A federal jury this week found a private company that runs detention centers liable for the 2015 death of an inmate in Louisiana and awarded the man’s family $42.75 million in damages.
Omar Qureshi, a lawyer for the family of the man, Erie Moore Sr., called the judgment the largest against a private correctional company in the United States, and the largest civil rights verdict ever in Louisiana.
Mr. Moore, a 57-year-old retired millworker and father of three, died at a hospital on Nov. 14, 2015, a month after guards slammed him headfirst to the floor at the Richwood Correctional Center, a detention center in Richwood, La., that was owned and operated by LaSalle Management Company, his family’s lawyers said.
The Richwood Correctional Center now serves as a federal immigration detention site operated by LaSalle. The company operates facilities in Georgia, Louisiana and Texas that have the capacity to hold a total of more than 13,000 inmates, according to its website.
On Monday, a federal jury in Monroe, La., found that LaSalle had acted with “actual malice or reckless indifference to the rights or safety of others” and that the negligence of one or more of its employees was a “substantial factor” in causing Mr. Moore’s death.
The jury found that guards had used excessive force against Mr. Moore and that the there was a “custom or practice” of punishing inmates at Richwood by using chemical spray or taking them to an area of the detention center known as the Four Way that had no surveillance cameras.
The jury awarded Mr. Moore’s family $19.5 million in compensatory damages and $23.25 million in punitive damages.
“With its verdict,” Mr. Qureshi said in a statement, “the jury affirmed the value of Erie Moore Sr.’s life, and sent an unequivocal message to LaSalle: If you make money off of jailing people, you cannot disregard their rights and safety.”
Mr. Moore’s son, Erie Moore Jr., 40, said he drove from the courthouse immediately after the verdict to his father’s gravesite in Bastrop, La., and placed flowers on his headstone.
He said he had not been able to bring himself to visit the grave since his funeral in 2015, and he wanted his father to know: “We stuck together. We did not stop. You can rest now.”
Lawyers for LaSalle, which could challenge the judgment, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.
In a court filing, they said that officers at Richwood were not deliberately indifferent or at fault in causing Mr. Moore’s death. They pointed instead to a fight that they said Mr. Moore had with another inmate, who died after the fight.
Mr. Moore had no criminal history when he was arrested by the police on Oct. 12, 2015, on a misdemeanor charge that he had disturbed the peace by yelling in a doughnut shop in Monroe, La., his family’s lawyers said.
After the police took Mr. Moore to Richwood, guards sprayed mace in his face while he was handcuffed, the lawyers said. He was sprayed repeatedly with mace over the next 36 hours, the lawyers said.
In court filings, lawyers for the Moore family said that Mr. Moore had “exhibited obvious mental health conditions” and was at times acting “erratically” in his cell and being “noncompliant.”
On Oct. 13, 2015, while attempting to remove Mr. Moore from his cell, guards “body slammed Mr. Moore headfirst to the ground, picked his motionless body up and slipped, dropping him on his head and causing his fatal brain injury,” the lawyers said in a statement.
The guards then carried Mr. Moore to be interrogated in the Four Way, the statement said.
He remained in the Four Way for two hours, even though he was lying handcuffed on the floor, unconscious, the statement said, adding that no one called for an ambulance.
Ouachita Parish Office sheriff’s deputies picked Mr. Moore up from Richwood later that night and took him to the Ouachita Correctional Center, where an emergency medical technician determined he might have a brain injury, according to one of the family’s lawyers, Max A. Schoening.
Mr. Moore was rushed to a hospital and was in a coma when he arrived, Mr. Schoening said. After about a month in the hospital, Mr. Moore died. Mr. Moore’s death certificate lists the manner of his death as homicide and says the cause was pneumonia complicating blunt force head injuries.
The Moore family’s lawyers said no one was ever criminally charged in connection with his death and that LaSalle did not discipline any of the staff members involved.
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Moore’s son, Erie Moore Jr., said he was gratified that the jury was able to separate the “fluff versus the true facts” surrounding his father’s death.
“It made our family feel vindicated to know that this story that we’ve been trying get out for 10 years was heard,” he said.
His father, he added, “can finally rest in peace, knowing his name was not destroyed in his last hours living his life.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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