123
submitted 6 months ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/news@lemmy.world

A New Hampshire jury awarded $38 million to the man who blew the lid off abuse allegations at the state’s youth detention center Friday, in a landmark case finding the state’s negligence allowed him to be beaten, raped and held in solitary confinement as a teen.

The state said the award will be reduced to $475,000 under its law that caps damages.

David Meehan went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. Since then, 11 former state workers have been arrested and more than 1,100 other former residents of the Youth Development Center in Manchester have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual and emotional abuse spanning six decades.

Jurors in Meehan’s case were instructed that if they believed the state was liable for Meehan’s injuries, they should come up with a figure that represented “full, fair and adequate” compensation. They awarded $18 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in “enhanced” damages, the latter of which can be added if a defendant acted with reckless indifference or abused its power. But they also said Meehan had proven only one “incident” or episode in which he was injured without being aware that New Hampshire’s law allows claimants against the state to recover a maximum of $475,000 per reported incident.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Pronell@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

The New Hampshire motto: Live Free or Die.

Not doing a great job of living up to that ideal.

[-] exanime@lemmy.today 2 points 6 months ago

I guess dying is the only option they care for people to have

this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
123 points (96.9% liked)

News

23397 readers
1735 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS