Jail or Prison Injury and Wrongful Death
Jails and prisons exist to house individuals suspected of crimes who are awaiting trial and individuals who have been convicted of crimes and are serving out their sentences. The United States Constitution requires that jails and prisons not pose undue risks to the personal health and safety of individuals in custody. As such, jail and prison officials are obligated to provide safeguards to those individuals under their supervision. When an individual is injured or dies due to the failure of jail or prison officials to protect the safety of the pre-trial detainees or inmates under their supervision, those officials may be held liable for their misconduct. This misconduct may include failing to monitor an inmate’s medical condition, failing to determine medication needs upon intake, failing to provide medical attention, failing to protect inmates from violent inmates, or failing to maintain a suicide watch.
GLG’s lawyers have successfully represented numerous clients who were injured while in custody or on behalf of families of those who suffered death while in jail or prison.
Mr. Grenier has successfully handled multiple in-custody death cases against Frederick County, Maryland, all of which were highly publicized in the press. In the past two years alone, he recovered substantial sums for the families of three separate suicide victims, each of whom had committed suicide in the Frederick County, Maryland Detention Center due to the misconduct and failures of its correctional officers. Most recently he recovered a very substantial amount for the family of a man who committed suicide in the Los Angeles County, California, Detention Center, as the result of numerous acts of misconduct by members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office. In mid-2015, Mr. Grenier was lead counsel in a jury trial in the Eastern District of New York (Central Islip), on behalf of a man who attempted suicide while in the custody of Suffolk County, New York law enforcement. During the second week of trial, and just before closing arguments, the defendants settled the case for just under $3.6 million.
In a tragic case in New Jersey, Mr. Grenier represented the family of a teenage boy who was essentially rendered a vegetable as a result of attempting to hang himself when jail guards refused to give him proper medical treatment for his heroin and methadone withdrawal symptoms. After months of litigation against three different police departments, Mr. Grenier secured a multi-million dollar settlement providing for potentially $26 million in payments over the young man’s life expectancy.
Mr. Grenier obtained a confidential seven-figure settlement from both the State of Maryland and a Denver, Colorado halfway house for the family of a young woman who was brutally raped and murdered after the State of Maryland illegally sent a convicted violent felon, who was barely two years into a twenty year prison sentence, unsupervised on a Greyhound Bus to the halfway house. Mr. Grenier argued, successfully, that these acts were a violation of the Interstate Compact, which governs the interstate transfer of parolees and probationers, and that Maryland’s own sovereign immunity did not apply outside of its own borders.
Mr. Grenier obtained a $1.425 million settlement from the County of Sacramento, California, for the family of a 26 year old man who, while incarcerated as a pretrial detainee, repeatedly begged for medical treatment for stomach pain. His requests were ignored, and he died in agony on the cold concrete, the result of an easily treatable peptic duodenal ulcer.
Mr. Grenier successfully settled a case against the Commonwealth of Virginia, on behalf of the family of a 14 year old mentally ill, mentally retarded boy who died after being restrained by a group of guards in a juvenile facility. The parties settled for $1.25 million.
Mr. Grenier successfully settled a case against the State of Maryland, involving the tragic suicide of a 15 year old girl in a juvenile facility, who had expressed suicidal ideations to a State employee, who did nothing to take precautions to prevent the subsequent suicide. The parties settled for $550,000.00.
Please contact GLG and we will be happy to review with you – at absolutely no charge – your particular rights and remedies.