Filed Date: Feb. 13, 1992
Case Ongoing
Clearinghouse coding complete
This entry describes the consolidated federal class action lawsuits arising out of complaints about the treatment of prisoners in Montana State Penitentiary.
The Initial Class Action Suit
On January 28, 1992, inmates at the Montana State Penitentiary filed a pro se lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Montana Department of Corrections in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana. The plaintiffs alleged that their constitutional rights had been violated by poor medical care, dental care, and mental health care, overcrowding, fire hazards, environmental hazards, and security hazards, programming of prisoners, classification procedures, access to the prison for disabled inmates, and physical abuse by prison guards resulting in injury and death of inmates.
In May 1992, the Defendants twice moved for dismissal for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Magistrate Judge Leif Erickson held the Defendants' motion in abeyance until the Plaintiffs could file their amended complaint. On September 4, 1992, attorneys from the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union entered the case to represent the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs filed multiple amended complaints, and the plaintiffs also moved for class certification on October 7, 1992. On July 23, 1993, the plaintiffs were granted certification. Judge Erickson also denied the Defendants' motion to dismiss on August 12.
The Consolidation
On September 10, 1993, Magistrate Judge Leif Erickson consolidated this case with several other suits stemming from poor conditions at Montana State Prison (In re: Conditions at MSP, 6:93-cv-00046. On July 23, 1993, the district court certified the plaintiffs as a class, consisting of the current plaintiffs and other similarly situated inmates in the Maximum Security Unit since July 1, 1988 and in the future. Over the next few years, the court added 63 other lawsuits to the consolidation. The Clearinghouse has a list of the docket numbers for each of those suits, along with the names of the suits and the dates they were filed for most of them.
Settlement Agreement and Early Litigation
On October 28, 1994, the parties entered into a settlement agreement, and the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana (Magistrate Judge Erickson) granted preliminary approval. The agreement covered the areas of medical staffing, tuberculosis screening for inmates, intake medical screening, sick call, access to medication, annual physicals for prisoners, eye care, dental care, mental health care, out of cell recreation, preventive maintenance for prison buildings, compliance with public health and fire codes, objective classification, development of a disciplinary handbook, priority for treatment programs, maximum security procedures, staff supervision and training procedures, a prison-wide intercom system, procedures for use of force, population caps, revision of good time statutes, additional administrative staff, annual review of treatment plans, coordination with the parole board, and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. On November 28, 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice filed notice of objections to the settlement agreement. On November 29, 1994, the district court (Judge Erickson) approved the settlement agreement.
On March 30, 1995, the plaintiffs asked the court to award them attorneys' fees and expenses. On November 9, 1995, the district court (Judge Erickson) ordered the defendants to pay $232,131.44 in attorneys' fees and expenses. Both the plaintiffs and the defendants appealed the award. On April 29, 1996, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dismissed the appeals and affirmed the district court's decision, ordering both parties to pay their own costs on appeal.
Early Efforts Toward Reaching Compliance
On June 25, 1997, the defendants asked the court to dismiss the portions of the complaint dealing with the areas where they had already substantially complied with the settlement agreement. On August 1, 1997, the district court (Judge Erickson) found the defendants partially substantially compliant and granted the defendants' motion to dismiss in the areas of out of cell time, coordination with the parole board, annual review of treatment plans, priority for treatment programs, creation of a disciplinary handbook, use of force, revision of good time statutes, and additional administrative staff.
On October 9, 1998, the plaintiffs asked the court to award them reasonable attorneys' fees and expenses for the litigation period following the first award of attorneys' fees. On September 30, 1999, the district court (Judge Erickson) granted the plaintiffs' second request for attorneys' fees and expenses. The court ordered the plaintiffs to advise the court on how much additional billable time they had spent on the litigation. Langford v. Racicot, 1999 WL 33208662 (D.Mont. Sept. 30, 1999). On February 29, 2000, the parties advised the court that the motion for attorneys' fees had been resolved privately, and that all plaintiff parties had been paid.
Earlier, on January 27, 1999, the district court (Judge Erickson) held that the defendants were substantially compliant in several areas except the tuberculosis screening, and the court dismissed those complaints accordingly. On September 9, 1999, the tuberculosis issue was dismissed as well.
Later Efforts Toward Compliance
Most of what happened in the early 2000's were just fights about attorney's fees. A September 30, 1999 order determined that defendants did have to pay plaintiff's attorney's fees, 1999 WL 33208662, and the precise amount in question was solved privately in early 2000. By June of 2005, however, Judge Erickson ordered the parties to submit a report summarizing the current status of the case and giving a timeline as to when the court could expect resolution. That report was due later that month, but it was not publicly available.
On August 18, 2005, defendants filed a motion to dismiss the rest of the settlement agreement. In October of that year, Judge Erickson granted dismissal of one section, saying that defendants were substantially compliant, but then in January of the following year denied dismissal of the settlement agreement as a whole, instead granting the appointment of an expert to supervise. Unhappy with this result, defendants appealed, and the court stayed all other proceedings in the case until the appeals court ruled. On May 15, 2007, the Ninth Circuit dismissed the defendants' appeal in part and affirmed the lower court's decision in part. Defendants were stuck with the district court's decision after all.
In the meantime, Judge Leif Erickson retired from the bench in June of 2006, and Judge Jeremiah C. Lynch was assigned the case. In December of that year, Judge Lynch was assigned as the referral judge on pretrial matters, while Judge Donald W. Molloy would be the presiding judge.
By May of 2008, attention shifted to the ADA provisions of the case, which represented the final step for Montana to become compliant. The court appointed an ADA expert, Peter Robertson, but he was fired in July of that year, "based upon his utter inability or refusal to complete the assigned tasks." Doc. 1470.
The case then dragged on for several years as defendants continued to submit status reports and make improvements to the prison in an effort to become compliant. On April 11, 2012, the court ordered parties to engage in good faith talks to appoint an expert that would evaluate whether defendants were ADA compliant. On July 12, the court appointed Ralph Frazier and Paul Bishop as experts, ordering the parties to split the costs. They made the inspections in September and were given November 1 as the deadline for their report.
We do not have the report, but plaintiffs' June 24, 2013 motion for specific performance indicates that the experts found that defendants were still not substantially compliant. The court denied this request, however, asking that the parties first try to work it out amongst themselves.
On November 11, 2013, the court granted the parties' stipulated motion to extend the monitoring period. Defendants agreed to begin a tracking system for disabled inmates, and the parties were to submit a final list of remaining issues by March 2014. On February 12, 2016, the court again granted the parties' stipulated motion to extend the monitoring period until August 12, 2016. However, the day before that deadline the court granted one more extension (although warning that it would be the last) until February 12, 2017.
Final Settlement Agreements
The parties jointly moved for class action settlement on March 2, 2017. This Settlement Agreement was intended to resolve the parties' only remaining dispute from the 1994 Settlement Agreement, the integration of disabled prisoners into housing, facilities, programs, and services as required by the ADA. However, for unknown reasons this agreement was never addressed by Judge Lynch.
The parties moved jointly for a separate Settlement Agreement regarding prison conditions on January 19, 2018. The court denied this Settlement Agreement on January 24, 2018. Although the court generally accepted the terms of the agreement, it did not wish to retain jurisdiction over the matter, and requested that the parties revise their motion to include an alternative procedure for dispute resolution, such as binding arbitration. The parties jointly moved for the court to approve their revised Settlement Agreement on February 23, 2018, and the court approved the Settlement Agreement on February 27, 2018. The parties acknowledged that the defendant had moved significantly toward compliance in two major areas: barrier removal and policy change, and reached a resolution toward full compliance in the remaining disputed areas.
On June 19, 2018, the court entered judgment in accordance with the February 23, 2018, Class Action Settlement Agreement, and gave the Agreement final approval. The agreement revised the 2017 settlement to reflect that defendants had made substantial improvements in providing access and had very few issues left to solve. The dispute resolution provision in the new agreement required that any disputes first go through an arbitrator before going back to the court as a forum of last resort. The court left open the possibility of appointing a Special Master if future disagreements arise from the terms of the Settlement Agreement.
In February of the next year, the judge ordered the defendants to pay a sum total of $950,000 in attorney's fees to plaintiffs, pursuant to the 2018 Settlement Agreement.
Summary Authors
Kristen Sagar (8/2/2007)
Alex Wharton (12/2/2014)
Elizabeth Heise (11/1/2018)
Jack Hibbard (7/1/2020)
For PACER's information on parties and their attorneys, see: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6317922/parties/langford-v-racicot/
Balaban, Eric G. (District of Columbia)
Abbott, Christopher D (Montana)
Adams, Lois H (Montana)
Ambrose, Colleen E (Montana)
Baker, Elizabeth S (Montana)
Balaban, Eric G. (District of Columbia)
Brenneman, Hugh Warren Jr. (Michigan)
Griffing, Elizabeth L (Montana)
Koren, Edward I. (District of Columbia)
Lopez, Mark J. (District of Columbia)
Quereshi, Ajmel (District of Columbia)
Robertson, Amy Farr (Colorado)
Sheehy, Edmund F. Jr. (Montana)
See docket on RECAP: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6317922/langford-v-racicot/
Last updated April 4, 2025, 10:42 a.m.
State / Territory: Montana
Case Type(s):
Healthcare Access and Reproductive Issues
Special Collection(s):
Post-PLRA Jail and Prison Private Settlement Agreements
Key Dates
Filing Date: Feb. 13, 1992
Case Ongoing: Yes
Plaintiffs
Plaintiff Description:
inmates at the Montana State Penitentiary
Plaintiff Type(s):
Attorney Organizations:
Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center
Public Interest Lawyer: Yes
Filed Pro Se: Yes
Class Action Sought: Yes
Class Action Outcome: Granted
Defendants
Montana Department of Corrections, State
Montana State Prison (Deer Lodge ), State
Facility Type(s):
Case Details
Causes of Action:
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12111 et seq.
Constitutional Clause(s):
Unreasonable search and seizure
Available Documents:
Injunctive (or Injunctive-like) Relief
Outcome
Prevailing Party: Plaintiff
Nature of Relief:
Injunction / Injunctive-like Settlement
Source of Relief:
Form of Settlement:
Court Approved Settlement or Consent Decree
Content of Injunction:
Develop anti-discrimination policy
Other requirements regarding hiring, promotion, retention
Implement complaint/dispute resolution process
Order Duration: 1994 - None
Issues
General/Misc.:
Sanitation / living conditions
Staff (number, training, qualifications, wages)
Discrimination Area:
Discrimination Basis:
Disability (inc. reasonable accommodations)
Jails, Prisons, Detention Centers, and Other Institutions:
Medical/Mental Health Care:
Policing: