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The Utah State Prison paid $400,000 in taxpayer money to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of an inmate who died in April after a medical technician failed to show up for work to give him a dialysis treatment.

The amount of the settlement was in a document obtained through a public records request filed by The Salt Lake Tribune with the Utah attorney general's office. The office represented Department of Corrections Warden Scott Crowther; Richard Garden, the department's Clinical Services Bureau director; and medical workers at the prison.

The document released the corrections defendants from any liability in the death of inmate Ramon C. Estrada, who died April 5 of apparent cardiac arrest due to renal failure, according to a statement by the Department of Corrections. The inmate was to be paroled April 21 after nearly a decade in prison on a rape conviction.

The release specifies that the payment was made to avoid the expense of litigation and is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing of any kind.

Claims against other defendants in the suit — University of Utah Health Care, which provides dialysis at the prison through the South Valley Dialysis Center, and clinic employees who allegedly were involved in a scheduling mix-up — are not affected by the settlement.

U.S. District Judge David Sam signed an order on Dec. 1, dismissing the corrections defendants.

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