New Hampshire jury finds state liable for abuse at youth detention center and awards victim $38M
A New Hampshire jury awarded $38 million to the man who blew the lid off abuse allegations at the state’s youth detention center Friday, in a landmark case finding the state’s negligence allowed him to be beaten, raped and held in solitary confinement as a teen.
The state said the award will be reduced to $475,000 under its law that caps damages.
David Meehan went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. Since then, 11 former state workers have been arrested and more than 1,100 other former residents of the Youth Development Center in Manchester have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual and emotional abuse spanning six decades.
Jurors in Meehan’s case were instructed that if they believed the state was liable for Meehan’s injuries, they should come up with a figure that represented “full, fair and adequate” compensation. They awarded $18 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in “enhanced” damages, the latter of which can be added if a defendant acted with reckless indifference or abused its power. But they also said Meehan had proven only one “incident” or episode in which he was injured without being aware that New Hampshire’s law allows claimants against the state to recover a maximum of $475,000 per reported incident.
