Iowa Landmark Legal Settlements
Wrongfully convicted men settle Iowa lawsuit
Two men wrongfully imprisoned for murder settled a lawsuit for $12 million with the Iowa prosecutors who allegedly framed them. Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee spent 26 years in Iowa prisons for a murder they didn't commit. Their convictions were overturned in 2003, and the men demonstrated on appeal that prosecutors knowingly presented false evidence to secure their convictions. Harrington and McGhee were teens in 1978, when they were arrested and accused of murdering a recently retired local police officer who was working as a night security guard at a car dealership.
Lawsuits settled in death of Hempstead student
The Dubuque Community School District and the city of Dubuque agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a student who died in a traffic accident. In 2007, a vehicle driven by a 16-year-old classmate hit Lauren Schmidt and another 15-year-old student as they walked across the street near Dubuque Hempstead High School. Schmidt’s parents sued the school district, the bus driver, the city and an insurance company. The school district agreed to pay a settlement of $115,000 and the city agreed to pay $55,000.
Railroad agrees to stop gene-testing workers
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. agreed in 2001 to stop testing its employees for genetic defects as part of a workplace discrimination settlement between the railroad and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The settlement - the first of its kind - came two months after the EEOC went to an Iowa federal court to request that the railroad halt genetic testing on blood samples from employees who had filed claims for work-related carpal tunnel syndrome injuries.
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