A case was settled out of court for half a million dollars. Seems it was decided to settle after Cook County, Illinois spent a little over a 1/3 million in legal fees to defend the case which had yet to go to trial. The county decided to settle the case because the cost of litigation to the end was estimated to be three times the settlement. The plaintiffs lawyer gets a third to a half of the half million (estimates as the exact deal isn't public). The case? Schmude -v- Cook County. Seems Schmude was an unemployed alchoholic housepainter (how such can be unemployed these days is amazing) who was separated from his wife who had previously obtained an order of protection against him. He was arrested in a violent confrontation with sherrif's deputies who were called to the scene by the wife because Schmude was throwing rocks at their house. The wrongful death suit alleges that three deputies beat Schmude in the county lockup causing his death. The three deputies were acquitted in a hilarious trial pitting the judge against the prosecutors (said judge has since become an ex-judge and taken up his former practice as a criminal defense attorney). The pathologist was ready to testify in the cival trial the same as he had in the criminal trial against the deputies that Schmude died as a result of a fall where his hardened liver punctured his enlarged spleen. Schmude's wife's malpractice case against the hospital where Schmude was taken after his fall remains open. (Yah, the deputies killed him and so did the hospital.)2 responses total.
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I don't know anything about this specific case, but in general, a jail or prison is responsible for the welfare of its inmates. Notwithstanding that human nature in an uncontrolled prison environment leads guards into brutal behavior toward prisoners, the management is expected to put in place training and medical care and other systems to minimize this. In the 1980s, I was an Ingham County Commissioner. About a year before I was elected, a young man named Loveless was sent to the jail for the first time in his life. One of the risks of group living (military, jail, college, whatever) is that people who haven't been exposed to it before come down with meningitis. This is a usual and expected development, and this type of meningitis is curable with antibiotics. It isn't supposed to be fatal any more. However, as it happened, the Ingham County Jail's medical services were provided (at substantial cost) by one elderly physician who rarely visited the jail or examined any prisoners. When Loveless got sick, he repeatedly filled out the form to ask for medical care, and presumably the forms landed in the doctor's overflowing jail mailbox, ignored. Loveless wrote to his mother to tell her he was sick and the doctor wouldn't see him. His mother contacted her county commissioner, Grady Porter. Grady Porter called up the sheriff and asked him to send a doctor to see Loveless. So finally, the doctor was prevailed upon to make an exception and actually go to visit somebody in the jail. The doctor's examination was so cursory that he either didn't notice, or didn't realize the significance, of Loveless's stiff neck, the classic symptom of meningitis. He gave Loveless some aspirin. And then the doctor, his duty done, went on vacation for two weeks, and provided no one to cover the jail for him while he was gone. Loveless proceeded to get sicker and sicker. He started eating magazines and making a lot of weird noises. His dementia was so annoying to the guards and other prisoners that he was moved to solitary confinement. Eventually, he died. When I became county commissioner about a year later, this doctor was not only still the sole medical care for the jail -- he was asking for a raise! The newly elected county board fired him. Loveless's mother sued the county for a million dollars. We settled out of court for $250,000.
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