On December 31, 2015, three indigent individuals residing in Indiana filed this putative class-action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. Plaintiffs filed a third amended complaint on August 19, 2016. The plaintiffs sued the Allen County Council, Allen County Board of Commissioners, and Allen County Public Defender Board under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to redress the alleged deprivation of their constitutional rights. Plaintiffs, represented by private counsel, sought declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the Defendants from violating their Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution, and their equivalent provisions under the Indiana state Constitution. Plaintiffs also sought an injunction to enjoin the Defendants from making expenditures of funds on indigent defense services likely to result in violations of constitutional rights. Lastly, plaintiffs sought costs and attorneys' fees. This case was initially assigned to Judge Philip P. Simon.
The plaintiffs proposed a class defined as, “all individuals who have or will have misdemeanor criminal cases pending in the courts of Allen County, Indiana, who have or will have an attorney assigned to them due to indigency and have not been convicted or entered into a plea agreement.”
Plaintiffs claimed that Defendants, for years, operated a constitutionally, structurally, and systemically deficient public defender system for indigent individuals charged with misdemeanor crimes. They alleged that these failures resulted in ineffective assistance of counsel and constructive denial of counsel for misdemeanants represented by the Allen County Public Defender Office. Defendants alleged that Plaintiffs knew about these deficiencies for at least 10 years. Plaintiffs also claimed that public defenders in Allen County had caseloads consisting of hundreds of additional misdemeanor cases; did not meaningfully conducted any legal research into Plaintiffs’ cases; did not meaningfully investigate Plaintiffs’ charges; did not file any substantive motions in the cases; did not hold a single confidential in-person meeting with Plaintiffs outside a courthouse; and devoted less than one year in whole to the defense of each of class Plaintiffs’ cases. The public defender system failed to provide clients with adequate advise, consultation, and communication with attorneys; the ability to make informed decisions about their legal rights; meaningful opportunity to present defenses against charges; proper attorney assistance prior to waiving of rights; and proper, prompt, and accurate information regarding plea alternatives, jail alternatives, and the consequences of plea agreements and criminal sentences.
Throughout 2016, the parties engaged in discovery and mediation talks. On February 15, 2017, a mediator reported that mediation talks had finished without resolution.
On May 1, 2017, the case was reassigned to Chief Judge Theresa L. Springmann. The parties continued litigation, particularly addressing discovery and class certification.
Judge Springmann denied the plaintiffs motion for class certification on August 14, 2017. She held that the defendants had raised an issue as to the plaintiffs' standing and the court's jurisdiction over the case. As such, she ruled that she could not decide class certification until issues of standing and jurisdiction had been addressed. The defendants then filed a motion to dismiss on September 17, 2017.
On June 20, 2018, Magistrate Judge Susan Collins stayed proceedings on the defendants' motion to dismiss, sighting settlement conversations. The parties had a status conference with Judge Collins in late August where they announced officially that they had reached settlement, but that one of the three plaintiffs may not agree to sign. The contents of the settlement were not available.
Defendants moved to enforce the settlement on September 18, 2018. Judge Springmann decided to keep this motion under advisement to give the hold-out plaintiff, now proceeding pro se, time to reply. The plaintiff filed a petition for relief on November 19, 2018. The court did not issue an official order regarding these two motions until July 25, 2019, when it denied defendants motion to enforce and granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs petition for relief. The petition was granted only insofar as it requested the defendants' motion be denied. No other additional relief was granted.
Defendants proceeded to reinstate their motion to dismiss on September 9, 2019. On February 5, 2020, after the hold-out plaintiff failed to file a timely reply, the court granted the motion as it applied to claims that she had brought individually. The other plaintiffs stipulated to dismissal of the remaining claims on April 1, 2020, and the case was subsequently dismissed with prejudice the same day. This case is now closed.
Nili Blanck - 06/10/2018
Alex Moody - 04/19/2020
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