State plans to settle lawsuit over an attack inside prison

The state plans to pay $35,000 to settle a lawsuit against the Department of Public Safety for an attack at Halawa Correctional Facility during which the assailants gained access to an inmate’s living area.

Gilbert Avila sued the department in December 2013, claiming that an employee at Halawa allowed two assailants into his secured quad in Module 2-A on Feb. 14, 2013.

Avila was serving time for a drug charge, said attorneys Joseph and David Ahuna.

The lawsuit is one of two new claims that have been added to House Bill 2279, which would appropriate money for claims against the state or its employees. The bill was passed by the House and then approved Friday by the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

According to written testimony by the attorney general’s office when the measure was heard by the Senate Ways and Means Committee on March 28, Avila was attacked “over an extortion demand with other offenders known by plaintiff to be USO gang members,” referring to the United Samoan Organization.

The testimony also said that Avila invited a confrontation with the gang instead of alerting the prison staff to his risk of harm, and “the state had neither notice of the threat nor any opportunity to relocate plaintiff within HCF (Halawa) for his own safety or take other measures to stop the extortion before the altercation.”

The attorneys for Avila maintain that he did not invite the confrontation.

“The state has a duty to provide for the safety of inmates while under their custody,” Avila’s attorneys said in an email. “In this case, we claimed that the state was negligent in allowing gang members to leave their assigned quad and enter an unassigned quad to extort and assault Mr. Avila. We hope this case has caused the state to be more diligent in preventing inmates from gaining access to authorized quads.”

As a result of the attack, the lawsuit says, Avila sustained a head injury, a cut lip, broken and loose teeth, and pain to various areas of his body.

According to the attorney general’s testimony, an arbitrator of the case “found the state 60 percent negligent in the amount of $86,773.87.” The amount was later brought down to $35,000 after the state appealed the award.