One of the jurors who awarded a New Hampshire man $38 million in a landmark lawsuit over abuse at the state’s youth detention center says the state is misinterpreting the verdict by capping the payment at $475,000.
Jurors on Friday awarded $18 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in enhanced damages to David Meehan, who alleged that the state’s negligence allowed him to be repeatedly raped, beaten and held in solitary confinement as a teenager at the Youth Development Center in Manchester. But the attorney general’s office said the award would be reduced under a state law that allows claimants against the state to recover a maximum of $475,000 per “incident.”
Jurors were not told of the cap. When asked on a verdict form how many incidents they found Meehan had proven, they wrote “one.” The completed form does not indicate whether they found a single instance of abuse or grouped all of Meehan’s allegations together, but one of the jurors emailed Meehan’s attorney on Sunday to explain their reasoning.
CLOSING ARGUMENTS HEARD IN NH YOUTH DETENTION CENTER ABUSE SUIT
“We wrote on our verdict form that there was 1 incident/injury, being complex PTSD, from the result of 100+ injuries (Sexual, Physical,…
