Lawsuits cost New Jersey $178M in 2024, as abuse claims rise

By DANA DiFILIPPO
Republished with permission of N.J. Monitor

Six years ago, New Jersey legislators expanded the statute of limitations for survivors of sexual assault, responding to a wave of victims looking for justice years or even decades after abuse at the hands of predatory clergy, Boy Scout leaders, and others entrusted to care for children. 

But the state has found itself increasingly held to account for sexual abuse people have suffered in the government’s custody, from foster care to state-run homes.

Officials paid more than $23 million to settle over a dozen of these complaints last year. They were among 332 payouts, totaling almost $178 million, that the state made in 2024 to resolve legal claims involving state employees, agencies, and property, according to records the New Jersey Monitor obtained under the Open Public Records Act.

Two of the largest payments in 2024 — $12 million and $6.8 million — went to women for sexual abuse they endured in foster placements, one dating back to 1987 and the other to 1963. The women said they reported the abuse while still in the care of their molesters, but child welfare workers did little to investigate and just moved them to other foster homes where they encountered new abusers.

Spokespeople from the state Department of Children and Families did not respond to a request for comment.

Several men received settlements for sexual abuse they endured while in state-run homes decades ago.

One said four male employees and two male residents at the New Lisbon Developmental Center, a state-run home in Burlington County for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, sexually assaulted him starting in 1950, when he was 8 years old, until he aged out of the system at 18. He received a $3.5 million payout. Another man who alleged he was abused at New Lisbon, where he was placed in 1987 at age 8, received $99,000 to settle his lawsuit.

Abuse also occurred at the now-shuttered Arthur Brisbane Child Treatment Center in Monmouth County, according to a man who said he was 13 in 1983 when an employee there began molesting him. That employee, Thomas Grisard, was later convicted, and the state paid the victim $750,000 last year to resolve his lawsuit.

Beyond those cases, public transit continued to fuel the most lawsuits against the state, with complaints lodged about passengers injured in bus and rail accidents, workers hurt on the job, and pedestrians and bicyclists injured or killed by NJ Transit buses. People also sued over medical malpractice at public hospitals, faulty roads and bridges, workplace discrimination and harassment, mistreatment by police and prison guards, and civil rights violations.

The $177.9 million the state paid to settle lawsuits last year was $56 million more than it paid in 2023 to resolve 364 claims and the highest since 2021, when 287 lawsuits cost the state $196 million.

Thirty-five cases cost the state $1 million or more, representing 73% of the total disbursed. The largest payout — $12.5 million — went to Shelley Pritchett, a former correctional officer for the Juvenile Justice Commission who said her bosses forced her to resign after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Plenty of people settled for peanuts, too, with the smallest payout, $150, going to an East Orange man who said he was hurt when another car hit the NJ Transit bus in which he was riding.

Cases that resulted in payouts last year include:

• Dion Miller, who spent 20 years in prison for an elderly neighbor’s murder. Miller maintained his innocence and was exonerated in 2023. The state paid him $995,000 to settle his lawsuit.
• Scott Lupia was a locomotive engineer who alerted his supervisors to a broken air conditioner in his cab one sultry day in July 2020. His bosses ordered him to continue working even though temperatures hit 114 degrees in his cab, according to his suit. He passed out at the controls 40 minutes after leaving Penn Station, hitting his head and suffering career-ending injuries, the suit says. The state paid him almost $12.4 million after he won his case at trial.
• Zenaida Gonzalez received $4 million after child welfare workers took her baby because she was struggling with an abusive partner and mental health challenges. The baby, Alison Chavez, was 16 months old when she died in 2012 of head trauma while in a foster home.
• Donald Turner Jr., a public works employee in Hawthorne, got $3.9 million after a pedestrian bridge where he was clearing snow in March 2019 collapsed onto the roadway below, and he was seriously injured.
• Two women who reached out to a state-run crime victim compensation office for help filed lawsuits after an employee sexually harassed them. The state paid one $424,000 and another $400,000 over their claims that Guilherme Jamarino, an employee who was later criminally charged, sent them sexually explicit pictures and videos of himself.
• Jasmine Roach received $500,000 for the 2014 sexual assault and murder of her 9-year-old daughter at the hands of a paroled sex offender.
• Muhammad Muslih and his family got $3.5 million after computers, cash, jewelry, and more that Montclair police seized from their home during a 2019 search went missing when the family tried to retrieve it after resolving the accusations against them.

The state made money too

While millions flowed out in lawsuit payouts, almost $430 million went back into state coffers due to the civil enforcement work of the state’s attorneys.

Attorney General Matt Platkin said successful settlements involved environmental cases, consumer issues, taxation matters, and debt recovery actions.

“We’ve stopped scams, halted questionable business practices, and made polluters pay—and in the process we’ve returned hundreds of millions of dollars back to the State and our residents,” Platkin said in a statement. “These results translate into a better quality of life for all New Jerseyans. I will always fight to make sure that costly and damaging misconduct is corrected, whether that stems from polluters, consumer fraud, or others who engage in unlawful business practices.”

The amount recovered last year fell from 2023, when Platkin’s office recouped nearly $600 million. Among 2024’s largest recoveries:

• The chemical company Solvay Specialty Polymers USA paid $179.8 million for remediation and natural resource damages stemming from contamination at its Gloucester County facility.
• The state received $125 million from Orsted after the wind energy company abandoned plans to build two offshore wind projects in New Jersey’s coastal waters.
• New Jersey will get more than $30 million as part of a $700 million nationwide settlement with Johnson & Johnson to resolve complaints stemming from its marketing of talc-based baby powder.
• The state received $18.5 million in compensation for groundwater contaminated by the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether.