Jury finds Alaska corrections department negligent but not liable for inmate’s disabling suicide attempt

The Alaska Department of Corrections was negligent in its care of a woman who suffered severe brain injuries in a suicide attempt but is not liable for her injuries, an Anchorage jury found Thursday.

The jury returned a verdict in the monthlong civil case on Thursday morning, according to the Alaska Court System. The verdict found that the department’s negligence was not a “substantial factor in causing harm to the Plaintiff and awarded no damages,” according to the jury form.

The plaintiff’s attorneys had asked for $35 million in damages, for her medical care and the loss of life potential.

Gabby Chipps of Ninilchik was 20 when she was arrested in 2020 on an assault charge and taken to Wildwood Correctional Center in Kenai, her attorneys said at trial. She’d never before been in prison. After several weeks of incarceration and signs of mental deterioration, she attempted suicide in an isolation cell and suffered an anoxic brain injury.

Chipps now requires 24-hour-a-day medical care, which her attorneys said is provided at home by her family.

A decision on who will pay for attorney fees in the case is still being litigated, according to the Alaska Court System.

The Department of Law said in a statement that the case was tragic but the jury recognized “her injury is not the state’s fault simply because she was inside a state facility.”

“Sometimes tragic events happen, and no one is to blame,” Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor said in a Department of Law statement.

Chipps’ mother, Holly Chipps, said the case was “painful” and “raw.”

“It’s not just individuals but families that are affected,” she wrote. “This is not just Gabby’s story, but really so many who have lost.”