by David M. Reutter
A federal district court in Indiana awarded $21,525 to a prisoner on May 30, 2021, after granting partial summary judgment in a civil rights action he filed alleging battery by a guard at the state’s Pendleton Correctional Facility.
The lawsuit was filed pro …
by David M. Reutter
After guards at the Lake County Jail (LCJ) in Illinois were sued for using excessive force by tasering an unresisting prisoner, the parties reached a settlement for $90,000 on June 30, 2021.
The prisoner, Christopher Davis, was held at LCJ while awaiting sentencing …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
