by David M. Reutter
A California federal court approved a $150,000 settlement on October 13, 2021, for the estate of a prisoner who died of valley fever at the Merced County Jail.
The prisoner, 29-year-old Luis Patino, was booked into the county’s main jail on June 24, 2017, dutifully reporting ...
by David M Reutter
On October 20, 2020, a federal judge in New York refused to overturn a $650,000 award made by a jury earlier that year to a state prisoner on his excessive-use-of-force claim.
The action took place in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ...
Loaded on
Jan. 1, 2022
published in Verdict1
January, 2022, page 43
A Michigan federal district court awarded a $493.80 default judgement on October 29, 2020, to a prisoner in a civil rights action alleging excessive use of force by guards at Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
The prisoner, Donna K. Scrivo, had alleged her Eighth Amendment guarantee of protection ...
by Jacob Barrett
On January 8, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina approved a $2 million settlement to be paid by Buncombe County, North Carolina, for the wrongful death of Michele Quantele Smiley, a 34-year-old mother of six children left to die in a ...
by David M. Reutter
A California federal district court approved a $53 million settlement in a class action lawsuit alleging women held by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) were subjected to “highly invasive body cavity searches” from March 5, 2008 to January 1, 2015. [See: PLN, Dec ...
by Jayson Hawkins
The New Jersey Department of Corrections had a policy of housing prisoners according to their gender assignment at birth, regardless of whether they are transgender or of any non-binary sexual orientation. As a result, when Sonia Doe (not her real name) was sentenced to prison, she was ...
by Chuck Sharman
A settlement was reached on May 11, 2021, in a censorship complaint filed in August 2020 against Sherburne County, Minnesota, and its Sheriff, Joel Brott, by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), the Florida nonprofit that publishes Prison Legal News (PLN) and Criminal Legal News (CLN).
Under ...
by Chuck Sharman
On September 21, 2021, the Indiana Department of Corrections (INDOC) agreed to a slate of policy reforms embodied in a consent decree to settle a censorship lawsuit filed by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of Prison Legal News (PLN)and Criminal Legal News ( ...
by David M. Reutter
On June 17, 2021, Southern Health Partners paid $750,000 to resolve a lawsuit alleging it failed to take proper steps in caring for a pretrial detainee who entered South Carolina’s Marlboro County Jail with a prescription drug addiction.
Roy Locklear, 30, had a history of drug ...
by Matt Clarke
On August 8, 2020, Corizon Health, Inc. agreed to pay $20,000 to settle its part of a federal lawsuit brought by an Arizona prisoner who suffered a partial foot amputation after Corizon delayed effective medical treatment.
Arizona state prisoner Edmund V. Powers fell 60 to 80 feet, ...