New York Prisoner Awarded Almost $280,000 in Retaliation Claim Against Guards
Legal costs and fees awarded on January 6, 2025, nearly tripled a $100,000 jury verdict for New York state prisoner Crushaun Hundley in his retaliation claim against a pair of Elmira Correctional Facility guards. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Court upheld the verdict on August 21, 2024, in a ruling that also clarified an issue of law that arose when the jury returned a “split” verdict.
After a pat-down search turned up a weapon on him in December 2017, Hundley got into an altercation with guards Archie Frunzi and Corey May. According to the prisoner, the two guards “started punching him without any justification and banged his head on a metal desk,” as he recalled in the complaint he later filed. The beating broke one of his ribs. Once Hundley was handcuffed, one of the guards “pulled down his pants and shoved an object in his rectum.”
Frunzi and May denied using excessive force on Hundley or sexually assaulting him. A supervisor who was present during the incident, State Department of Corrections and Community Services guard Sgt. Thomas Mallare, reportedly said, “[T]his is what happens when you send letters up front threatening officers”—an apparent reference to grievances that Hundley had filed with prison administrators.
With the aid of attorneys from Sivin & Miller LLP in New York City, Hundley filed suit in federal court for the Western District of New York. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, he accused the guards of using excessive force, in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights. He also made a claim for retaliation in violation of his First Amendment rights, alleging that the guards had subjected him to retribution because of constitutionally protected grievances he filed.
The case went to trial in March 2023, at the conclusion of which the jury rejected the excessive force claim but found in Hundley’s favor on the retaliation claim. He was awarded $20,000 in compensatory damages plus $20,000 in punitive damages against Frunzi, $20,000 against May and $40,000 against Mallare.
The verdict was particularly noteworthy because, as Hundley’s complaint noted, his claim “turn[ed] largely [on] the credibility of a mentally-ill plaintiff with a history of making threats against corrections officers, who was admittedly carrying an illegal weapon at the time of the incident.”
Defendants filed post-trial motions to vacate or set aside the verdict, for judgment as a matter of law, and to alter or amend the judgment or for a new trial. But the district court denied them on July 14, 2023. Defendants appealed, contending that the jury’s split verdict was “ineluctably inconsistent.” How could jurors find that guards used no excessive force while also agreeing with Hundley that they retaliated against him? That is, they argued that “a jury finding that they did not use excessive force during the incident is equivalent to a finding that they acted in good faith … and, therefore, that their actions … could not have been retaliatory in nature.”
But the Second Circuit rejected that argument. The verdicts in the case were “general verdicts” and not special verdicts, the Court noted, so even if the jury’s decision was inconsistent that did not mean a new trial was required. Moreover, the jury was provided instructions by the district court which indicated “at least two independent ways in which the jury’s general verdicts can be reconciled.” First, jurors could have found that any adverse actions by the guards may have been retaliatory—not just their use of force but also the pat-down search which preceded that incident. Second, although jurors found the use of force was not excessive—i.e., not malicious and sadistic enough to support an Eighth Amendment claim—they still could have found it was in retaliation for Hundley’s grievances.
The Second Circuit also took care to distinguish its ruling in Baskerville v. Mulvaney, 411 F.3d 45 (2d Cir. 2005), which involved a similar legal issue but resulted in an opposite outcome due to different jury instructions in that case. Accordingly, the $100,000 verdict was affirmed. See: Hundley v. Frunzi, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 21111 (2d Cir.).
Following remand, the district court awarded Hundley an additional $172,882.40 in attorney fees plus costs of $6,880.13. That brought his total award in the case to $279,762.53. See: Hundley v. Frunzi, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1899 (W.D.N.Y.).
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