The Knox County woman who was awarded $1.1 million in damages last week by a federal judge in a lawsuit that alleged she was sexually assaulted by an ex-corrections officers is unlikely to collect the full amount.
That is because state law limits damages against public employees to $400,000 and because she did not report the incident herself to officials in the Maine Department of Corrections.
The Bangor Daily News in not naming the plaintiff because she was a victim of alleged sexual assaults in late 2015 and early 2016 in a transport van.
Although U.S. District Judge George Singal awarded the now 33-year-old woman $900,000 in compensatory damages and $200,000 in punitive damages, he dismissed DOC Commissioner Joseph Fitzpatrick, other prison officials and the state as defendants in the lawsuit. That prevents the woman from collecting from the insurance fund that has paid out in other cases.
In June of 2017, the woman sued ex-corrections officer Josh Dall-Leighton, 33, of Standish, the state and DOC officials. He did not hire an attorney or defend himself against the lawsuit. Singal issued a default judgement against him and ordered that Dall-Leighton pay the entire $1.1 in damages himself.
The woman’s attorney, Ezra Willey of Bangor, said he would take steps to collect as much of the money awarded his client as possible.
“While Dall-Leighton may not have the assets to collect the judgment today, we will be taking all appropriate steps to ensure future collectability against him,” Willey said Friday in an email. “However, these egregious acts took place while Dall-Leighton was on duty, as a corrections officer and while he had full control over my client. Therefore, we will also be vigorously seeking compensation from the State of Maine through all available means, as well.”
Collecting from Dall-Leighton could include seeking court orders to attach his wages and/or seeking liens on any real estate he might purchase or inherit in the future.
To collect from the state, Willey most will have to ask the Legislature to award her all or some of the money. The Maine Tort Claims Act allows lawmakers to decide if plaintiffs in cases where judges have found that public employees are immune from a lawsuit, as Singal did in this case, to award damages.
Singal dismissed DOC officials and the state because the plaintiff could not establish that they showed a “deliberate indifference” to her alleged assaults. Willey did not show that officials had “knowledge of the facts” from which they could “draw the inference that a substantial risk of serious harm” existed as required by law, the judge found.
Willey said that the lawsuit was about more than money for his client.
“Most importantly, my client hopes that she has been able to shed light on what seems to be a prevalent issue in the Maine Department of Corrections — assaults on female inmates by male corrections officers,” the attorney said Friday. “This is conduct that we, as citizens of this state, must not and cannot allow to take place. While prisoners may have reduced rights when incarcerated, they do not lose all rights. Most notably, an inmate always maintains the right to be free from sexual assaults or other violations of any civil liberties during her period of incarceration.”
In July, the DOC settled for an undisclosed amount a federal lawsuit filed by a woman who now lives in Florida. She claimed she was sexually assaulted by a corrections officer while incarcerated at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham.
Dall-Leighton in June 2015 made headlines for donating a kidney to a woman who had sought a donor by putting a written plea in the back window of her car.
He was indicted in November 2016 by the York County grand jury on five counts of gross sexual assault and one count of unlawful sexual contact for the same conduct described in the civil complaint. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges. The case still is pending, according to the clerk’s office at the York County Courthouse in Alfred.
If convicted, Dall-Leighton faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.
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