by Scott Grammer
In August 1976, a lawsuit was filed in a Florida federal district court alleging numerous constitutional violations at the Broward County jail, including overcrowding. Two years later the case was certified as a class action. It took until 1994 for a consent decree to be reached, then ...
by Dale Chappell
Officials in Rensselaer County, New York approved a settlement on January 8, 2019 to resolve a federal lawsuit against Sheriff Jack Mahar. Mahar was accused of retaliating against the county’s jail chief, who was fired in 2013 for what the lawsuit claimed was her refusal to ...
by Ed Lyon
Each year, throughout the duration of summer months, there are empathy-invoking news stories about children and pets left in unattended vehicles, sometimes resulting in deaths due to the scorching heat. A New Mexico federal jury recently held that prisoners should not be left in unattended transport ...
by Kevin Bliss
Ralph Caldwell, the father of Michael Kibbons, filed a lawsuit against St. Louis County, Missouri for deliberate indifference to his son’s mental health needs, resulting in his death. The suit alleged that jail staff failed to properly treat and house Kibbons in a manner consistent with his ...
by David M. Reutter
Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County Prison (LCP) paid $30,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging a female pre-trial detainee was strip searched four times over her three-day stay at the facility.
Rebecca Brown was arrested on March 25, 2016 and taken to LCP. She was strip searched upon being ...
by Douglas Ankney
Officials in Monterey County, California agreed to pay the family of Jacob Parenti $365,000 to settle a lawsuit over his death while he was held at the Monterey County Jail (MCJ).
In 2013, Parenti was on his way home from work when, during a traffic stop, police ...
by David M. Reutter
A $40,000 settlement was reached in a lawsuit alleging the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) deprived a parolee of his liberty without due process or an opportunity to properly waive his rights.
In his pro se complaint, Scott Andrew Witzke alleged that MDOC officials arrested him ...
by Dale Chappell
An excessive force death at the hands of Washoe County, Nevada sheriff’s deputies ended in settlements totaling $175,000. It was the third excessive force death in a two-year period for the Sheriff’s Department.
When 38-year-old Thomas Purdy, Jr. began acting erratically at the Peppermill Casino in Reno ...
by Ed Lyon
In mid-August 2015, diabetic Nebraska prisoner Aron Lee Boyd-Nicholson was washing clothes in his cell when he began experiencing classic heart attack symptoms – including chest pain, dizziness and weakness – before he collapsed. Nurse Carolyn Moore tested his blood-sugar levels, then instructed him to return ...
by Matt Clarke
On December 24, 2018, a federal court awarded $501.1 million to the parents of Otto Warmbier after he was tried, convicted and imprisoned by North Korean officials in an attempt to extract concessions from the United States, and tortured to such an extent that he died ...