Tag: lawsuits

‘Reprehensible and Plainly Unconstitutional’: Child Welfare Agents Took Their Kids. Now They’re Suing.

Last July, Josh Sabey’s and Sarah Perkins’ two young children were seized by child welfare officials in the middle of the night without a warrant. Because of a minor injury to their youngest child, the Massachusetts Department of Families officials attempted to keep custody of the children for nearly four months. The couple has now filed a lawsuit, arguing that the state’s seizure of their children was “reprehensible and plainly unconstitutional.”

“The officials had no warrant to enter the Sabeys’ home or seize the young Sabey children,” the 33-page complaint states. “And there was no plausible imminent threat that could justify entering the home and seizing the sleeping toddler and infant from their loving parents.”

On July 12th, 2022, the Sabeys’ youngest child, 3-month-old Cal—named in the lawsuit as C.S. 2—developed a high fever, leading Sarah to take him to the emergency room at the advice of the family’s pediatrician. At the hospital, Cal was diagnosed with a respiratory infection. During an X-ray to search for pneumonia, doctors found a small, almost-healed fracture on Cal’s rib—an injury many doctors view as a sign of child abuse.

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NEW YORK’S IMPRISONED WOMEN BRAVE RISKS TO SUE SEXUAL ABUSERS UNDER NEW LAW

Kim Brown says she met a lieutenant at New York’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in 1996 or 1997 when she was sent to his office for disciplinary reasons. But the officer seemed unusually interested in her.

“He started calling me down, and I didn’t understand why,” she told The Appeal. I didn’t do anything.” Their initial meetings were “under the guise of interviewing me about things that were going on in the facility,” she said. “And then it became light. He would offer me a drink.”

Brown eventually relented to the pressure from a man with near-total control over her life inside the prison—a situation she now sees as sexual abuse. Today, Brown feels she finally has one way to fight back: She is among nearly 1,000 women filing claims so far this year as part of New York’s Adult Survivors Act (ASA), which briefly waives New York’s statute of limitations requirements to file sexual abuse lawsuits.

But while the new law is intended to address past harm, Brown is one of only a small number of women likely to be doing so from prison. For incarcerated people like Brown, filing a claim—or even talking about what happened to them—carries unique risks. Among numerous claims, currently or formerly incarcerated people have alleged that guards have coerced women into performing oral sex in plain view of others, refused to allow imprisoned people to file complaints under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, forced women to perform sex acts by threatening discipline; locked people in prison facilities and assaulted them; and a host of other serious incidents.

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INDIANA JAIL LET MAN WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA STARVE TO DEATH IN SOLITARY, LAWSUIT ALLEGES

On July 20, 2021, apartment managers entered 29-year-old Indiana resident Joshua McLemore’s home, found him confused, incoherent, and nude on the floor, and had McLemore transported to a Seymour, Indiana, hospital. McLemore’s mother had called her son’s living complex, worried he could have been having a psychotic episode. At the hospital, McLemore grabbed a nurse’s hair and the Seymour Police Department arrested him on battery charges.

At the Jackson County Jail, McLemore, who had schizophrenia, was stripped naked and thrown into solitary confinement in what was known as “Padded Cell 7,” a small room without toilet access.

Surveillance footage over 21 days shows him screaming; rocking back and forth; licking the walls; smearing his feces and urine all over the floor; violently shoving a plastic bottle into his rectum; throwing his food on the ground; and eating the styrofoam food trays that made their way through the thin slot at the cell door.

According to the lawsuit, he lost 45 pounds in less than a month. Jail staff rarely checked in on him. Jackson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) employees occasionally placed McLemore in restraints and wheeled him into a shower as JCSO forced other imprisoned people to clean the excrement in his cell. On August 8, a guard named Beverly texted her supervisor, “Just bathed him. And he can’t hold his hands, legs, anything. He’s dead weight.”

In the footage, McLemore’s body visibly shrinks over weeks until he doesn’t have the strength to hold his head up.

“Get up, buddy,” a corrections officer asks. But he can’t. In one portion of the footage, a female guard sprays him with liquid soap and hoses him down so that he does not smell before EMS comes.

On August 8, jail officials noticed that McLemore—visibly emaciated and unable to hold up his body—likely needed medical care. But medical officials were unable to save him. According to a suit, doctors listed McLemore’s cause of death as “multiple organ failure due to refusal to eat or drink with altered mental status due to untreated schizophrenia.”

McLemore’s family alleges that at least 20 people, including Sheriff Rick Meyer, had access to roughly 400 hours of footage of McLemore wasting away in his cell. Edwin Budge, the family’s attorney, said he could not understand why no one called 911 earlier.

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The Biden Administration Is Helping Norfolk Southern Block Workers’ Lawsuits

Alooming Supreme Court decision could end up making it easier for the railroad giant whose train derailed in Ohio this month to block lawsuits, including from victims of the disaster.

In the case against Norfolk Southern, the Biden administration is siding with the railroad in its conflict with a cancer-stricken former railworker. A high court ruling for Norfolk Southern could create a national precedent limiting where workers and consumers can bring cases against corporations.

The lawsuit in question, filed initially in a Pennsylvania county court in 2017, deals with a state law that permits plaintiffs to file suit against any corporation registered to do business there, even if the actions that gave rise to the case occurred elsewhere.

In its fight against the lawsuit, Norfolk Southern is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court ruling, overturn Pennsylvania’s law, and restrict where corporations can be sued, upending centuries of precedent.

Oral arguments in the case were held last fall, and a ruling is expected from the Supreme Court in the coming months.

If the court rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could overturn plaintiff-friendly laws on the books in states including Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia that give workers and consumers more leeway to choose where they take corporations to court — an advantage national corporations already enjoy, as they often require customers and employees to agree to file litigation in specific locales whose laws make it harder to hold companies accountable.

Limiting lawsuits is exactly what the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the industry’s primary lobbying group, wants. The organization filed a brief on the side of Norfolk Southern in the case, arguing that a ruling in favor of the plaintiff would open up railroads to more litigation.

It is also apparently what the Biden administration wants — the Justice Department filed its own brief in favor of Norfolk Southern.

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Seattle officials intentionally ‘purged’ thousands of texts about 2020 ‘autonomous zone’ despite order not to: federal judge

The city of Seattle has been hit with sanctions by a federal judge for deleting thousands of text messages between officials, including the former mayor, police chief, and fire chief during the deadly three-week-long Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, also known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or what was termed the CHAZ or CHOP.

US District Judge Thomas Zilly sent the Hunters Capital lawsuit, on behalf of over a dozen businesses that were in the Capitol Hill area that was taken over by protestors and essentially abandoned by the city, to trial for two of five claims, but dismissed three others.

The businesses, led by Seattle developer Hunters Capital, sued for damages on June 24, 2020, claiming the zone cost them almost $3 million in lost business. Their attorneys sent a series of letters demanding that city officials preserve any evidence pertaining to city officials’ alleged support of the zone’s creation, according to the court documents.

Zilly ruled that the charge that the city “directly participated” in creating CHAZ through its decision to provide barriers, portable toilets, hand-washing stations, dumpsters, and other accommodations during the June 8 to July 1, 2020, armed occupation, can go to trial. 

He also ruled that a jury should decide whether the actions of city officials amounted to a “right-of-access taking” by allowing the rioters to disrupt access to local businesses.

Zilly dismissed the plantiffs’ claims that there was an alleged violation of due process rights by the city, negligence, and illegal taking of property and civil rights.

The judge also ordered the city to pay attorneys’ fees for plaintiffs that demonstrated that city officials destroyed significant evidence regarding their decisions during the armed occupation of 6 blocks of the city by BLM and Antifa rioters, including their decision to abandon the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct that led to the creation of the zone.

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Jeffrey Epstein victims sue JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank for ‘facilitating his sex-trafficking operation and ignoring red flags’: Women claim large cash sums were withdrawn to pay them for sex

Victims of Jeffrey Epstein are suing Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase, alleging they ‘played an integral role’ in the pedophile financier’s campaign of sexual abuse.

In two lawsuits filed in New York on Thursday, the women say the banks facilitated Epstein’s sex trafficking operation because large sums of money were withdrawn to pay his victims.

They are also accused of ignoring ‘red flags’ and putting profit before the law. 

Bradley Edwards, a lawyer in the case against Deutsche Bank, told the Wall Street Journal: ‘The time has come for the real enablers to be held responsible, especially his wealthy friends and the financial institutions that played an integral role.

‘These victims were wronged, by many, not just Epstein. He did not act alone.’

Epstein took his own life in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.

Both lawsuits are class action cases that name the plaintiffs as ‘Jane Doe 1, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated’.

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White Sign-Language Interpreter Sues Broadway’s ‘The Lion King,’ Claims he Was Fired Because of His Race

A white sign-language interpreter is suing Theatre Development Fund for discrimination, alleging that the Broadway show fired him because of his skin color. 

Theatre Development Fund (TDF) — a nonprofit that assists Broadway shows with sign-language interpreters — asked Keith Wann, 53, and at least one other interpreter to step aside in favor of a black replacement for an April production of “The Lion King.” According to the New York Post, the organization decided it was “no longer appropriate to have white interpreters represent Black actors in Broadway shows.”

On Tuesday, Wann filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the organization and its programming director, Lisa Carling.

According to the lawsuit, Carling asked Wann and another non-black sign-language interpreter to “back out” of the show — which celebrates its 25th anniversary on Sunday — so they could be replaced by black sign-language experts.

“To me, just seeing that discrimination, it doesn’t matter if I’m white or black,” Wann told the New York Post. “This is blatant and I would just hope that other people who have also experienced this would step forward.”

Wann is a veteran sign-language interpreter who has been involved in Broadway productions for over a decade. In March, he was asked to work on one of Broadway’s most-acclaimed and longest-running shows.

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Hundreds of women suing state over alleged sex abuse in prisons

Hundreds of women are suing the state of New York for its alleged role in prison sex abuse under the newly-passed Adult Survivors Act, which allows sexual abuse victims to file civil lawsuits after the statute of limitations has expired, according to the New York Times.

The law, passed in May, grants victims of abuse at state-run facilities including prisons a one-time opportunity file civil lawsuits after the statute of limitations has passed, according to the New York Times. At least 750 civil lawsuits will be filed on behalf of incarcerated women by Slater Slater and Schulman, a law firm that pursued sexual abuse lawsuits against Boy Scouts of American and the Catholic Church, and other law firms will likely follow.

The law firm reached potential victims through television ads and said the response was overwhelming.

“Once we recognized the overwhelming number of survivors, we decided to reach out in different ways — and the response has been pretty unbelievable,” Adam Slater, a partner at the firm, told the NYT.

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‘What are they hiding?’: Group sues Biden and National Archives over JFK assassination records

The country’s largest online source of JFK assassination records is suing President Joe Biden and the National Archives to force the federal government to release all remaining documents related to the most mysterious murder of a U.S. president nearly 60 years ago.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday one year after Biden issued a memo postponing the release of a final trove of 16,000 records assembled under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which Congress passed without opposition in response to Oliver Stone’s Oscar-nominated film “JFK.”

The JFK records act, signed by President Bill Clinton, required that the documents be made public by Oct. 26, 2017, but President Donald Trump delayed the release and kicked the can to Biden, who critics say continued the policy of federal obfuscation that has existed since Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, in an open motorcade at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

“It’s high time that the government got its act together and obeyed the spirit and the letter of the law,” said the vice president of the nonpartisan Mary Ferrell Foundation, Jefferson Morley, an expert on the assassination and the CIA.

“This is about our history and our right to know it,” said Morley, the author of the JFK Facts blog.

Morley’s sentiment is shared by fellow historians, open government advocates and even some members of the Kennedy family, who usually don’t comment on the assassination.

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