Plaintiff’s attorney Rus Rilee speaks to media after a $38 million ruling was awarded to David Meehan in the youth center abuse trial at Rockingham County Superior Court in Brentwood, N.H., Friday, May 3, 2024. The jury found the state liable for abuse at its youth detention center and awarded the sum to Meehan, a former resident who says he was beaten and raped as a teen.
“I’m so sorry. I’m absolutely devastated,” the jury foreperson wrote to attorney Rus Rilee on Friday evening, according to the hearing request filed Saturday. Jurors were not told of the cap, but they were asked how many incidents it found Meehan had proven. They wrote “one,” but the completed form does not indicate whether they found a single instance of abuse or grouped all of Meehan’s allegations together.New Hampshire jury finds state liable for abuse at youth detention center and awards victim $38M“We had no idea,” the jury foreperson wrote.
After consulting with outside counsel with expertise in post-trial matters, Rilee and attorney David Vicinanzo requested that a hearing be held Monday. According to their request, Rilee did not see the email from the juror until Saturday and did not reply.Meehan’s lawsuit was the first to be filed and the first to go to trial. After four weeks of testimony, jurors returned a verdict in under three hours.
Over the course of the trial, Meehan’s attorneys accused the state of encouraging a culture of abuse marked by pervasive brutality, corruption and a code of silence. They called more than a dozen witnesses to the stand, including former staffers who said they facedThe state argued it was not liable for the conduct of rogue employees and that Meehan waited too long to sue. Its witnesses included, who answered “yes” when asked whether his son had “a reputation for untruthfulness.
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