$42.75 Million Verdict Over Jail Death After Doughnut Shop Arrest
After trial: On appeal by both sides, so nothing is final. The October 20, 2025 verdict was $42,750,000, and the court remitted wrongful-death damages and cut punitive damages to $6,000,000 on May 7, 2026, then stated the revised judgment as $16,741,148.84 on June 17, 2026, roughly $15.6 million after a 12 percent fault reduction.
Won by Nelson W. Cameron, Attorney at Law.
Erie Moore Sr., 57, a mill worker with no criminal record, was arrested on October 12, 2015 for disturbing the peace at a Monroe doughnut shop and taken to Richwood Correctional Center, a private jail LaSalle Corrections ran for the city. Over about 36 hours guards pepper-sprayed him repeatedly, struck him on the head, slammed him head-first into the floor, and left him roughly 90 minutes in an area with no cameras and no medical check. He died on November 14, 2015 of a brain hematoma; the parish coroner ruled it a homicide. On October 20, 2025 a federal jury awarded his three children $42,750,000. In May and June 2026 the court remitted it to $16,741,148.84 with a further fault reduction, and both sides appealed.
What happened
Erie Moore Sr. was 57, a mill worker and father of three with no criminal history. Early on October 12, 2015 he was arrested for disturbing the peace, cursing and acting erratically at a doughnut shop in Monroe, Louisiana, and taken to Richwood Correctional Center, a private jail that LaSalle Corrections operated for the City of Monroe.
Booking was never completed because of his behavior, and he was put in isolation. Over roughly the next 36 hours guards pepper-sprayed him three times: to stop him kicking the door, again after a scuffle with a detainee who had been put in the cell with him, and a third time during another altercation. When guards came to extract the other man they maced Moore again, struck him on the back of the head, knocked him down, and then six of them put him in a bear hug and slammed him head-first into the floor. When they moved him he fell and hit his head again. They took him to an area of the jail called the four-way, where there were no surveillance cameras, and left him there for about 90 minutes. Nobody checked his vital signs or gave him medical attention.
When Ouachita Parish deputies arrived to transfer him he was unresponsive and bleeding from the head. The receiving facility refused to take him. He went to a hospital instead and died there on November 14, 2015 of a brain hematoma. The Ouachita Parish coroner ruled the death a homicide caused by head trauma. No officer was criminally charged.
His children, Erie Moore Jr., Tamara Green and Tiffany Robinson, sued LaSalle, Richwood and three guards under 42 U.S.C. 1983 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, No. 3:16-cv-01007, before Judge Terry A. Doughty. The case took nine years to reach a jury. On October 20, 2025 the jury returned $42,750,000: $19,500,000 in compensatory damages, including $6,000,000 in wrongful-death damages to each of the three children, and $23,250,000 in punitive damages. It put 88 percent of the fault on the defendants, 10 percent on the City of Monroe and 2 percent on Moore, and found the LaSalle entities a single integrated enterprise. It was reported as the largest verdict ever against a private correctional company.
The number did not survive intact. On May 7, 2026 the court granted a remittitur of the wrongful-death damages from $6,000,000 to $3,080,382.95 per child and held the punitive award constitutionally excessive, reducing it to $6,000,000. The plaintiffs accepted. On June 17, 2026 the court clarified that the revised judgment is $16,741,148.84, not the $40.59 million figure in the plaintiffs' proposed form, and ruled that the 12 percent of fault not cast to the defendants also reduces the remitted wrongful-death award, to $2,710,737.99 per child, setting aside the earlier acceptance so the plaintiffs could accept or reject that figure. Both sides have noticed appeals to the Fifth Circuit.
Nelson W. Cameron of Shreveport tried the case for the family, with Omar Qureshi and Max A. Schoening of Qureshi Law and support from Public Justice and Orrick Herrington.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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