The judge who oversaw a landmark trial over abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center says capping the verdict at $475,000 as the state proposes would be an “unconscionable miscarriage of justice.”
In a lengthy order issued Wednesday, Judge Andrew Schulman outlined five options for addressing the dispute that arose after a jury awarded $38 million to a man who said he was beaten and raped hundreds of times at the Youth Development Center but found the state liable for only one incident of abuse. Jurors weren’t told that state law caps claims against the state at $475,000 per “incident,” and some later said they wrote “one” to reflect a single case of post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from more than 100 episodes of physical, sexual and emotional abuse.
