by David M. Reutter
In September 2021, after closing out a $10 million settlement in a class-action suit alleging its county jail violated the privacy rights of detainees by making their expunged criminal records available online, Bucks County, Pennsylvania was left with about $80,000 in unclaimed funds when fewer claims ...
by David M. Reutter
Fresh off a court victory that held “state contracts with a public entity” require private firms hired by the Vermont Department of Corrections (DOC) to release records relating to legal actions and settlements, PLN’s publisher, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), sued Centurion of Vermont ...
by David M. Reutter
On June 10, 2022, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (DCS) agreed to pay $40,000 and make several policy changes to resolve a lawsuit filed by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), publisher of PLN, challenging the agency’s publications policy.
HRDC sued DCS in federal ...
David M. Reutter
For prison officials and healthcare providers who refused to grant an Illinois prisoner an exemption from wearing “black box restraints” during medical transport, a federal district court in the state also refused to find an Eighth Amendment violation, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh ...
by David M. Reutter
In a decision published on June 21, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held a guard was not deliberately indifferent to a prisoner’s symptoms of heroin withdrawal when the prisoner died from pills she smuggled into Illinois’ Champaign County Satellite Jail (CCSJ). ...
by David M. Reutter
On February 8, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit denied a petition for the full court to rehear en banc a decision by a three-judge panel three months earlier vacating a lower court’s $8 million award to an Illinois prisoner against private ...
by David M. Reutter
Understanding how the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) impacts prisoner civil rights litigation can be a time intensive undertaking. John Boston’s new book, The PLRA Handbook, makes that undertaking a simple task and answers virtually any question one may have on the topic.
When I first ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has decided that when a prisoner alleges sexual assault by a prison official, the only fact he needs to prove is whether the sexual assault occurred and not that it was also carried out with excessive force ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 20, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed an order finding officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) are immune to civil rights claims for damages resulting from regulations they adopted while exercising authority delegated them by ...
by David M. Reutter
In April 2021, Illinois’ DuPage County Jail (DCJ) and its Psychiatric Services Medical Director agreed to pay $275,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by detainee Dean Fuerstenberg, who attempted suicide at the jail in November 2013, sustaining permanent injuries.
In his amended civil rights complaint, Fuerstenberg ...
