by Don Moniak
October 9, 2024
(Updated October 10, 2024)

Adam Crow died after hanging himself in the Aiken County Detention Center (ACDC) on May 16, 2017. The series of events preceding his death are chronicled in a consolidated wrongful death lawsuit filed by his family, and involving as Defendants the Aiken Regional Medical Center (ARMC) and its parent company United Health Services; members of the ARMC staff; the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO); and the Aiken County Detention Center (ACDC) and its former health care provider Southern Health Partners.

A November 2022 Motion to Compel and the original Summons (pages 10-17) both chronicle the six-hour sequence of events leading to his death.

After drinking a pint of liquor that morning, Mr. Crow drove to the Aurora Pavilion Behavioral Health (Aurora) mental health facility to self-commit. His path to Aurora ended when he ran a red light and collided with another vehicle. 

 “Because he appeared to be heavily intoxicated,” Crow was brought to ACDC by a Highway Patrol officer, and later was confirmed to have a blood alcohol content of 0.225. 

Once at ARMC, where he had been previously diagnosed as suffering from various mental illnesses and labeled as having suicidal ideation, Crow was placed under a suicide watch. Two hours later he was discharged and transported to the Detention Center, instead of to Aurora for treatment. 

Once at the jail, Crow underwent a meager five-minute intake process, followed by detainment in a holding and observation cell. Three hours later, he manually covered the lens of the video monitoring camera in his cell, an action that went undetected by jail employees. 

One hour later Adam Crow hung himself by his pants. His body was not discovered until an hour later, and only after another prisoner alerted the ACDC staff. (The video footage showing the moments leading to his death was included in a December 4, 2023 WRDW feature story.)

None of these facts are in dispute. What is in dispute is whether ARMC and the Sheriff’s Office–and therefore the Detention Center and its former health provider Southern Health Partners–were negligent in their treatment and care of Adam Crow, whether its actions rise to the level of gross negligence, which could lead to a determination of wrongful death. 

The wrongful death lawsuits that were filed on July 30, 2020, one against the health providers and one against the Sheriff’s Office and its Detention Center,  have slogged through the courts for more than four years. The developments in the cases since that time, beyond the Defendants’ denials of culpability and negligence, have included the following: 

• November 30, 2022: The Plaintiff made a settlement offer of $250,000 to the Sheriff’s Office. That offer was rejected in a similar manner as in the Owens vs. ACSO et al and the Rhoads vs. Southern Health Partners et al cases. In both cases, juries eventually went on to award Plaintiff’s far greater amounts than those offered to the County. 
• December 29, 2024: A Motion to Compel that alleged an ARMC doctor provided “evasive and non-responsive” to interrogatories submitted two years earlier. 
• January 24, 2024: The two lawsuits were consolidated. 
• April 30, 2024: Southern Health Partners settled for $25,000. The company’s role was less obvious given the fact that Crow was only held during the intake process for five minutes.
•  August 26, 2024: The Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel ARMC for key information that would provide sufficiently complete information on his medical history.

In the Plaintiff’s most recent Motion to Compel, or in the alternative a determination of spoliation,  the point of issue is an audit trail of Crowe’s treatment and medical history, one that would include three audit logs that “record the activity of people accessing a patient medication record and maintain a record of what parts of a patient’s medical record are opened and closed.”

According to an email from the ARMC defense team, the Audit Log records that were requested “cannot be stored for very long. We are talking hours, maybe a day or two at most, not weeks or months, and certainly not years.” 

In their Motion, Plaintiff’s attorneys describe an ARMC statement, that it has already produced an audit trail, as “simply untrue” and should cause the court to “view the remainder of ARMC’s defense with a high level of skepticism.” 

The attorneys go on to assert that, if the audit trail is missing, that absence constitutes a “spoliation of evidence,” meaning the record was deleted after the lawsuit was filed, an action that the Plaintiff’s lawyers described in an email to ARMC’s defense team as potentially “nefarious:”  

“It appears this was a sentinel event and to delete a document as important as the audit trail under those circumstances makes no sense, other than for nefarious purposes.” 

In support of their Motions, the Plaintiff’s attorneys submitted several exhibits detailing that federal rules and law dictate that such electronic records be maintained for up to ten years.

The brief argues that “for the Court to not compel a complete audit log production (or, in the event that one cannot be provided, not to find for spoliation of evidence) would defeat one of the primary purposes of the federal government’s push to switch to electronic health records;” and concludes that “a complete audit log is critical in allowing Plaintiff to identify whether the medical record is accurate and complete.” 

October 10, 2024 Update on the Hearing.

The Motion to Compel was heard on October 9th at the Aiken County Courthouse, in the Court of Common Pleas of the State of South Carolina’s Second Judicial Circuit.

Plaintiff’s Attorney Robert Philips began his argument before Judge Brian Gibbons by stating, “This is not a fishing expedition. We have a fish on the line and we do not know what fish it is;” referring to records that should exist, but which ARMC had refused to fully divulged.

Philips explained that, after his death, Adam Crow had been returned to ARMC. By then his lab results had shown the high blood alcohol content in addition to “active benzo and active THC.” The portion of the audit trail that was provided showed that Crow’s chart was modified at 1:30 a.m. to indicate he was coherent upon discharge. The details of that modification are what is being sought.

Philips finished by repeating that the Plaintiff’s were “not on a fishing expedition,” adding this time that “there is something going on here.”

ARMC attorney Denny Major began his argument by stating “I feel like a third-string quarterback covering this. This is the first time I’ve seen this.” He later would state “I am completely in the dark,” “I am not prepared to speak to that,” and “I haven’t had a chance to go through it.”

He argued, in part, that HIPAA was “for the insuring of the integrity of records, not designed to retain records for tort cases.”

Judge Gibbons then granted the Motion to Compel, while declaring the issue of spoliation was “not ripe,” but could be brought back. The Defendant ARMC was given fifteen days to produce the requested records.