Jury Awards $2.9 Million Against D.C. for Negligent Care

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A D.C. jury has awarded $2.9 million in what is believed to be the largest verdict against the District over the negligent care of a mentally disabled resident.
The judgment in U.S. District Court on April 18 was the climax of a decade-old lawsuit against the city by the family of Curtis Suggs, who suffered from profound developmental disabilities and cerebral palsy and died in 2000 at age 68. Suggs spent more than three decades in the District’s long-troubled system for the mentally disabled, surviving until a treatable spinal condition erupted in the last five years of his life into the maladies that contributed to his death.