On June 6, 2014, an inmate at the Cook County Jail filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, against Cook County. The plaintiff, represented by the Uptown People's Law Center and a private law firm, sought compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorneys' fees, and costs, alleging violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Specifically, the plaintiff claimed that overcrowding led to unsanitary living conditions and the deprivation of basic necessities. The plaintiff also claimed that Cook County was aware of severe overcrowding and failed to provide adequate funding to the jail.

The court granted in part defendants' motion to dismiss on October 15, 2014 to the extent it sought to strike allegations of punitive damages against the sheriff in his official capacity and Cook County, since a municipality is not exposed to punitive damages because of the bad-faith actions of its officials. The court denied the rest of defendants' motion to dismiss. On August 24, 2015, the court granted plaintiffs' counsel's motion to withdraw class certification, and denied plaintiffs' motion for leave to file an amended complaint. The court dismissed the motion on file based on counsel's representation that the two alleged counts were unsupported. Malewski v. Preckwinkle, 2015 WL 5037073 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 24, 2015). Plaintiff appealed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the filing fees on September 22, 2015, and the Court of Appeals dismissed the case on June 22, 2016. The case is now closed.

Priyah Kaul - 09/24/2014
Elizabeth Heise - 11/18/2018


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