Ten Million Dollars Later: What Dayton's Jail Settlements Say About Injury Claims Against the County

Published February 18, 2020 · Verdicts & Settlements

Most people never expect to need this post. Then a son is arrested on a Friday night, or a mother is booked on a minor charge, and the next phone call is from a hospital. Injuries inside a county jail are some of the hardest cases in injury law, and the legal rules that govern them are very different from the rules for a car crash or a fall at a store.

Earlier this month, Prison Legal News published an update, dated February 4, 2020, under the headline that Montgomery County, Ohio paid $10 million to settle jail lawsuits. The cases it describes, and the way they were brought, say a great deal about how families can hold a county accountable and where Ohio law stands in the way.

What the report describes

All of the following figures and facts come from the Prison Legal News report. Our office was not involved in any of these cases.

• $3.5 million, January 2019. The family of Robert A. Richardson Sr., 28, settled a wrongful-death suit. According to the report, jailers placed him face down, cuffed his hands behind his back, and knelt on his back.
• $5.6 million, June 2019. Joseph Guglielmo, a 61-year-old homeless veteran, settled with the county and its insurers. The report states that four jailers beat him in 2015 while two other guards blocked the view of the surveillance camera in front of his cell, and that he is permanently injured, uses a wheelchair, and needs full-time care.
• $187,500, late July 2019. Tonya Varney settled her federal suit after, according to the report, a sergeant shoved her into a cell in May 2017. She needed surgery to repair her injury, followed by physical therapy, and claimed lasting loss of hand function.
• $115,000, December 2018. Charles Wade settled claims that he was placed in a restraint chair, repeatedly pepper-sprayed, and kept in the chair for more than two hours.

The four settlements itemized in the article add up to about $9.4 million; the headline figure is $10 million. Either way, it is a large sum for one county over roughly a year. I wrote about the Richardson and Guglielmo settlements when they were announced, in last July's post on Montgomery County's jail settlements. This post looks at the legal framework behind them.

Why these were federal civil-rights cases

The suits the report identifies by case number were filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, which sits in Dayton. They were civil-rights cases under a federal statute, 42 U.S.C. 1983, which makes any person who, acting under government authority, deprives someone of a constitutional right "liable to the party injured."

The Constitution protects people in custody, including people who have not been convicted of anything, from excessive force and from deliberate indifference to serious medical needs. A jailer who kneels on a restrained man's back, beats a prisoner, or uses a restraint chair and pepper spray as punishment can be personally liable under Section 1983. A county can be responsible as well, generally when its own policies, customs, or failures in training or supervision caused the violation.

There is a reason these claims are brought under federal law. Ohio's political-subdivision immunity statute, R.C. Chapter 2744, does not apply to claims based on the Constitution or federal statutes. R.C. 2744.09(E) says so directly. That makes Section 1983 the main path to accountability when a county's employees abuse someone in custody.

Why ordinary negligence claims against the county usually fail

If a jail inmate is hurt by carelessness rather than deliberate misconduct, the picture is very different. Under R.C. 2744.02(A)(1), a county is generally immune from liability for injury or death connected to its governmental functions, and running a jail is a governmental function. The statute lists a handful of exceptions, but they rarely fit jail injuries. The exception for injuries caused by employee negligence and physical defects in government buildings, R.C. 2744.02(B)(4), expressly does not include jails, juvenile detention centers, workhouses, or other detention facilities.

Individual jail employees have their own immunity under R.C. 2744.03(A)(6), but it is not absolute. An employee loses that protection when he acts "with malicious purpose, in bad faith, or in a wanton or reckless manner." Serious beatings and dangerous restraint practices can meet that standard, which means a state-law claim against the individuals may sit alongside a federal civil-rights claim.

In plain terms: a slip on a wet floor in the county jail is very hard to bring as a claim. A beating, a dangerous restraint, or a guard who ignores a medical emergency is a different matter.

What wins these cases: evidence that disappears

Notice a detail in the Guglielmo report: guards allegedly blocked the camera. Jail video is often the most important evidence in a custody case, and everyone involved knows it. So are the use-of-force reports, the restraint-chair logs, cell-check records, medical-intake forms, nurse's notes, and the names of other inmates who saw what happened.

Much of that evidence is under the county's control, and some of it is kept only for a limited time. The first step in any of these cases is a formal demand that it be preserved. Our guide chapter on gathering evidence while it still exists explains how preservation letters work. In a custody case they matter even more, because the family has no access to the scene.

Medical records do the rest. Injuries like Mr. Guglielmo's, permanent and life-altering, are what drive the value of these claims, just as they do in any serious personal-injury case.

The deadlines are short and they overlap

Several clocks can run at once:

• Federal civil-rights claims arising in Ohio are generally subject to a two-year limitations period.
• State-law claims against a county or its employees generally must be brought within two years under R.C. 2744.04(A).
• Claims for assault or battery carry a one-year limitations period under R.C. 2305.111.
• Wrongful-death claims run two years from the date of death.

Our guide chapter on deadlines and the timeline of an Ohio injury case walks through these and the exceptions. When the defendant is the government, nothing about the case should wait.

What this means for you

• If a family member was seriously hurt or died in a county jail, the case is likely to be a federal civil-rights case, not an ordinary negligence claim. It needs a lawyer who understands both systems.
• Ask for the medical records and write down everything you were told, by whom, and when.
• Do not assume the jail's own investigation will preserve the video. Demand that it be preserved, in writing, right away.
• These results show that accountability is possible, and that serious, permanent injuries and deaths in custody can produce substantial recoveries.

You can learn more about how we approach claims against the government and wrongful death cases on our practice pages.