Pima County Jury Awards Mother $5 Million After Son, 20, Dies Days Into Sierra Tucson Treatment
After trial: We found no reported appeal or post-trial reduction, but could not conclusively confirm the judgment is final. Whether the award was collected is not public.
A Pima County jury awarded Jennifer Johe $5 million on May 23, 2019, in her wrongful death suit against the Sierra Tucson treatment center. Her son Steven, 20, had been admitted in April 2014 for substance addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder and died of acute drug toxicity within days. Robert Boatman represented the family at trial.
What happened
Steven Johe was 20 when his mother, Jennifer Johe, checked him into Sierra Tucson, a residential treatment center outside Tucson, in April 2014. He was there for substance addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Within days of his admission, staff found him unresponsive and not breathing. He was rushed to a hospital and died there of acute drug toxicity on April 15, 2014. The autopsy could not say whether the fatal mix of drugs was taken intentionally or by accident.
An Arizona Department of Health Services review after his death found that staff did not properly check his vital signs and did not follow the facility's own suicide assessment protocol. Jennifer Johe filed a wrongful death suit in 2016, alleging that Sierra Tucson failed to use reasonable care in supervising a patient who had voiced suicidal thoughts.
The case went to trial in Pima County Superior Court beginning May 14, 2019. Robert Boatman represented Johe. At trial, Sierra Tucson's lawyers acknowledged that the patient's bedside nurse, assigned to watch him around the clock, had fallen asleep, but argued that this did not make the facility liable for his death.
The state fined the facility after Steven's death for failing to follow its patient care policies, and the Daily Star reported that five patients died at Sierra Tucson between 2011 and August 2015, a period in which regulators also cited it over the care of its most seriously ill psychiatric patients and its tracking of patients' whereabouts. Johe's claim rested on what happened in her son's own first days at the center: the missed vital-sign checks, the unfollowed suicide protocol and the sleeping nurse.
The jury returned its verdict on Thursday, May 23, 2019, finding for Jennifer Johe and awarding her $5 million. A Sierra Tucson spokesperson declined to comment afterward. Before the trial, Johe had told reporters, 'Steven went there to live. Steven did not go there to die.'
Arizona Attorney Magazine later listed the verdict among the state's top civil verdicts of 2019. Searches of news and appellate records turned up no post-trial reduction or appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Arizona Daily Star, 'Jury awards $5M to mother of man who died after stay at Sierra Tucson', May 24, 2019·Archived copy
- 2.KGUN 9, 'Jury sides with mother in Sierra Tucson wrongful death trial', May 2019·Archived copy
- 3.KGUN 9, 'Mother of patient who died at Sierra Tucson is going to trial with treatment facility', May 2019·Archived copy
- 4.Gallagher & Kennedy, 'Bob Boatman and Jeff Pyburn Johe Verdict Listed in Top 10 Civil Verdicts for 2019 in Arizona'·Archived copy
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