On November 13, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld a jury award of more than $8.7 million to the Estate of detainee who died in Utah’s Davis County Jail. In its ruling, the Court agreed that jail Nurse Marvin Anderson and other County officials were ...
by Douglas Ankney
On February 7, 2025, California’s Sacramento County made a $600,000 offer of judgment that was accepted by the Plaintiffs in a suit filed over a detainee’s murder at the County lockup in 2019. The Estate of Bryan Debbs had earlier accepted another $600,000 settlement offer from the ...
by Douglas Ankney
A volunteer minister took a dustup with Georgia jailers over baptism to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which agreed on September 16, 2024, that he had been subjected to impermissible viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. The relevant policies adopted ...
by Douglas Ankney
Private prison and jail medical provider Wellpath, LLC has announced a plan to exit bankruptcy proceedings, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, May 2025, p.56.] The plan offers some relief to prisoners or their survivors who have successfully sued Wellpath for causing their injuries or ...
by Douglas Ankney
On October 11, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed dismissal of Connecticut prisoner’s complaint over an assault he suffered in a Virginia lockup where he was temporarily transferred five years earlier. The Court found that Joe Baltas raised a triable fact issue ...
by Douglas Ankney
For subjecting him to sexual harassment, the state of Missouri paid a jury award of more than $1.2 million in damages, plus legal fees and costs to former Kansas City Reentry Center Deputy Warden Bryant Holmes, after a state appellate court upheld the verdict on August 20, ...
by Douglas Ankney
In a maddening decision issued on July 16, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit managed to dismiss the excessive-force claim of a Colorado prisoner shot by a guard despite being shackled. Conveniently avoiding the merits of Brian Estrada’s suit, the Court decided ...
by Douglas Ankney
In what was otherwise a disappointing ruling for a Maryland prisoner, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held on June 14, 2024, that a prisoner need not exhaust administrative remedies before filing suit accusing officials of sexual misconduct that is not specified in ...
by Douglas Ankney
On September 27, 2024, the state of New York agreed to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit that alleged that the state had violated the Eighth Amendment rights of state prisoner Wonder Williams by keeping him isolated in administrative segregation (Ad Seg) for nearly nine years.
The ...
by Douglas Ankney
As PLN reported 25 years ago, the New York City Department of Correction (DOC) was accused in a suit filed by attorneys with the Legal Aid Society of denying educational opportunities to young people incarcerated at the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex. [See: PLN, May 2000, ...
