BLUEFIELD — McDowell County Commission has been dismissed as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging a jail inmate was injured.
On April 12, Jonathan Cochran voluntarily dismissed any and all of his claims asserted against the McDowell County Commission in the lawsuit with prejudice. The case will proceed against Investigator Mike Cochran and the unknown, unnamed defendants.
The case is currently scheduled for a three-day trial on April 24, 2023, according to a May 5 document filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
Jonathan Cochran filed the lawsuit in November alleging that during his incarceration, the McDowell County Commission had an obligation to prevent inmates from being physically assaulted and from physical harm, according to the federal complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia in Bluefield.
"Despite jail standards, legislative rules, the Constitution of the United States and the West Virginia Constitution, all of which provide for the protection and proper treatment of inmates, the McDowell County Commission and its employees failed to take any steps to stop or prevent plaintiff from being assaulted and, in fact, placed him in imminent and direct danger by placing plaintiff with inmates that defendants had knowledge of their prior attack against plaintiff," the complaint states.
Jonathan Cochran claims Mike Cochran and the unknown, unnamed defendants acted with deliberate indifference when they received information of the plaintiff's initial beating and his request to be moved. They intentionally failed to move him despite their ability to protect him.
"Defendants' failure to protect plaintiff from a known dangerous living environment was an act of deliberate indifference to a known danger," the complaint states.
Jonathan Cochran is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. He is represented by Paul M. Stroebel of Stroebel & Stroebel in Charleston.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia case number: 1:21-cv-00586