By C1 Staff
SOMERSET, Pa. — An inmate’s lawsuit over a damaged footlocker has been reinstated, despite being formerly thrown over due to the suit’s frivolous nature.
Kevin Williams claims that during a contraband search, corrections officers damaged his footlocker to the tune of $71.47, according to Penn Live.
He filed a lawsuit against the state DOC in Somerset County Court, arguing that prison officials ignored his pleas for compensation.
The judge who originally dismissed the suit as frivolous, County Judge David C. Kelemntik, noted that the amount of damages that Williams sought totaled less than the $75 filing fee for the lawsuit. Klementik concluded that no reasonable persone would have filed such a case.
Through an appeal, Williams got the dismissal overturned by Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter. While she agreed that the state law allowing prison inmates to file lawsuits over jail conditions often placed a “burden on an overstressed court system,” the law that allows judges to toss out claims they see as obviously frivolous or malicious did not apply to Williams’ case.
“While the footlocker in question was not of great value, neither was it trivial,” Leadbetter wrote, concluding that judges can’t simply “measure frivlousness by measuring the amount in controvery against the cost of the filing fee.”
The state court’s decision doesn’t mean Williams has won his case.