Record $42.75 Million Verdict in Louisiana Detainee’s Death in LaSalle Jail
by Chuck Sharman
In one of the largest verdicts ever returned in a suit over an American jail death, a federal jury in Louisiana awarded $42.75 million on October 20, 2025, to the Estate of Erie Moore, Sr., who died almost 10 years earlier while detained at the Richwood Correctional Center (RCC), a private jail owned and operated at the time for the City of Monroe by LaSalle Corrections.
According to the complaint later filed on his behalf, Moore’s death traced in part to a bizarre incident in October 2012, when he followed a state trooper and pulled him over, making threats and suicidal comments in what the trooper ascertained was an attempt at “suicide by cop.” That resulted in a notice to local law enforcement in Monroe, where Moore lived.
But the notice never made it to the Monroe cop who picked up Moore early on the morning of October 12, 2015, “for disturbing the peace by using foul language and acting erratically at a doughnut shop,” the complaint recalled. Moore, 57, was taken into custody and delivered to RCC, but his booking wasn’t completed because his behavior was too erratic.
Jailers put Moore in a lockdown cell to be held in isolation. But they soon added another detainee, Vernon White, 28, after breaking up his fight with a third detainee. That night, guards maced Moore to make him stop kicking his door. They maced him again the next morning after he and White got into a scuffle; they said Moore was acting “crazy.”
After another altercation between the two detainees, White was found on the floor. Guards entered the cell to extract him, macing Moore a third time and striking the back of his head, knocking him to the floor. Once White was out of the cell—he later died of his injuries—six guards returned to extract Moore, putting him in a bear hug and slamming him head-first to the floor. He wasn’t moving when they picked him up again, and a guard slipped and Moore’s hit head the floor one more time.
The next hour and a half Moore spent in the “four-way” area of the jail, where no one attempted to treat him or even take his vital signs, the complaint said. There were also no surveillance cameras in the area. So there was no record of what happened before deputies from Ouichita Parish arrived to transport him to a schedule hearing there and found him restrained and unresponsive, his head bleeding. Because of those injuries, the Ouichita Parish Correctional Center refused to admit Moore when he arrived, sending him instead to a hospital, where he died of fatal brain injuries on November 14, 2015.
The Parish coroner ruled the death a homicide, but no one was charged. Monroe stopped contracting for RCC, which LaSalle now operates for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, with the aid of Shreveport attorney Nelson W. Cameron, Moore’s survivors sued LaSalle and Ouichita Parish personnel in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in July 2016. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, they alleged violations of his Fourth and Eighth Amendment rights with excessive use of force, as well as training and supervision failures by LaSalle that demonstrated deliberate indifference to the serious risk of harm that resulted—and which ultimately left Moore dead.
After discovery, the district court granted Defendants’ motion to dismiss the deliberate indifference and excessive force claims. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed that ruling in July 2022. As PLN reported, the Court found that “the record in this case is beyond troubling,” reinstating the claims and denying LaSalle derivative sovereign immunity. [See: PLN, May 2023, p.18.]
The case proceeded to trial, at the conclusion of which jurors found LaSalle, its jail and staff 90% liable for Moore’s death, the City of Monroe bearing the remaining 10% of the blame. Moore’s survivors—three adult children—were awarded $19.5 million in compensatory damages, plus $23.25 million in punitive damages. See: Moore v. LaSalle Corr. LLC, USDC (W.D. La.), Case No. 3:16-cv-1007
“The jury found the guards continued to use excessive force against Mr. Moore in the camera-less area,” Los Angeles attorney Max A. Schoening told AP News. He and fellow Qureshi Law attorney Omar Qureshi joined the Moore family’s legal team for the trial.
Defendants moved the district court to bifurcate the verdict between compensatory and punitive components, apparently planning to appeal the latter for the jury’s failure to make a separate apportionment of blame from that made for its compensatory damages verdict. On October 3, 2025, the district court agreed that “evidence associated with punitive damages … should not be permitted until the second phase of trial.” It further ordered that when the matter is heard, “Plaintiffs may reference the possibility of punitive damages in their opening statements but may not elaborate further or discuss Defendants’ financial condition.” See: Moore v. LaSalle Corr. LLC, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 196709 (W.D. La.).
Even if they succeed in striking down the punitive damage award, what remains is “the largest compensatory damage award I have ever heard of,” according to Carnegie Mellon University professor Jay Aronson, who wrote Death in Custody: How America Ignores the Truth and What We Can Do about It. No appeal has been filed, but PLN will continue to update case developments.
Additional source: AP News
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Related legal case
Moore v. LaSalle Corr. LLC
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 196709 (W.D. La.) |
| Level | District Court |