$450,000 Paid for Michigan Jail Detainee’s Fentanyl Death, Incarcerated Husband Prevails in Claim for Part of Payout
On September 30, 2025, the story of one woman’s long battle with drugs reached its conclusion, when the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ordered distribution of proceeds from a settlement it had previously approved between the City of Troy and the Estate of Megan Miller, who was found dead of a fentanyl overdose three days after being placed in the city’s lockup on a probation violation.
When detectives with the Special Investigation Unit of the Troy Police Department picked her up for an alleged probation violation on July 16, 2020, they wanted to interview Miller, 41, about the death of her five-month-old child a month earlier. Though she advised jailers at intake that she was high on cocaine and heroin, she was left in a cell without medical care, according to the complaint later filed on her behalf. On July 19, she was found dead of what an autopsy later concluded was fentanyl poisoning. She had taken the drug earlier that same day, though it was unclear where she got it.
With the aid of attorneys with Johnson Law PLC in Detroit, Miller’s surviving husband, Steven Gillman, filed suit as personal representative of her Estate in 2021. Proceeding under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, he lodged claims under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments against Julie Green-Hernandez and fellow Troy jailers for their failure to protect Miller from the fatal drug dose, as well as their deliberate indifference to her resulting serious medical need. A companion claim was lodged against the City for supervisory liability, plus state-law negligence claims.
At that point, Gillman was incarcerated by the state Department of Corrections (DOC) at Macomb County Correctional Facility, serving a sentence for assault with intent to do great bodily harm by strangulation, unlawful imprisonment, plus three counts of manufacturing controlled substances. He was then replaced as Administrator for the estate by Royal Oak attorney Darren Findling; according to a later filing that Gillman made in the case, an attorney from Johnson Law promised that this was necessary to have someone advocate on his behalf.
That advocacy didn’t happen. After the City of Troy approved a $450,000 settlement in July 2025, Johnson Law attorneys filed a proposed order distributing one-third, or $137,321.54, in attorney’s fees to the firm, plus another $38,035.37 in costs. The proposed order also asked the district court to disburse $9,276.97 to Findling’s firm, Probate Pro, for establishing the estates of Miller and her deceased child. It further proposed that 50% of the remaining $265,366.12 be distributed to Miller’s adult daughter, Savannah Miller, with the other half split between Miller’s surviving sisters, Lindsay Dolson and Sandy Marecki.
Conspicuously, Gillman was to receiving nothing. A later filing by Johnson Law attorneys on September 5, 2025, argued this was justified because (a) his marriage to Miller lasted only seven months and (b) he was imprisoned—so under Michigan law, the DOC could attach up to 90% of his assets to recoup the costs of his incarceration.
When the district court ultimately ruled, it acknowledged that the state has “no common-law right to recover damages for a wrongfully caused death,” per Lewis v. Charter Twp. of Flint, 767 F. App’x 59 (6th Cir. 2019). Instead, distribution of the settlement proceeds was governed by the state Wrongful Death Act, Mich. Comp. Laws § 600.2922. And “[t]he only reasonable measure of the actual destruction caused is to assess the type of relationship the decedent had with [each] claimant,” the district court declared, citing In re Claim of Carr, 471 N.W.2d.
No one objected that Gillman should be reimbursed the $10,140 that he spent on Miller’s burial. At a hearing to determine the remaining distributions, Marecki did not appear, so the district court awarded her nothing from the settlement. Dolson appeared but admitted that Miller “was no longer in Dolson’s life for some 25 years,” so nothing was awarded to her, either. Savannah Miller’s testimony was credited that she and her mother had reconnected in later years and bonded when both were pregnant at around the same time. Gillman’s payment for Miller’s burial was credited for establishing the closeness of their relationship, along with the deceased child they shared and his testimony that they had been romantically involved since she was a teenager.
The district court thus awarded half of the proceeds to Miller’s daughter and half to Gillman, after making all other payments to Johnson Law and Probate Pro as provided in contracts signed with them. The argument that the prisoner should get nothing because the state might seize most of it was rejected as “speculative” because the statute “does not provide for a seizure of the entirety of Gillman’s assets, rather not more than 90%.” Importantly, the district court declared that he “should not lose out entirely simply because much of his distribution may go to his jailers.” See: Findling v. Green-Hernandez, USDC (E.D. Mich.), Case No. 2:21-cv-12762.
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Related legal cases
Findling v. Green-Hernandez
| Cite | USDC (E.D. Mich.), Case No. 2:21-cv-12762 |
|---|---|
| Level | District Court |
Lewis v. Charter Twp. of Flint
| Year | 2019 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 767 F. App’x 59 (6th Cir. 2019) |
| Level | Court of Appeals |