A Missouri man whose murder conviction of a local journalist was overturned in 2013 after it received media attention will get a huge payout after suing him for overdue cash from his first wrongful conviction case.
Ryan Ferguson, 40, was awarded $38 million in damages by a jury after an insurance company hired by the city of Columbia failed to pay for his wrongful conviction. According to ABC17,
Travelers Insurance was ordered to pay a hefty sum to Ferguson and the six police officers against whom it successfully sued in the first instance, the local station reported.
The company failed to convince the court that it should not be fined for the $11 million settlement it awarded Ferguson after successfully suing the city of Columbia, police and prosecutors in 2017.
The insurance company – which was hired by the city from 2006 to 2011 – tried to avoid financial responsibility for that payment and the legal fees of the six officers against whom Ferguson was in litigation. Those officers are reportedly bankrupt due to the legal fees and damages of the man they wrongly put behind bars.
Then both sides of the case united and filed a lawsuit against Travelers Insurance.
According to ABC 17, Count II of the lawsuit claims that Travelers Insurance “deliberately disregarded the financial interests of the officers” in hopes of avoiding their liability.
Ferguson’s lawyers told the outlet that the innocent man will receive 86% of the verdict while the six officers will split the remaining 14%.
“This decision will have a wide-ranging impact on wrongful conviction cases across the country when insurers refuse to participate in settlement negotiations and refuse to promptly pay their share of the judgment. Ryan Ferguson finally got justice. “The jury heard us loud and clear,” Ferguson’s attorney Kathleen Zellner said in a statement to the news station.
Ferguson spent 10 years behind bars for 2001 murder Journalist Kent Heitholt in Columbia, Missouri. Heitholt was sports editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune and was found dead early in the morning in his office parking lot – beaten and strangled.
He was in high school at the time Ferguson was charged with murder along with a friend and classmate, who allegedly confessed to the murder under the influence of alcohol before recanting the confession under coercion.
Ferguson was convicted on the testimony of his friend and a witness, who later retracted his claims. He was released from prison in 2013 and won $11 million in a civil lawsuit against Missouri police in 2017.
His friend, Charles Erickson, was released after serving nearly 20 years and Heitholt’s murder remains unsolved.
Zellner told ABC that with the latest lawsuit, Ferguson has been awarded a total of $48 million dollars.
(TagstoTranslate)US News(T)Missouri(T)Settlements(T)Wrongful Conviction
