by David M. Reutter
In April 2021, Illinois’ DuPage County Jail (DCJ) and its Psychiatric Services Medical Director agreed to pay $275,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by detainee Dean Fuerstenberg, who attempted suicide at the jail in November 2013, sustaining permanent injuries.
In his amended civil rights complaint, Fuerstenberg ...
by Mark Wilson
On November 19, 2021, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay $3 million to a murdered prisoner’s family for overriding recommendations to house his violent cellmate in a cell by himself. Together with another $3.25 million settlement in July 2021 [See: PLN, June 2022, ...
by Ed Lyon
Nearly four years after a group of Connecticut prisoners sued the state Department of Corrections (DOC) for denying treatment for their infection with the Hepatitis-C virus (HCV)—and a year after the parties reached a settlement that a federal judge then rejected—a superseding settlement agreement was reached on ...
by Ashleigh Dye
A woman who gave birth in a cell in 2017 at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, has been awarded $250,000 to settle a lawsuit she filed the following year against Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern and jail employees, including its privately contracted healthcare staffers. The ...
by Harold Hempstead
On November 23, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas awarded $7,000 in compensatory damages to a state prisoner who, while held in a Pine Bluff jail, was injured in a beating by fellow prisoners when a former guard failed to intervene.
The ...
by Harold Hempstead
In November 2021, Ohio state prisoner Seth Fletcher received a $17,500,000 settlement to conclude the civil rights complaint filed on his behalf against guards at Chillicothe Correctional Institution (CCI), after the developmentally disabled 21-year-old was the victim of a brutal assault that left him physically disabled, too. ...
by Jacob Barrett
In an agreement executed on February 7, 2022, Canyon County, Idaho, agreed to pay $45,000 to settle censorship claims made by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News (CLN). The County also agreed to a list of policy ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 12, 2021, a settlement was reached under which four officials at the Duval County Jail (DCJ) in Jacksonville agreed to pay $6,500 to a detainee who alleged they repeatedly opened his legal mail outside his presence. That followed a decision by the U.S. Court ...
by David M. Reutter
On July 7, 2021, the Connecticut Department of Corrections (DOC) paid $1.65 million to settle a lawsuit alleging medical personnel failed to diagnose and treat a 19-year-old state prisoner who died of lupus.
The settlement resolves a lawsuit brought by the estate of Karon Nealy, Jr. ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On February 24, 2022, a former sheriff’s deputy in Harrison County, Texas, was sentenced for savagely beating a restrained detainee at the county jail, an assault which had already cost the County a $325,000 settlement the year before. For pleading guilty to “official oppression” in the ...