$7.5 Million Settlement for Man Left Brain-Damaged by Miami Police Chokehold

In January 1992, Antonio Edwards, a 24-year-old Black man, was eating lunch near his parked car in Miami when officers approached him. An officer claimed Edwards had reached for a weapon. Officers handcuffed him, held him down, and Officer Carl Seals applied a chokehold. Seals then slammed Edwards into the pavement and maintained the hold until Edwards suffered a cardiac arrest and severe, permanent brain damage. No weapon was ever found in the vehicle.

Edwards was left in a vegetative state, requiring around-the-clock medical care. He had a young son who was four years old at the time. An internal Miami Police Department investigation concluded that Seals had used excessive force, and the city acknowledged that officers had violated Edwards's civil rights. Despite that finding, Seals faced no criminal charges.

Stuart Grossman, who had built his practice primarily in medical malpractice, took on the case as his first Section 1983 civil rights lawsuit against a municipal police department. The theory of liability centered on the city's responsibility for its officers' training and use of force policies, and on the foreseeable danger the chokehold posed to any person subjected to it. Grossman pressed for a settlement that would cover not just an upfront lump sum but guaranteed daily care costs for the rest of Edwards's life.

In June 1993, the City of Miami agreed to pay $7.5 million, along with an additional $1,000 per day for Edwards's lifetime medical care. At the time, the settlement was reported to be the largest ever paid in a Miami police-brutality case and among the largest in Florida. Police Chief Calvin Ross placed the chokehold under a citywide moratorium during the proceedings, and Miami subsequently banned the technique outright.

Edwards survived in a coma for approximately a decade before dying from his injuries. The policy change that followed his case removed a restraint method that medical evidence had long identified as capable of causing fatal oxygen deprivation.