TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Nov 2, 2021

Nashville attorney Kyle Mothershead estimates that roughly 200 people filed a total of 300 claims to receive a portion of the $11 million settlement that came as a result of a class-action lawsuit against Rutherford County for wrongfully detaining juveniles, the Daily News Journal reports. That number is significantly lower than the estimated 1,450 people who were believed to be eligible for a portion of the settlement, but doesn’t include the hundreds, possibly thousands, of people illegally arrested whose incidents are outside the statute of limitations. Oct. 29 was the deadline to file claims, which were worth $1,000 per illegal arrest and $4,800 for illegal incarceration. Mothershead and fellow plaintiffs’ attorneys Mark Downton and Frank Brazil reached the class-action settlement in June. The suit was filed in 2017 after the illegal incarceration of children at Hobgood Elementary School in Murfreesboro, but expanded to others jailed at the juvenile detention center after the case revealed it was violating state law regarding the pretrial incarceration of children.