Her Father Called for Help With Her Addiction. She Died of Dehydration in the Jail, and the Physician Assistant Did Not Come Until She Had Been Dead Twelve Hours.
After trial: On appeal, and this figure is not final. The jury returned $15,007,508.45 on April 18, 2025, allocated $14,957,508.45 against Duchesne County and $50,000 against Nurse Jana Clyde. Duchesne County commissioners were publicly weighing an appeal when the verdict came in and they filed one: Estate of Madison Jody Jensen v. Duchesne County, Tenth Circuit No. 25-4060, docketed May 16, 2025. Because this is a claim under 42 U.S.C. 1983, Utah's Governmental Immunity Act cap in Utah Code 63G-7-604 does not apply and the full figure was enterable, but the appeal is live and the number should be read as a verdict rather than a recovery. The same case had already been to the Tenth Circuit once before trial, as Estate of Madison Jody Jensen v. Clyde, No. 20-4024 (Mar. 2, 2021).
Won by Kesler & Rust.
Madison Jensen, 21, was booked into the Duchesne County Jail in 2016 after her father contacted authorities for help with her heroin addiction and suicidal thoughts. Over four days of withdrawal she could not keep food or water down. She died of severe dehydration. The jury found the county had failed to train its staff or set any protocol for inmate medical problems.
What happened
Madison Jensen was 21. In 2016 her father contacted authorities asking for help with her heroin addiction and her suicidal thoughts, and she was booked into the Duchesne County Jail.
Over the next four days she went through withdrawal and could not keep food or water down. She submitted written medical requests, more than once, including a note setting out her symptoms. Jail video captured her stumbling and reporting that she was lightheaded in the hours before she died.
The jail's physician assistant did not come to see her until she had already been dead in her cell for more than twelve hours.
She died of severe dehydration, which is a condition that takes days to kill someone and is reversible for almost all of that time by giving them fluids.
A judge had earlier found Nurse Jana Clyde not guilty of negligent homicide in a criminal case. That acquittal is what pushed the family into the civil courts.
On Friday, April 18, 2025 a federal jury in the District of Utah found that Clyde and Duchesne County had deprived Jensen of a constitutional right, and it made the further finding that matters most for a case like this: that the county's failure to train its staff, or to set any protocol at all for handling inmate medical problems, caused her death. That is the Monell finding, and it is what puts liability on the institution rather than only on the person who was standing there.
The jury awarded $15,007,508.45, allocated as $14,957,508.45 against Duchesne County and $50,000 against Clyde.
The estate, through Jensen's father, was represented by Ryan B. Hancey of Kesler and Rust, who has described it as the largest civil-rights jury verdict in Utah history.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.KUTV: the Utah family's award after the death of Madison Jensen in the Duchesne County jail, naming attorney Ryan Hancey and reporting the April 2025 verdict
- 2.Estate of Madison Jody Jensen v. Clyde, Tenth Circuit No. 20-4024 (Mar. 2, 2021): the earlier appeal in the same case, establishing the District of Utah venue, the Section 1983 claims, and the facts of the four days of withdrawal, the written medical requests and the death from dehydration
- 3.Tenth Circuit docket No. 25-4060, Estate of Madison Jody Jensen v. Duchesne County, et al., filed May 16, 2025: the pending appeal of the verdict, listing Kesler & Rust as counsel of record
- 4.KSL NewsRadio, April 2025 (archived): the exact allocation of $14,957,508.45 against Duchesne County and $50,000 against Nurse Jana Clyde per court documents, the single estate brought by her father, the physician assistant not arriving until she had been dead more than twelve hours, and the jury's failure-to-train finding
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