City of Rochester Settles Daniel Prude Wrongful Death Suit for $12 Million
After trial: A federal judge approved the settlement on October 6, 2022. It was funded by the City of Rochester as an institutional defendant, making it a collectable, paid result rather than an award against individual officers. The city denied liability and paid no punitive damages as conditions of the deal. Because the case ended in a negotiated settlement rather than a trial verdict, there was no judgment for either side to appeal.
Won by Roth & Roth, LLP.
Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Rochester man in the middle of a mental health crisis, died in March 2020 after police officers put a spit hood over his head and held him face down on the pavement until he stopped breathing. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide from asphyxia during restraint, though a state grand jury declined to indict the officers. Elliot D. Shields of Roth & Roth, LLP filed the family's federal civil rights suit against the City of Rochester in September 2020. On October 6, 2022, a federal judge approved a $12 million settlement, split evenly between pain-and-suffering and wrongful death claims, with the city admitting no liability.
What happened
On March 23, 2020, Rochester police responded to a 911 call about Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man who had left a relative's home unclothed during a mental health episode. Officers found him naked on Jefferson Avenue, handcuffed him, and placed a mesh spit hood over his head after he said he had COVID-19. While he lay on the ground, an officer pushed his head down against the pavement for about two minutes while another officer held his body down. Prude stopped breathing before paramedics arrived. He was resuscitated but never regained consciousness.
He was removed from life support on March 30, 2020, and died of brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation. The Monroe County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, giving the cause as complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint, with excited delirium and acute PCP intoxication in the chain. In February 2021, a state grand jury declined to indict any of the officers involved, after the state attorney general's office argued that excited delirium brought on by PCP use, rather than the restraint itself, sent Prude into cardiac arrest. Body camera footage of the encounter was not made public until months after Prude died, which set off protests across Rochester and led to the resignations of the police chief and other city officials.
In early September 2020, Elliot D. Shields of Roth & Roth, LLP and Donald M. Thompson of Easton Thompson Kasperek Shiffrin in Rochester filed a federal civil rights suit on behalf of Prude's estate in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, case number 6:20-cv-06675, against the City of Rochester, the police department, and the officers involved. The 66-page complaint alleged excessive force, deliberate indifference to a medical emergency, and a decades-long municipal practice of failing to discipline officers who use excessive force. Stephen Schwarz of Faraci & Lange and attorney Matthew Piers later joined the family's legal team as the case moved toward resolution.
Two and a half years later, on October 6, 2022, a federal judge approved a $12 million settlement between the city and Prude's estate, which was administered by his son and payable to Prude's five children. The money was split evenly: $6 million for pain and suffering and $6 million for wrongful death. As part of the deal, the city admitted no liability and paid no punitive damages. Rochester's mayor at the time, Malik Evans, said the settlement let the city move past the litigation rather than keep fighting it in court.
The settlement closed the federal case without a trial. Prude's death remains one of the largest publicly reported payouts by the City of Rochester over a single police encounter.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Courthouse News Service, Sept 2020: names Elliot D. Shields of the Manhattan firm Roth & Roth and Donald Thompson of Easton Thompson Kasperek Shiffrin as the attorneys who filed the federal complaint, the failure-to-discipline allegations, and the roughly two-minute restraint on the pavement
- 2.Rochester City Newspaper, Oct 6 2022: confirms the $12M settlement, the $6M/$6M pain-and-suffering and wrongful-death split, the city's no-liability and no-punitive-damages position, and identifies Elliot Shields of Roth & Roth LLP as the lawyer who filed the suit and Stephen Schwarz of Faraci & Lange for the family
- 3.ABC News, Oct 6 2022: reports that a federal judge approved the settlement terms that day, that Prude's son administered the estate, that the money goes to Prude's five children, and names Matthew Piers among plaintiffs' counsel
- 4.WXXI News, Oct 6 2022: reports the $12M settlement's even pain-and-suffering and wrongful-death split, the city's no-liability position, and the March 23 to 30, 2020 restraint and death
- 5.Bloomberg Law, Sept 2020: confirms the case caption and docket, Tameshay Prude v. City of Rochester, No. 6:20-cv-06675 (W.D.N.Y.), and the constitutional claims pleaded
- 6.The Intercept, Dec 21 2024: sets out the medical examiner's cause-of-death chain (asphyxia complications, excited delirium, PCP intoxication) and the attorney general's excited-delirium argument to the grand jury that declined to indict
- 7.Rochester Beacon, Oct 6 2022: confirms the $12M figure, the March 30, 2020 death after restraint with a spit hood, the city's no-liability stipulation, and Mayor Malik Evans' comment on the settlement
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