Widow of deputy sues over husband’s death

BANGOR – The widow of a state fire inspector who worked part time as a Penobscot County deputy sheriff has sued the Maine Municipal Association and an insurance company over their refusal to pay claims associated with her husband’s death two years ago.

Douglas J. Castiglia, 47, of Eddington died Dec. 2, 2004, five days after he collapsed while assisting at the scene of a car-deer accident in Levant. The lawsuit claims that Nathan A. Bailey, 23, of Orono is responsible for the deputy’s death because he was speeding when he struck the deer and left the scene of the accident.

Because Bailey’s insurance had lapsed, Yolanda Castiglia, 49, of Holden sued the MMA Property & Casualty Pool of Augusta and AIU Insurance Co. of New York, N.Y., the companies that covered the deputy under the state’s uninsured-motorist provisions.

The lawsuit, filed last month in Penobscot County Superior Court by N. Laurence Willey Jr., the Bangor attorney representing Yolanda Castiglia, is seeking unspecified damages, including payments for medical expenses.

A trial date has not been set.

Efforts to reach the insurance firm were unsuccessful Friday.

Castiglia died at Eastern Maine Medical Center five days after suffering a torn aorta on Nov. 28, 2004, on Route 222 near the Merriman Road. The deputy was the first responder to the scene of the deer-car collision. He collapsed after completing “two searches under the very physical, strenuous, dangerous and hazardous circumstances” in the woods that line either side of the road, the lawsuit claims.

Bailey did not report that he had hit a deer for nearly an hour after he had left the scene of the accident, according to court documents. He allegedly told the dispatcher when he called about 12:20 a.m. on Nov. 28, 2004, that the accident had occurred about 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 27, 2004.

Despite the fact that a dispatcher told him to return to the scene, Bailey did not do so until nearly 1 a.m. after deputies called his parents’ home in Levant, where he then resided. The deputies, according to court documents, wanted Bailey to point out the exact location where he had struck the animal so they could locate it.

Castiglia clutched his chest and fell to one knee about the time Bailey arrived, according to Willey. He died five days later leaving a wife and three children.

“The facts, as outlined, provide ample basis for a jury to conclude that [Bailey’s] negligence caused the death,” Willey stated last month in a letter to the MMA. “There is a clear and unbroken chain of events that [he] put in motion.

“It is equally clear that [Bailey],” the attorney continued, “should not have left the scene or immediately returned to the scene of the injured animal, so he could point out its location … preventing the police from traversing a dark, desolate wooded and dangerous area in the middle of the night, searching for an injured deer … [Bailey] put this activity into the chain of events, and his negligent acts resulted in deputy Castiglia’s death.”

Castiglia joined the State Fire Marshal’s Office in 1995 after working for 21 years as a firefighter in the Maine Air National Guard.