$2 Million Judgment for Woman, 19, Who Died in Rolette County Jail Cell Nine Hours After Booking
After trial: Judgment of $2,000,000 entered in the District of North Dakota after the plaintiff accepted a Rule 68 offer of judgment from Rolette County in April 2025. No post-trial or appellate step remains that could reduce it.
Won by Robins Kaplan LLP.
Lacey Higdem, 19, was found hallucinating in the woods under the influence of methamphetamine and booked into the Rolette County Jail in Rolla, North Dakota on June 3, 2020. She died in her cell roughly nine hours later. Rolette County and two former correctional officers made a $2 million offer of judgment, which was accepted.
What happened
Lacey Higdem was 19. On June 3, 2020 she was found hallucinating in the woods, under the influence of methamphetamine, and was booked into the Rolette County Jail in Rolla, North Dakota.
She died in her cell at 12:42 a.m. on June 4, roughly nine hours after she was admitted. She left a young son.
According to her mother's court filings, the jail's video showed her exhibiting obvious signs of someone who needed urgent medical attention, and no correctional officer took any action. The two officers named as defendants, April Azure and Myles Brunelle, are both former employees.
In April 2025 Rolette County, on behalf of itself and the two officers, made an offer of judgment of $2,000,000. Her mother accepted it. Because it was an accepted offer of judgment under Rule 68 rather than a private settlement, it was entered as a judgment, and there is no post-trial or appellate step left that could reduce it.
The figure is the whole lesson of North Dakota public-entity litigation, and it is worth understanding precisely. N.D.C.C. § 32-12.1-03(2) limits a political subdivision's liability to five hundred thousand dollars per person and two million dollars for any number of claims arising from a single occurrence, and separately bars punitive damages against a political subdivision altogether. A pure state-law wrongful-death claim for one decedent against Rolette County could not have exceeded $500,000.
Federal claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 are not subject to that cap at all. That is what made $2,000,000 possible. It is also worth noticing that $2,000,000 is exactly the statute's per-occurrence figure, which suggests the number is bounded by the county's coverage as much as by anything else.
Her lead counsel called it the largest outcome for a jail death in North Dakota, and described the situation as preventable.
The family was represented by Andrew Noel as lead counsel with Marc Betinsky and Julie Moroney of Robins Kaplan, and Timothy Q. Purdon.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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