Pennsylvania County Settles 2 Inmate Lawsuits

Allegheny County, Pa., settled two lawsuits by former jail inmates who allege that they were mistreated.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the county settled one case for $30,000 and another for $23,000, but didn’t admit liability in either case.

The paper obtained the documents this week under the state right-to-know law.

One inmate alleged that a corrections officer locked him in a cell with five other inmates in 2009. The complaint says he hit an alarm button, but the officer ignored it. The inmates then knocked him unconscious and sodomized him.

Robert P. Gallagher, a functionally deaf man, settled his case for $23,000. Gallagher says he was denied access to an interpreter and medication during a 10-day stay in 2006 that ended when charges against him were dismissed.