On June 25, 2018, detainees in the Genesee County Jail in the City of Flint who bathed in and consumed lead-contaminated water filed this lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The plaintiffs, represented by private counsel, sued Genesee County under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and sought compensatory and punitive damages along with attorney’s fees. The plaintiffs claimed that the failure to provide safe drinking water and the delay in providing safe drinking water constituted cruel and unusual punishment and violated the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

Specifically, the plaintiffs claimed that the defendants knew the Jail’s water was contaminated, yet forced the plaintiffs to continue drinking it. They claimed that the defendants prohibited the plaintiffs from accepting deliveries of bottled water, failed to ensure that adequate bottled water was given to the plaintiffs, withheld bottles of water from the plaintiffs forcing them to continue drinking contaminated water, restricted plaintiffs to less than the minimum required amount of water per day, and withheld water as punishment. For more information about a similar suit involving the Genesee County Jail that sought injunctive relief, please see Long v. Pickell.

On October 18, 2018, the defendants responded to the complaint. They contended that a) the plaintiffs could not have been exposed to lead because the water service lines to Genesee County Jail are not made of lead, b) as soon as they became aware of the possibility that the water in the Genesee County Jail could have been contaminated with lead they tested the water sources, and c) they provided adequate bottled water as soon as they became aware of the publicity surrounding the water supply while they waited for the water to be tested.

However, on August 14, 2020 after close to two years of discovery, the parties stipulated to the dismissal without prejudice of this case, with the provisions that the statute of limitations for the case's claims would be tolled for 120 days after the dismissal and that this case's discovery would be usable if the plaintiffs were to refile their case.

As of April 19, 2021, the case is officially closed. But the case appears still to be open because class members continue to write to the court asking for it to be reopened, as well as other relief, and litigation over these requests is ongoing.

Elisabeth Ng - 10/10/2019
Nora Baty - 11/05/2019
Jonah Hudson-Erdman - 04/14/2021


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