On November 23, 2015, a former pre-trial detainee who had been confined for over 100 days at Rikers Island, a jail run by the New York City Department of Corrections (NYCDOC), filed this class action lawsuit. The case proceeded under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the City of New York in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The complaint described the NYCDOC’s “Old Time Policy,” under which detainees who had been released prior to serving the entirety of a disciplinary sentence in solitary confinement served the remainder of their “old” time upon returning to jail. In some instances, this policy required people to serve time in solitary even if they had only received a disciplinary ticket many years earlier on a prior arrest. The complaint alleged that this policy violates substantive and procedural due process, under the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiff sought to bring the case as a class action, and asked for damages and attorneys’ fees. In the complaint, plaintiff defined the proposed class as all persons who have been pretrial detainees in the City’s custody held in punitive segregation to serve Old Time.

On November 12, 2016, a new complaint was filed, naming additional plaintiffs similarly situated. Little more was changed. Settlement negotiations followed.

On August 11, 2017, the parties entered into a Stipulation of Settlement after 18 months of negotiation, encompassing 15 conferences with the magistrate judge (Cheryl L. Pollak). The negotiations involved four main issues: 1) the overall amount of damages for the class; 2) the identification of class members; 3) the determination of compensation for each individual class member; and 4) the notice and claims process.

At the end of the negotiations, parties agreed that each class member would receive $175 per day spent in punitive segregation (PSEG) while a pretrial detainee, as a result of the Old Time Policy. Class members diagnosed with a mental illness or who were under the age of 18 when they served PSEG time would receive $200 per day. The parties identified 470 class members. On average, class members received approximately $10,500 with an overall anticipated total amount paid of $4,963,175. The parties then created a procedure for locating and notifying class members.

Plaintiffs therefore filed an unopposed motion for a class action settlement, conditional certification of the settlement class, and appointment of plaintiff’s counsel as Class Counsel on August 23, 2017. The court, on December 11, 2017, granted the motion, noting the procedural and substantive fairness in memorandum (Magistrate Judge Cheryl L. Pollak). 2017 WL 6375736. A Fairness Hearing was held on September 14, 2018, and the court issued a subsequent order giving final approval of the settlement on December 4, 2018.

As of April 12, 2020, the case remains open for monitoring purposes and parties submit periodic status reports.

Jake Parker - 05/15/2018


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