Ashley Estes, representing the estate of Clay Aaron Estes, is filing a wrongful-death and civil rights lawsuit against the Orange Beach Police Department in the hanging death of Clay Estes at the city’s jail in August 2025.

Estes was first brought to the Orange Beach jail on Aug. 9, 2025, and after being taken to a medical facility for treatment then returned to the jail, where he was found dead on Aug. 12 of an apparent suicide.

The filing by Fairhope attorney Melvin H. Dixon Jr. doesn’t state how or if Estes and Ashley Estes are related, though some news reports have identified her as his wife.

“During this period, Mr. Estes exhibited significant medical and mental-health concerns, including conditions that required monitoring, evaluation and appropriate custodial safeguards, and he had just returned from an emergency-department hospitalization, facts that placed defendants on actual notice that he was vulnerable and required protective supervision,” the filing states. “Rather than provide constitutionally adequate care and supervision, defendants failed to implement and maintain the basic safety measures necessary to protect Mr. Estes from a known and obvious risk of serious harm, including suicide.”

Estes was in jail pending a pretrial hearing. The lawsuit claims city jailers failed to recognize signs Estes was troubled mentally and suffered from disabilities. The lawsuit alleges after a changing of the guard at the jail, a lack of supervision of Estes contributed to his death.

“On the evening of Aug. 11, 2025, Mr. Estes’s supervision was affirmatively discontinued following a shift change,” the filing states. He was found dead the next morning.

The lawsuit further alleges the handling of Estes in the jail was indicative of normal operations at the lockup.

“The manner in which Mr. Estes was treated was not aberrational. It reflects the city’s standard operating practice for detainees held in the Orange Beach Police Department Jail, who are routinely subjected to inadequate intake and suicide-risk screening, inadequate monitoring and cell checks, discontinuity of watch status across shift changes and inadequate emergency response, the same deficiencies that killed Mr. Estes,” the lawsuit states.

Had better practices and procedures been in place, the lawsuit alleges, Estes would have received better supervision and his death avoided.

“Mr. Estes’s death was not an isolated or unavoidable event,” the filing states. “It was the direct and foreseeable result of defendants’ deliberate indifference and of the City’s own policies, customs, and practices, including its persistent failure to train, its persistent failure to supervise and discipline jail personnel who violate detainees’ rights, and its ratification of the very conduct that caused this death.”

City officials have not commented publicly on the lawsuit. No defendants were identified in the lawsuit other than the city and its representatives.

“At all relevant times, the city, through its policymakers, agents, officers and employees, was responsible for establishing, implementing, enforcing and disciplining violations of the policies, practices and procedures governing the care, custody, supervision and safety of detainees held in its jail,” the filing states. “Defendants … are currently unidentified officers, jailers, supervisors and/or policymakers employed by or acting on behalf of the city who were responsible for Mr. Estes’s custody, medical care, monitoring and supervision.”

The 10 unidentified plaintiffs will also be sued “in their individual capacities” but remain unknown “despite reasonable efforts to identify them,” the filing states.

Plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages determined by a jury, punitive damages against individual defendants and civil rights and federal Americans with Disabilities Act violations. Ashley Estes is also demanding a jury trial and attorneys’ fees.