$15.01 Million Verdict for Woman, 21, Who Died of Dehydration in Duchesne County Jail
After trial: The county appealed to the Tenth Circuit (No. 25-4060), and on November 10, 2025 the court dismissed the appeal on the parties' stipulation without ruling on the verdict.
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. The county's appeal to the Tenth Circuit (No. 25-4060) ended on November 10, 2025, when the court dismissed it on the parties' stipulation without ruling on the verdict. The terms were not reported.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.KUTV, report on the Utah family's award after a death in the Duchesne County jail (April 2025)·Archived copy
- 2.Estate of Madison Jody Jensen v. Clyde, Tenth Circuit No. 20-4024 (Mar. 2, 2021)·Archived copy
- 3.Tenth Circuit docket No. 25-4060, Estate of Madison Jody Jensen v. Duchesne County, et al., filed May 16, 2025
- 4.KSL NewsRadio, April 2025
- 5.Tenth Circuit docket No. 25-4060, Estate of Madison Jody Jensen v. Duchesne County (appeal dismissed on stipulation, Nov. 10, 2025)
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