Cleveland Reaches $4.85 Million Settlement With Wrongfully Convicted Man After Trying to Avoid

Cleveland Reaches $4.85 Million Settlement With Wrongfully Convicted Man After Trying to Avoid Paying $13 Million Jury Verdict


Years after the city of Cleveland used a novel legal maneuver to avoid paying a single dime of a $13 million jury verdict to a man wrongfully convicted based on the work of two city police officers, the city has finally agreed to a settlement of $4.85 with David Ayers.

Ayers spent 11 years in prison for the 1999 beating death of a 76-year-old woman, a crime he was later exonerated of thanks to DNA evidence. A civil suit against two Cleveland detectives who worked the case — Denise Kovach and Michael Cipo — showed the two targeted Ayers despite zero physical evidence tying him to the case.

A jury awarded a $13 million verdict against the officers.

In a typical case where a city employee has been slapped with a civil lawsuit, the Ohio Revised Code dictates the municipality has the "duty to defend" the employee as long as they were "acting both in good faith and not manifestly outside the scope of employment or official responsibilities." So too with indemnification: If the employee meets those two requirements and is found liable for a civil judgment, the law says the city indemnifies — or picks up the tab.

But rather than indemnify per state law in that case, the city of Cleveland paid for the officers to enter bankruptcy — paying not only for their legal representation, but for their filing fee.

Read more: https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2020/12/01/cleveland-reaches-485-million-settlement-with-wrongfully-convicted-man-after-trying-to-avoid-paying-13-million-jury-verdict