cancer, the attorney general’s memo states.
The allegations that Lajes made in the tort claim were confirmed through medical reporting, according to the attorney general’s office.
The Nevada Department of Corrections and an attorney representing Lajes didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Attempts to reach Lajes for comment were also unsuccessful.
The attorney general’s memo also states that if the tort claim wasn’t resolved out of court and Lajes instead proceeded with a lawsuit, his attorneys would have argued that an alleged “two-year delay” in the colonoscopy and diagnosis was deliberate indifference — a legal standard used to determine whether one consciously disregarded a substantial risk of harm.
Much of the settlement, specifically $249,500, will be paid from the state’s tort claim fund, which is financed through assessments paid by state agencies. The remaining $500 will be paid by the Nevada Department of Corrections, according to the attorney general.
As part of the settlement, Lajes has agreed to release the state and the Department of Corrections from any further claims relating to the allegations in the tort claim.
Contact Lucas Hellberg at lhellberg@reviewjournal.com.
