(Photo by Darrin Klimek/Getty Images)
The family of a Metuchen man who fatally overdosed on drugs in a state prison last year has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the state.
Phillip Kellerman, 35, died on Jan. 20, 2024, after he took fentanyl-laced drugs at Northern State Prison in Newark, where he had been incarcerated since 2017, according to a lawsuit his sister Danielle Mendes filed last week.
Prison staff were aware of his history of addiction but failed to properly monitor him or house him separately from other people struggling with addiction, the lawsuit says. After he was found unresponsive in his cell, medical staff did not administer the overdose-reversing drug Narcan, in violation of their policies, the lawsuit says.
No one was arrested or charged in Kellerman’s death, and there’s no evidence of any investigation into how Kellerman got the drugs that killed him, according to the complaint.
Attorney Peter P. Adubato, who represents Mendes, said the state strictly enforces penalties in drug-free school zones but not in prisons, despite its legal obligation to ensure the well-being of people in its care and custody.
“Correctional facilities — controlled and managed by the state and law enforcement officers — have become drug havens,” Adubato said. “Those who allow drugs to enter into prison are rarely punished.”
Daniel Sperrazza, a Department of Corrections spokesman, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mendes’ lawsuit accuses the state, the Department of Corrections, Commissioner Victoria Kuhn, and various administrators and staff of negligence, state-created danger, and failures to protect, train, supervise, discipline, and render adequate medical care.
There’s a “raging drug epidemic” at Northern State, with drugs smuggled in by staff and through the mail and sold for money, food or favors, the lawsuit claims.
Administrators knew of the facility’s pervasive drug problems because at least four correctional officers have been caught smuggling drugs into the prison in recent years, the lawsuit says.
“Yet they failed to take adequate or reasonable measures to stem the tide of drugs entering Northern State or to stop the distribution of drugs to and among incarcerated individuals,” the lawsuit says. “This abysmal failure was the result of lax detection and enforcement measures.”
Mendes’ lawsuit comes six months after another family sued over the 2022 overdose death of a Howell man incarcerated at East Jersey State Prison in Rahway.
The state Department of Corrections has tried to prevent drugs from entering prisons by converting last year to a mail-scanning system to foil people who spray synthetic marijuana, fentanyl, and other drugs onto paper disguised as mail.
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