$1 Million Paid by Cuyahoga County for Detainee’s Preventable Suicide in Cleveland Jail
by Chuck Sharman
On December 1, 2025, the Chief Executive of Ohio’s Cuyahoga County put the last signature on a resolution authorizing a $1 million payout to settle claims filed by the estate of Nicholas Michael Colbert, a detainee who committed suicide at the County lockup in Cleveland in 2019.
Colbert’s death was the ninth in just 11 months that year, as the jail population mushroomed with arrestees from Cleveland and other municipalities in the County. They had signed new agreements with then-Chief Executive Armond Budish, only to watch jail conditions deteriorate so badly that a report by the U.S. Marshals Service ranked it among the “worst in the country,” as PLN reported. A federal judge agreed that the lockup was “horrific” when she sentenced Jail Director Ken Mills to nine months in prison on two misdemeanor counts of falsifying records and two misdemeanor counts of dereliction of duty. [See: PLN, Mar. 2019, p.12; and Feb. 2022, p.54.]
A veteran and father of four, Colbert, 36, was picked up for drug possession by Maple Heights cops and booked into the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center (CCCC) in May 2019. Like far too many Americans that decade, Colbert had become addicted to pain medication prescribed for a collarbone injury. He told jailers at booking that he had recently survived a heroin overdose and had tried to take his own life just five weeks earlier.
Yet he wasn’t placed on suicide watch. He wasn’t put in a mental health observation cell or even given a mental health evaluation. He got such a cursory screening that jailers left him in his sweatshirt with its drawstring in place. Unsurprisingly, Colbert used that to fatally hang himself; his corpse was discovered in the cell on his second afternoon in the jail.
With the aid of attorney Paul J. Cristallo of Weston Hurd LLP in Cleveland, a suit was filed on behalf of Colbert’s Estate by its Administrator, his brother Daniel Colbert, which Defendant officials with the County and the City of Maple Heights removed from state court to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in June 2021. Plaintiff subsequently consented to dismiss Maple Heights from the case before dismissing the entire complaint in August 2022.
The case was refiled in July 2023 under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, accusing Budish, Mills and CCCC guards of deliberate indifference to Colbert’s serious medical need, in violation of his Fourteenth Amendment due process rights and the Eighth Amendment guarantee of freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. The suit also sought to extend liability to the County for maintaining a de facto policy that gave rise to these constitutional violations, as provided under Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978).
Defendants employed by jail medical provider MetroHealth System were granted dismissal on August 26, 2024, when the district court agreed that the complaint was filed outside Ohio’s four-year statute of repose for medical claims. The following month, on September 25, 2024, individual-capacity claims were also dismissed against Budish and other officials, when the district court agreed that they were duplicative of the § 1983 claims against them in their official capacities. Also dismissed were claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. ch. 126 § 12101 et. seq., and the Rehabilitation Act, 29. U.S.C. § 701 et. seq; neither statute provides a cause of action for inadequate medical care, the district court reasoned. However, the Monell claim was not dismissed, since personal liability is not necessary to prove in order to sustain that claim. See: Colbert v. Cuyahoga Cty., 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 152191 (N.D. Ohio); and 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173672 (N.D. Ohio).
The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement, with a payout that included costs and fees for Plaintiff’s attorneys. “While Nick’s untimely death was surely tragic,” Cristallo told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “the family has faith that it caused necessary changes within the county jail for the benefit of others.” See: Resolution R-2025-0330, Cty. Council of Cuyahoga Cty., Ohio (2025); and Colbert v. Cuyahoga Cty., USDC (N.D. Ohio), Case No. 1:23-cv-01414.
Additional source: Cleveland Plain Dealer
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