Christopher Zoukis's Blog - Posts Tagged "lawsuits"
Scam Draws Huge Volume of Lawsuits by Former Inmates of New Jersey County Jail
The first inkling clerks in a federal courthouse in Camden, New Jersey had that something might be seriously amiss came in August, when they started getting an unusual number of requests for a packet of legal forms and information prepared for persons wanting to file a pro se civil lawsuits (filed by individuals without the assistance of an attorney).
Within a month, to cope with a strong, ongoing demand, the clerks had to send the packets — usually produced in-house — out to a printer. But the long lines of people waiting to get the packets caused so much congestion in the courthouse hallways that the court clerks began giving them to the guards in the courthouse lobby to pass out to those seeking them.
Then came the lawsuits. Some handwritten, first a trickle and then a flood, seeking money damages for having spent time in the city’s notoriously overcrowded Camden County Correctional Facility. Some complained of having been jailed with three other inmates in a cell designed to house two prisoners; other complained of having had no bed spaces and sleeping on cell floors in rat-infested cellblocks.
And the lawsuits keep coming – as many as 50 in a single day, in a court that averages about 200 civil lawsuits filed per month. Over the span of a few months, around 1,800 filings came in, forcing the court to bring in workers from other district courts to deal with the avalanche of filings. Many of the submissions were invalid, failing to meet either the filing requirements or to state a claim on which the court could grant relief— for example, by failing to meet the two-year deadline for filing garden-variety injury claims, or by alleging harms that could not amount to a constitutional violation.
County officials eventually discovered what generated the tsunami of pro se lawsuits on the county jail’s conditions. Apparently, several people had been working the city’s streets, spreading the news that there was a class-action settlement authorizing cash payouts to anyone who had ever spent time in the overcrowded jail, which had been built to accommodate slightly more than 1,200 inmates but had for long stretches housed 1,800 or more. One account said at least one scammer claimed to have received a cash pay-out of $1,000 per day at the court, and offered to sell potential claimants the legal forms they would need to claim their recovery. Potential claimants likely felt they had a legitimate chance at compensation. There was, in fact, a long-running class action, filed in 2005, by inmates claiming conditions in the Camden jail were so bad as to violate their constitutional rights. But that case neither sought money damages nor had been settled.
In late October, the district judge posted an announcement that there was no class-action settlement or ready payments for the county jail’s ex-inmates, and a similar notice was soon inserted in the pro se form packets. When even those steps failed to stem the tide of claimants, the courthouse got a new notice from the judge denouncing the false rumor for wasting the time of both plaintiffs and court workers.
Within a month, to cope with a strong, ongoing demand, the clerks had to send the packets — usually produced in-house — out to a printer. But the long lines of people waiting to get the packets caused so much congestion in the courthouse hallways that the court clerks began giving them to the guards in the courthouse lobby to pass out to those seeking them.
Then came the lawsuits. Some handwritten, first a trickle and then a flood, seeking money damages for having spent time in the city’s notoriously overcrowded Camden County Correctional Facility. Some complained of having been jailed with three other inmates in a cell designed to house two prisoners; other complained of having had no bed spaces and sleeping on cell floors in rat-infested cellblocks.
And the lawsuits keep coming – as many as 50 in a single day, in a court that averages about 200 civil lawsuits filed per month. Over the span of a few months, around 1,800 filings came in, forcing the court to bring in workers from other district courts to deal with the avalanche of filings. Many of the submissions were invalid, failing to meet either the filing requirements or to state a claim on which the court could grant relief— for example, by failing to meet the two-year deadline for filing garden-variety injury claims, or by alleging harms that could not amount to a constitutional violation.
County officials eventually discovered what generated the tsunami of pro se lawsuits on the county jail’s conditions. Apparently, several people had been working the city’s streets, spreading the news that there was a class-action settlement authorizing cash payouts to anyone who had ever spent time in the overcrowded jail, which had been built to accommodate slightly more than 1,200 inmates but had for long stretches housed 1,800 or more. One account said at least one scammer claimed to have received a cash pay-out of $1,000 per day at the court, and offered to sell potential claimants the legal forms they would need to claim their recovery. Potential claimants likely felt they had a legitimate chance at compensation. There was, in fact, a long-running class action, filed in 2005, by inmates claiming conditions in the Camden jail were so bad as to violate their constitutional rights. But that case neither sought money damages nor had been settled.
In late October, the district judge posted an announcement that there was no class-action settlement or ready payments for the county jail’s ex-inmates, and a similar notice was soon inserted in the pro se form packets. When even those steps failed to stem the tide of claimants, the courthouse got a new notice from the judge denouncing the false rumor for wasting the time of both plaintiffs and court workers.
FCC Stops Defending Prison Phone Rate Cap Rules
Following a change in its makeup, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reversed its position on rate-cap rules for many inmate calling services which the agency adopted – by a narrow 3-2 party-line vote in October 2015.
Those rules have not yet taken effect, due to legal challenges pending before a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, and the FCC has served notice with the court that it will no longer defend key parts of those rules.
Until late January, the FCC and the Department of Justice had defended the rules against six pending lawsuits brought by inmate phone services providers, nine states, and two groups of state and local corrections officials— about the same number of states supported the rules, however. Opponents argued the FCC exceeded its authority in several ways: by extending rules already in effect for interstate calls to also cover intrastate calls (which make up about 80 percent of inmate calls), and by setting rates too low for providers to make a profit.
The FCC’s regulatory and litigation battles over capping prison and jail phone charges have been going on for years. In 2013, responding to a citizen petition, the agency placed interim caps on interstate calls (21¢ per minute for interstate calls and 25¢ per minute for collect interstate calls). At the same time, the FCC also began a rulemaking proceeding to look at curbs on charges for other services. In 2015, the agency lowered the per-minute rate for interstate phone calls to prisons to 11¢, with per-minute rates for jails ranging between 13¢ and 22¢, depending on size.
Besides attacking the coverage of intrastate calls as beyond the FCC’s lawful powers, some opponents of the rules, including major providers of inmate calling services, such as Securus Technologies and Global Tel Link , contended the agency’s method for calculating rates wrongly put them below their costs, especially since the FCC formula fails to take into account the sizable commission payments required by contracts with some state and local facilities – which some cap backers call “kickbacks.” Some sheriffs warned moving against those payments would lead them to drop prisoner phone services.
By late January, two FCC backers of the rule, both Democrats, had left the agency. The former agency head resigned and the term of another member expired. The Trump administration promptly filled the vacant chairmanship with a Republican already in the commission, Ajit Pai, an outspoken advocate of deregulation and a harsh critic of the prison phone rate caps, who noted the federal appeals court has acted to freeze the agency’s actions on prison rate caps four times.
Within days, the new chairman notified the court considering the challenges to the rate cap rules that the FCC would no longer defend major parts of the rules. The Department of Justice soon said it would follow the FCC’s lead.
At a Feb. 6 hearing before a three-judge panel of the appeals court, the remaining Democratic FCC member filed a written statement stressing the importance of phone calls to those incarcerated and their families, and the FCC had turned over part of its scheduled time to a lawyer representing advocates of prison rate caps.
Those rules have not yet taken effect, due to legal challenges pending before a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, and the FCC has served notice with the court that it will no longer defend key parts of those rules.
Until late January, the FCC and the Department of Justice had defended the rules against six pending lawsuits brought by inmate phone services providers, nine states, and two groups of state and local corrections officials— about the same number of states supported the rules, however. Opponents argued the FCC exceeded its authority in several ways: by extending rules already in effect for interstate calls to also cover intrastate calls (which make up about 80 percent of inmate calls), and by setting rates too low for providers to make a profit.
The FCC’s regulatory and litigation battles over capping prison and jail phone charges have been going on for years. In 2013, responding to a citizen petition, the agency placed interim caps on interstate calls (21¢ per minute for interstate calls and 25¢ per minute for collect interstate calls). At the same time, the FCC also began a rulemaking proceeding to look at curbs on charges for other services. In 2015, the agency lowered the per-minute rate for interstate phone calls to prisons to 11¢, with per-minute rates for jails ranging between 13¢ and 22¢, depending on size.
Besides attacking the coverage of intrastate calls as beyond the FCC’s lawful powers, some opponents of the rules, including major providers of inmate calling services, such as Securus Technologies and Global Tel Link , contended the agency’s method for calculating rates wrongly put them below their costs, especially since the FCC formula fails to take into account the sizable commission payments required by contracts with some state and local facilities – which some cap backers call “kickbacks.” Some sheriffs warned moving against those payments would lead them to drop prisoner phone services.
By late January, two FCC backers of the rule, both Democrats, had left the agency. The former agency head resigned and the term of another member expired. The Trump administration promptly filled the vacant chairmanship with a Republican already in the commission, Ajit Pai, an outspoken advocate of deregulation and a harsh critic of the prison phone rate caps, who noted the federal appeals court has acted to freeze the agency’s actions on prison rate caps four times.
Within days, the new chairman notified the court considering the challenges to the rate cap rules that the FCC would no longer defend major parts of the rules. The Department of Justice soon said it would follow the FCC’s lead.
At a Feb. 6 hearing before a three-judge panel of the appeals court, the remaining Democratic FCC member filed a written statement stressing the importance of phone calls to those incarcerated and their families, and the FCC had turned over part of its scheduled time to a lawyer representing advocates of prison rate caps.
Appeals Court: Prison Litigation Reform Act Doesn’t Apply to Suits Filed by Ex-Prisoners
A three-judge panel of a federal appeals court has ruled that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) applies only to lawsuits filed by people who are incarcerated at the time they file the lawsuit, not to those formerly incarcerated.
On May 19, in Olivas v. Nevada, the 9th Circuit panel reinstated a lawsuit brought by Dario Olivas, a former inmate in Nevada’s High Desert State Prison, that he filed against the prison, one corrections officer that was named, and 10 more unnamed ones.
In July 2012, Olivas was eating in the prison dining hall when a fight broke out nearby. Nevada equips its corrections officers with shotguns loaded with birdshot — one of the only states that does so. One officer quickly fired at the fighting inmates. Olivas, who wasn’t involved in the fight, was hit by pellets in his upper body, face and eye. As a result of that, and the allegedly inadequate medical treatment of the injury, he lost sight in one eye and was permanently disfigured.
After being released almost two years later, acting as his own lawyer, Olivas filed a state court lawsuit, alleging his injuries were due to unconstitutional actions of prison officers and violations of various state laws. After the case was moved to the federal district court, the presiding judge reviewed the case using procedures set in the PLRA.
Adopted by Congress in 1995, the PLRA was designed to crack down on frivolous lawsuits by creating new requirements for prisoner lawsuits, in order to ease the caseload burdens of courts. One section of the new law disallows filing of claims that are malicious, frivolous, don’t state a claim on which relief can be granted, or which seek monetary damages from an immune defendant.
PLRA also prohibits prisoner-filed lawsuits over prison conditions unless the inmate has first exhausted available administrative remedies. The PLRA doesn’t specify what administrative remedies a state must provide, but the Supreme Court has clearly held they must be completed before a prisoner’s lawsuit may be heard.
Finding the case failed to meet PLRA standards, the judge then dismissed the federal and constitutional claims, and sent the state law claims to a state court, which soon dismissed them as well. He did allow Olivas a chance to amend his lawsuit, however. Now aided by counsel, Olivas renewed his case, claiming the officers intended to harm him.
The revised complaint then came back to the judge for another PLRA review, and was again found deficient. The case could not go forward, the judge ruled, because Olivas had not offered any basis for showing intent to harm him. Instead, the court viewed the shotgun injury as an unintentional consequence of a good-faith effort to restore order.
But when the dismissal went to the federal appeals court, the three-judge panel focused on a new question: whether PLRA screening was appropriate for a lawsuit filed by a former inmate, not a current prisoner. Based on the statute’s definition of “prisoner,” they decided it was not, overriding the lower court’s dismissal and reviving Olivas’ case. Because Olivas was not in custody at the time he filed the lawsuit, it was wrong for the lower court to screen it for compliance with PLRA requirements.
On May 19, in Olivas v. Nevada, the 9th Circuit panel reinstated a lawsuit brought by Dario Olivas, a former inmate in Nevada’s High Desert State Prison, that he filed against the prison, one corrections officer that was named, and 10 more unnamed ones.
In July 2012, Olivas was eating in the prison dining hall when a fight broke out nearby. Nevada equips its corrections officers with shotguns loaded with birdshot — one of the only states that does so. One officer quickly fired at the fighting inmates. Olivas, who wasn’t involved in the fight, was hit by pellets in his upper body, face and eye. As a result of that, and the allegedly inadequate medical treatment of the injury, he lost sight in one eye and was permanently disfigured.
After being released almost two years later, acting as his own lawyer, Olivas filed a state court lawsuit, alleging his injuries were due to unconstitutional actions of prison officers and violations of various state laws. After the case was moved to the federal district court, the presiding judge reviewed the case using procedures set in the PLRA.
Adopted by Congress in 1995, the PLRA was designed to crack down on frivolous lawsuits by creating new requirements for prisoner lawsuits, in order to ease the caseload burdens of courts. One section of the new law disallows filing of claims that are malicious, frivolous, don’t state a claim on which relief can be granted, or which seek monetary damages from an immune defendant.
PLRA also prohibits prisoner-filed lawsuits over prison conditions unless the inmate has first exhausted available administrative remedies. The PLRA doesn’t specify what administrative remedies a state must provide, but the Supreme Court has clearly held they must be completed before a prisoner’s lawsuit may be heard.
Finding the case failed to meet PLRA standards, the judge then dismissed the federal and constitutional claims, and sent the state law claims to a state court, which soon dismissed them as well. He did allow Olivas a chance to amend his lawsuit, however. Now aided by counsel, Olivas renewed his case, claiming the officers intended to harm him.
The revised complaint then came back to the judge for another PLRA review, and was again found deficient. The case could not go forward, the judge ruled, because Olivas had not offered any basis for showing intent to harm him. Instead, the court viewed the shotgun injury as an unintentional consequence of a good-faith effort to restore order.
But when the dismissal went to the federal appeals court, the three-judge panel focused on a new question: whether PLRA screening was appropriate for a lawsuit filed by a former inmate, not a current prisoner. Based on the statute’s definition of “prisoner,” they decided it was not, overriding the lower court’s dismissal and reviving Olivas’ case. Because Olivas was not in custody at the time he filed the lawsuit, it was wrong for the lower court to screen it for compliance with PLRA requirements.
