A $2 Million Jail-Custody Settlement, and the Fraud Fight That Followed

In October 2015, Derrick Houston was an inmate at the Boone County Jail in Missouri. After an altercation in the dinner line, four deputies restrained him and moved him into solitary confinement. He told jail staff that his neck hurt and that he felt tingling through his body. According to the lawsuit that followed, those requests for medical care went unanswered for five days.

When Houston finally reached a hospital, doctors found a fractured vertebra in his neck. He said the injury left him paralyzed below the waist. In July 2016 he sued Boone County in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, alleging that the deputies' use of force and the jail's refusal to get him help had caused permanent damage.

James T. Thompson and Elizabeth Van Erem of Edelman & Thompson represented Houston. They built the case on the medical records, the documented five-day gap before treatment, and the county's own custody paperwork. In May 2017, before any trial, the county's insurer, the Missouri Public Entity Risk Management Fund (MOPERM), agreed to pay $2 million to resolve the claim. After roughly $723,000 in fees and costs, Houston's net recovery came to about $1.28 million.

The settlement did not hold. Five days after Houston cashed the check, Columbia police responded to a hotel disturbance and recorded body-camera video of him walking and carrying his luggage with no assistance. Boone County and MOPERM went back to federal court and asked to set aside the judgment, arguing that Houston had lied about the extent of his paralysis. The court agreed, found that he had given false testimony under oath, and ordered him to repay $1.3 million. By then his whereabouts were unknown, and mail sent to his last address came back undelivered.

The insurer's challenge also reached Houston's lawyers, who faced accusations that they had taken part in the deception. On August 5, 2019, the two sides reached terms. Edelman & Thompson agreed to pay MOPERM $100,000 and not to sue the insurer for defamation or malicious prosecution. In the written agreement, MOPERM stated that the firm "acted as ethical and vigorous advocates" and were "not participants in, or complicit in any misrepresentation."