Plaintiff, a personal representative for his son, sued numerous defendants associated with the Broward County Detention Center in Florida after his son, a pretrial detainee, died at the hands of a mentally ill co-inmate. The detention center was subject to a consent decree from Carruthers v. Cochran (JC-FL-008) that required the jail to institute a system of classification, separation, and monitoring of inmates. In 2002, the district court for the Southern District of Florida (Judge William J. Zloch) denied defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, and defendants filed an interlocutory appeal. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the district court's holding that plaintiff's amended complaint against jail guards stated a claim, but granted supervisory officials' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Cottone v. Jenne, 326 F.3d 1352 (11th Cir. 2003). According to the docket on PACER (as of May 2005), the parties are still going through pre-trial preparation, and a trial date was set for June of 2005.

Lauren Cutson - 05/25/2005


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