by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held on August 24, 2021, that two Michigan prison employees were not entitled to qualified immunity in a lawsuit alleging they were deliberately indifferent to a prisoner’s safety.
The case involved an October 15, 2015, incident in ...
by David M. Reutter
A Bloomberg Equality report published on January 11, 2022, gave little hope that the omicron variant behind a resurgence in the COVID-19 pandemic would spare immigrant detainees held for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with 1,254 people in isolation out of 22,142 in custody, a ...
Company Walks From Similar Case in Maine
by David M. Reutter
In November 2021, a year after a federal district court in California approved a $900,000 settlement in a class-action lawsuit alleging Securus Technologies, Inc. unlawfully recorded privileged calls between detainees and attorneys, the prison phone giant was still fighting ...
by David M. Reutter
On July 8, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused a request to rehear en banc a decision by a three-judge panel of the Court that three months earlier affirmed a grant of qualified immunity to a guard who monitored phone calls ...
by David M. Reutter
On June 9, 2021, the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal to a decision handed down by the state’s First District Court of Appeal on March 29, 2021, reinstating most charges that a trial court had dismissed against four prisoners involved in a riot ...
by David M. Reutter
In a ruling on March 30, 2021, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that prison officials were entitled to qualified immunity because it was not clearly established that a prisoner had a right to fair notice of a security detention hearing.
The Court’s opinion was ...
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, ...
by David M. Reutter
On December 11, 2021, New Mexico’s First Judicial District Court, County of Santa Fe, denied a motion to dismiss a suit filed by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of Prison Legal News (PLN) and Criminal Legal News (CLN), against Centurion Correctional Healthcare of New ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 14, 2020, a federal judge in Colorado refused to set aside a judgment for a state prisoner who won $180,002 the year before when a jury agreed that guards retaliated against him for exercising “his right to grieve/complain.” Then the court added another award ...
