Former prisoner puts transport company on notice for lawsuit

LEWISTON — An attorney for a woman who said she was mistreated during her extradition from Florida to Maine in November filed a notice of claim that she intends to sue.

Nicholas Worden said Meghan Quinn expects to pursue a claim in federal court related to her five-day journey caged in the back of a van.

The notice was mailed to U.S. Prisoner Transport in Florida, which carried out Quinn’s extradition, and its parent company, Prisoner Transportation Services in Tennessee. Worden also mailed copies to Androscoggin County District Attorney Andrew Robinson and Androscoggin County Sheriff Eric Samson.

Quinn and a male prisoner in the same transport van claimed she was kept in a cage in an unheated area and was made to sit in her menstrual blood and to defecate in a burger wrapper in front of the male prisoners.

Damages arose from actions including assault, battery, negligence, negligent operation of a motor vehicle and others, Worden said, though the actual complaint likely won’t include all of the damages named in the notice.

The factual basis for the claims includes, generally, the date of the contract between the transport company and the District Attorney’s Office, the date and place of the extradition transport and the conditions and treatment Quinn endured during the trip, Worden said.

The story of Quinn’s extradition was the subject of a special Sun Journal investigative report published on March 26.

Since that publication, county prosecutors in Maine who used the private transport company that extradited Quinn have stopped contracting with them. District attorneys have discussed possibly pooling their resources to hire one or more law enforcement officers who would handle extraditions that previously were contracted with the private transport company.