If Any of This Sounds Like Your Family, Keep Reading
- The facility is treating your loved one's mental illness as a discipline problem, not a medical one.
- Private prison records are nearly impossible to get without a lawsuit.
- You do not know how to bring a case against a government contractor or a correctional facility.
- You want the system to change so it never happens to another family.
Here is the case we built for a family in exactly this position.
The Challenge
A mentally ill inmate at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Delaware County, Pennsylvania was placed in solitary confinement for 52 straight days. During those weeks, the facility's response to his deterioration was procedural, not clinical. He died by suicide. The family came to us for two things: accountability, and a guarantee that the way mental illness was handled inside that facility had to change.
Our Strategy
- Retained a correctional psychiatrist and a former jail mental-health administrator to testify to the standard of care for inmates with known psychiatric conditions.
- Reconstructed the 52 days from wellness checks, cell logs, incident reports, and staff interviews — documenting how many times intervention could have happened and did not.
- Made the remedy part of the case: the family would not sign any release that did not include enforceable policy changes inside the facility.
- Kept the pressure on until the contractor agreed to both the damages number and the operational changes.
The Outcome
A $7 million settlement — and significant policy changes at the facility governing mental-health screening, check-in protocols, and use of solitary confinement for inmates with known psychiatric conditions. The family's goal, from the first meeting, was that no other family should receive the call they received. On that front, the case succeeded.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Attorney Advertising.
We did not just want a check. We wanted the place fixed. Mr. Cavaliere refused to settle until both were on the table.
Does Your Case Sound Similar?
- You or a loved one suffered a serious, life-altering injury
- Someone else's negligence, a defective product, or medical error was involved
- Insurance is lowballing you or denying the claim entirely
Your consultation is 100% free and we charge no fee unless we win.
Common Questions About Cases Like This
Can you sue a private prison company in Pennsylvania?
Yes. Private correctional contractors are not shielded the way a state agency often is. They owe the people in their custody a duty of reasonable care, including reasonable mental-health care, and they can be held accountable when they fail to provide it.
We have been told solitary confinement is a standard discipline tool. Isn't that a defense?
Solitary confinement is not automatically unlawful, but using it as a long-term response to untreated psychiatric symptoms is a different question. When the record shows that discipline replaced treatment for a known mental-health condition, that is the standard-of-care failure.
Can a civil settlement force real policy change, or is that just money?
It can — if the plaintiff insists on it and the firm is willing to hold the case open until the other side agrees. Written commitments to operational change are a negotiable term, not an impossibility, and they were central to this resolution.
