LEWISTON — Nearly three years after Meghan Quinn was forced to kneel in a blood- and urine-soaked cage during a five-day extradition from Florida to Maine, her lawsuit against a Florida company, U.S. Prisoner Transport, has been settled.
Details of the settlement are confidential.
Quinn, 36, said Thursday she was required to sign a disclosure agreement forbidding her from talking about the terms of the settlement.
Portland lawyer Benjamin Donahue, who filed the lawsuit in 2018, said Wednesday he was also unable to discuss the settlement as it is being finalized.
The story of Quinn’s extradition from Kissimmee, Florida, to Auburn, Maine, in November 2016 was the subject of a special Sun Journal investigative report published in March 2017. Quinn was being extradited to Maine on a probation violation for a forgery charge
In that award-winning story, written by reporter Christopher Williams, Quinn, who was being extradited to Maine on a probation violation for a forgery charge, and a male prisoner in the same transport van claimed she was kept in a cage in an unheated area in the back of a van, and was made to sit in her menstrual blood, defecate into a burger wrapper and urinate into a Ziploc bag in front of male prisoners.
During the five-day ordeal the week of Thanksgiving, Quinn was allowed out of her cage three times to use a bathroom and stretch her legs, according to the complaint that alleged seven counts, including negligent supervision and hiring, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil rights violation and negligence.
Quinn’s lawsuit claimed she suffered permanent physical injuries from “severely” tightened ankle shackles that cut into her skin to the bone and became infected by the bodily fluids that ran down her legs, leaving prominent scars.
Quinn also said she suffered a broken nose when the van’s driver slammed on the brakes while traveling at highway speeds in response to her complaints about her clothing becoming bloodied during her menstrual cycle.
“Humiliated, vomiting and crying hysterically, Meghan begged the drivers to help her,” according to the lawsuit.
After the Sun Journal’s publication of Quinn’s description of the abuse, county prosecutors in Maine who used the private transport company that extradited her stopped contracting with the company, based in Melbourne, Florida. Several other departments around the country did, as well.
Quinn filed her lawsuit in April 2018. Shortly after, U.S. Prisoner Transport denied it had mistreated Quinn or any other prisoners.
Since then, Quinn has moved out of Maine.
Meghan Quinn, now 36, formerly of Sabattus, at the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn in February 2017, as she wipes away tears while talking about her extradition from Florida to Maine. She filed a federal lawsuit last year, claiming she was caged for five days in the back of a van belonging to a private Florida company that extradites prisoners. Sun Journal file photo
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