The Third Circuit held that in claims alleging the malicious use of force by prison guards the wantonness of the attack, rather than the degree of injury suffered, is the dispositive issue for courts reviewing such claims on summary judgment.
Pennsylvania state prisoner Alan Brooks filed suit claiming that prison ...
by Steven Fama, et. al.
Subtitled a "Comprehensive Practice Manual" for California prisoners, the new 3rd edition of the California State Prisoners Handbook easily lives up to its billing. Covering in detail all aspects of California prisoners' interaction with the "correctional experience" from reception to parole, this 900 page soft-back ...
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 (PLRA), a federal court is not deprived of jurisdiction to hear a prisoner's civil rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 if he has not first exhausted administrative remedies. In so doing, the Eighth ...
AU.S. district court jury in Washington, D.C., awarded female D.C. Jail prisoner Sunday Daskalea $350,000 in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages against the District and the Department of Corrections Director, Margaret Moore, for Daskalea's having been sexually assaulted and forced by guards to perform a striptease in ...
by John E. Dannenberg
Holding that a private corporation acting under color of federal authority may be sued under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 US 388, 397, (1971), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the District Court's dismissal of John ...
by John E. Dannenberg
A federal district court in Wisconsin held that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) cap on recovery of attorney fees in successful prisoner civil rights complaints violated Fifth Amendment equal protection principles and determined that $80,000 in attorney fees was proportionately related to the $40,000 total ...
PLRA Limits Guard's Liability For Prisoner's Attorney Fees
by John E. Dannenberg
The US District Court, SD Ohio ruled that the Prison Litigation Reform Act's (PLRA) 150% cap restricting a prevailing prisoner plaintiff's attorney fees limited only how much the defendant was liable to pay, not how much the prisoner's ...
by John E. Dannenberg
The United States District Court, Eastern District of CA, held that a "private settlement" agreement to cap the El Dorado (California) County jail population was not a "consent decree" as defined in the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), and that it was therefore immune from attack ...
Prison Doctor Wins $654,471 In Retaliation Suit
by John E. Dannenberg
Dr. Terence Allen, prison physician at Halawa (Hawai'i) prison, was awarded $111,000 in damages plus $543,360 in attorney fees/costs against prison officials who retaliated against him for speaking out on prisoner abuse at Halawa between 1987 and 1995.
Based ...
The state of Louisiana agreed to a settlement in federal court September 7, 2000 designed to radically alter the way it operates its juvenile prisons. The agreement was intended to settle several lawsuits against the state, including one by the U.S. Dept. of Justice, which charged that teenage detainees were ...
