A Missouri man whose murder conviction against a local journalist was vacated after receiving media attention in 2013 will receive a large sum of money after suing for overdue cash from his original conviction case. Become.
Ryan Ferguson, 40, was awarded $38 million in damages by a jury after an insurance company hired by the city of Columbia failed to pay him a wrongful conviction settlement. According to ABC17.
Travelers Insurance has been ordered to pay a large sum to Mr. Ferguson and the six police officers he first sued and won, local broadcasters reported.
The company was unable to persuade a court to block the $11 million settlement awarded to Mr. Ferguson after he won a lawsuit against the city of Columbia, police and prosecutors in 2017.
The insurance company, which was employed by the city from 2006 to 2011, sought to avoid financial responsibility for that payment and the legal costs of the six officers Ferguson is suing. These officers reportedly would have gone bankrupt with legal costs and damages for the man who was wrongly jailed.
Both parties then worked together to file a lawsuit against Travelers Insurance.
According to ABC 17, Count II in the lawsuit alleges that Travelers Insurance “deliberately disregarded the financial interests of the officers” in hopes of escaping its obligations.
Mr Ferguson's lawyer told the publication that the innocent man would receive 86% of the verdict and the six officers would split the remaining 14%.
“This ruling will have far-reaching implications for wrongful conviction cases across the country where insurance companies refuse to participate in settlement negotiations and immediately pay their share of judgments. Justice for Ryan Ferguson at last. The jury clearly heard us,” Ferguson's attorney Kathleen Zellner said in a statement to the news station.
Ferguson spent 10 years in prison for the 2001 murder of journalist Kent Heyholt in Columbia, Missouri. Mr. Highholt, a sports editor at the Columbia Daily Tribune, was found beaten and strangled to death in his office parking lot in the early morning hours.
Ferguson was a high school student at the time. He was accused of murder along with his friend and classmate, who confessed to committing the murder while drunk and later recanted his allegedly coerced confession.
Mr. Ferguson was convicted based on the testimony of a friend and a witness, who later recanted his claims. He was released from prison in 2013 and won $11 million in a civil lawsuit against the Missouri State Police in 2017.
Although his friend Charles Erickson was released after serving nearly 20 years in prison, Highholt's murder remains unsolved.
The latest lawsuit has awarded Ferguson approximately $48 million in total damages, Zellner told ABC.
