ALBANY – A lawsuit filed on behalf of a prisoner who was killed after falling out of a jail transport van can proceed because the complaint alleges failure to provide adequate seat belts as well as reckless driving by a corrections officer, a Northern District judge has held.
The motion decided last week by Judge Mae D’Agostino (See Profile) picks up where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit left off in a 2012 case where it joined several other circuits. It held that the mere failure to provide a passenger in a corrections van with a seat belt does not alone establish a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
