County settles strip suit Detainees at Knox jail to receive $5,000 each

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PORTLAND – More than 350 people who were strip-searched illegally at Knox County Jail during an eight-year period will receive about $5,000 each in damages, a federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge Gene Carter gave preliminary approval to a $3 million settlement during a one-hour hearing that should bring to an end the 41/2-year-old class-action lawsuit.

The settlement in the Knox County case, which includes 366 people, gives more than three times the amount of money to each of the class members than class members received in a similar case against York County Jail that was settled in 2005.

In that class-action lawsuit, 1,350 people were paid $1,670 each as part of a settlement agreement.

Both lawsuits were settled for $3 million and had about the same number of potential claimants – between 7,500 and 8,000, according to court documents.

Carter is expected to issue a final order in the lawsuit by the end of the month. The order will include, according to court documents, a permanent injunction ordering Knox County Jail personnel not to strip-search detainees without a “reasonable suspicion that the individual does possess a weapon, a controlled substance or other contraband.”

Current Maine law allows strip-searches of detainees charged with felonies that are violent, drug-related or involve weapons. Detainees charged with nonviolent, nondrug- or nonweapon-related infractions and those charged with misdemeanors are not subject to strip-searches unless there is a reasonable suspicion they are concealing contraband.

Peter Marchesi, the Waterville attorney who represented the county, said after the hearing that it went as he had expected. Although the settlement includes the permanent injunction, the county has denied in court documents that it was a custom or practice to strip-search all detainees at Knox County Jail as the plaintiffs alleged.

“I’m thrilled with the agreement,” lead plaintiff Dale Dare, 40, of Manchester, N.H., said after the hearing. “I’m glad this practice is going to stop in the Knox County Jail. This injunction is going to protect a lot of people.”

Dare said he was strip-searched in 1999 after he was arrested while attending his high school reunion on an outstanding warrant for failing to appear at a hearing in District Court. As lead plaintiff in the case, Dare will receive an additional $5,000. He and 24 other class members who gave depositions also will receive an added $500.

Sixty-seven class members will not receive their awards directly, Robert Stolt, the Augusta attorney representing the class, told the court Monday.

Their awards will go to the Department of Health and Human Services to pay off back child support.

Dare said after the hearing that he did not fall into that category.

The transient nature of the population of Knox County and poor record keeping at the jail made it difficult to track down more class members, Stolt said after the hearing. Many of the letters sent to addresses provided by jail officials were returned, he said.

The differences in opinion and style between the attorneys that have been evident in court filings spilled into the courtroom Monday.

Robert Stolt, an Augusta attorney representing the class, called the settlement “remarkable” and “extraordinary” during Monday’s hearing.

Carter disagreed.

The judge said Stolt’s description of the case in his most recent motion was “fantastically inaccurate” and that the two sides had to be “coerced into settlement.”

“There’s nothing extraordinary in this case,” the judge said. “It’s a routine class-action lawsuit and the settlement’s the same down the line” as the York County case.

The case also has taken several unusual procedural turns, especially during the past seven months since the settlement was hammered out. It also began with one lead plaintiff but ended with another.

Laurie Tardiff of Thomaston sued Knox County and former Sheriff Daniel Davey in December 2002, alleging her civil and constitutional rights were violated in 2001 when she was strip-searched by a female officer at the Rockland jail after being arrested on a felony charge of tampering with a witness.

That charge and a charge of violating conditions of release, a misdemeanor, later were dismissed.

In 2003, about a year after the case was filed, Carter certified it as a class-action lawsuit that allowed people charged with nonviolent misdemeanors who were strip-searched at the Rockland jail between Nov. 19, 1996, and Dec. 31, 2004, to join the lawsuit.

Carter issued in November 2005 a strongly worded summary judgment decision in favor of Tardiff and other members of the class. He found the county liable for illegally strip-searching arrestees between Nov 19, 1996, and Aug. 31, 2002.

The judge also ruled that a jury needed to decide whether illegal strip-searches were conducted at the jail between Sept. 1, 2002, and Dec. 31, 2004.

A trial was set for April 2006 in federal court in Portland but was delayed until May while the parties worked to negotiate a settlement with former Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen as mediator. An agreement in the case proved elusive and a trial was set for October, according to court documents.

“The parties, like the famed Light Brigade,” attorneys for the class wrote in the plaintiffs’ motion for final settlement dated March 30, 2007, “charged into summer with no thought to what September would bring. The parties interviewed, deposed, motioned and strategized fiercely aiming for the killer strike that would put them a leg up and demoralize the other side.

“On Sept. 5, 2006,” the attorneys said, Carter “decertified the class with respect to damages, disqualified all witnesses, shredded all exhibits and denied all motions. The parties retreated, seeking shelter in the chamber of [U.S. District Judge George] Singal. On Sept. 29 Chief Judge Singal brought the battle to a close through an all day Judicial Settlement Conference.”

Tardiff attended that settlement session and signed the agreement but changed her mind a few days later because she felt that her damages exceeded $50,000, which she did not expect to received as lead plaintiff.

Her attorneys refused to take her demands to Carter, so she hired a new attorney, who filed a new lawsuit against the Rockland jail and Knox County. Marchesi countersued, arguing that she could not back out of a negotiated settlement she had taken part in and had signed.

On Monday, Carter denied a motion to set aside the portion of the settlement Tardiff would receive if she remained part of the class. She is one of eight class members who chose to opt out of the settlement agreement.

So far, no others have filed their own lawsuits in federal court in Maine.

U.S. District Judge Brock Hornby has not yet ruled on whether Tardiff’s new lawsuit can go forward.

Before issuing his final order, Carter said Monday that he wanted more information on expenses filed by attorneys for the plaintiffs before determining the final amount they will receive.

The settlement includes the payment of plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees and expenses. About $900,000, or a third of the total settlement, is expected to be paid to the two legal firms representing the plaintiffs.

Knox County will pay $375,000 of the damages; the remainder is covered under a county insurance risk pool.