by David M. Reutter
On March 17, 2021, a federal district court in Tennessee awarded a $500,000 default judgment, plus another $60,863.75 in attorney’s fees, to a woman who alleged in a lawsuit that her probation officer sexually assaulted her.
The order from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern ...
Just in Time for the ‘Omicron Winter’
by David M. Reutter
On November 10, 2021, one day before first detection of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, a federal district court in Hawaii approved a settlement in a lawsuit filed over the response to the pandemic by ...
by David M. Reutter
On October 12, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed a district court’s judgment in favor of Michigan prisoners who sought a kosher meal with meat and dairy on the Jewish Sabbath and four important Jewish holidays, as well as cheesecake on ...
by David M. Reutter
Under a settlement agreement reached on August 23, 2021, officials at the Prince George’s County Jail in Maryland agreed to a raft of safety protocols overseen for at least four months by an independent monitor in order to protect detainees and prisoners from COVID-19.
The agreement ...
by David M. Reutter
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held on August 25, 2021, that a district court erred in dismissing a state prisoner’s pro se lawsuit by failing to make a finding that the plaintiff willfully abused the judicial process or otherwise conducted the litigation ...
by David M. Reutter
On August 26, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with a district court that an Ohio state prisoner must be transported to a medical center for neurological imaging that may bolster his challenge to his capital murder conviction.
The prisoner, Raymond ...
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 se in U.S. ...
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 and housed in ...
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 ...
