By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
The state’s wanton negligence in hiring, training, and supervising Sununu Youth Services Center employees may have resulted in the hundreds of rapes experienced by survivor David Meehan, but that doesn’t mean the state should pay for every single one, according to state attorneys.
Lawyers for the state of New Hampshire and for Meehan filed briefs this month with the New Hampshire Supreme Court answering the $38 million question: do the years of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and torture against Meehan count as a single incident?
A jury awarded Meehan $38 million in 2024 after weeks of grueling testimony in the first and only YDC civil lawsuit to go to trial. But New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella is trying to knock that down to $475,000 based on the sovereign immunity law’s statutory cap.
The Court heard arguments in the damages appeal in November, and last month asked attorneys to file supplemental briefs asserting whether or not Meehan suffered from a “single incident” of abuse, or from the actual hundreds of incidents detailed during the 2024 trial.
According to Solicitor General Anthony Galdieri and Senior Assistant Attorney General Mary Triick, Meehan is a victim of his own success at trial. Because his legal team was able to convince a jury that the state of New Hampshire is liable for his abuse, it all adds up to one, overall act of negligence that is capped by law.
“The facts and theories presented by Plaintiff Meehan focused on general supervisory-level negligence and persuading the jury to find the existence of a common plan or design. As a result, the jury reasonably viewed this case as a single incident case and rendered a verdict consistent with that view. Plaintiff Meehan could have tried to show at trial that he had separate claims premised on separate negligent acts of State employees each arising from a different, discrete incident, but he did not do that,” Galdieri and Triick wrote.
Complicating matters for Meehan is the fact the 2024 jury marked its verdict form to indicate one act of “wanton, malicious, and oppressive conduct” by abusing its power in permitting the sexual assaults, excessive solitary confinement, and physical abuse.
Complicating matters for the state is the fact that jury members subsequently said they did not understand the importance of finding a number of incidents when it came to state liability. Meehan testified to being raped more than 200 times during the trial, and Rockingham Superior Court Andrew Schulman wrote that he believes at least 116 incidents of abuse were proved.
“The court continues to believe that, if the jury accepted the gist of the plaintiff’s testimony, entering a judgment in the amount of the statutory damages cap will amount to a miscarriage of justice,” Schulman wrote in a 2024 order.
Daniel Deane, one of Meehan’s lawyers, argues in his brief that every single violent act committed against Meehan by state employees represents its own single incident of negligence, making the state liable for every individual incident.
“For example, each time an abuser showed up for a shift untrained or unsupervised, and then assaulted Meehan, is a separate tort by the State that could have been alleged in a separate lawsuit. And each day that Meehan’s case worker failed to check in on him, or take action to prevent him from being harmed, was also a separate tort by the State. Each new day presented a fresh opportunity for the State to correct its malfeasance by enforcing the protective policies it already had in place,” Deane wrote.
There is no timetable for a ruling in the case, which will be decided by Associate Justices Patrick Donovan, Melissa Countway, and Bryan Gould. Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, who created the YDC Task Force as Attorney General, recused himself from the case. Associate Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi opted not to take part in any case after she pleaded no contest to a class B misdemeanor in October involving her husband, Geno Marconi. Hantz Marconi is due to retire next month.