by Chuck Sharman

On June 24, 2026, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York awarded $3.25 million in damages to former jail detainee Thomas Donohue against Armor Correctional Health, which held the contract at the time of his 2014 incarceration to provide medical care at the Nassau County Correctional Center (NCCC) on Long Island. The firm has since gone through a bankruptcy reorganization that left it with a new name, Armor Health, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, July 2026, p.1.]

The state’s then-Attorney General, Eric Scheiderman (D), sued the firm in 2016, blaming a spate of NCCC deaths in part on shoddy medical care. As PLN reported, Armor settled the suit the following year with a $350,000 payment and a promise not to bid for business in the state for three years. Similar complaints across the country dogged the firm into bankruptcy, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, July 2017, p.30; and July 2026, p.1.]

County cops arrested Donohue, then 48, in September 2014 on suspicion of a pair of bank robberies in West Hempstead and East Meadow, according to a report at the time by Newsday. They took him to Nassau University Medical Center, where staff recorded his allergy to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and placed him on a methadone treatment plan after diagnosing his heroin addiction.

The following day, according to the complaint he later filed, Donohue was booked into the NCCC. There Armor staff admitted him to the jail’s medical floor and began treating his intoxication with “taper” drugs. Despite an initial assessment that he was not suicidal, “at some point, he was placed on suicidal … precautions,” the complaint recalled. He was seen by Armor psychiatrist Dr. Vincent Manetti, who got Donohue to authorize release of psychiatric evaluations and prescribed medications from state Department of Correctional Services and Community Supervision (DOCCS) medical staff at Fishkill Correctional Facility, which had released Donohue two months earlier after he served a term for DWI and leaving the scene of an incident with property damage, court records show.

After the case got to the district court, it recorded conflicting claims from Donohue and Manetti. The detainee said that the doctor refused him the drugs he’d taken in prison, saying “we don’t hand out medication like that.” Manetti accused him of being a drug-seeking malingerer who demanded, “I want meds because I’m in jail.” Each denied the other’s accusation.

Over the next six weeks, Donohue was treated at least twice for seizures. On November 30, 2014, he filed a grievance over his denied psychiatric medications, claiming that he was also denied pain medication and instead given Ibuprofen—one of the NSAIDs to which he had a documented allergy. The grievance was denied, and Donohue appealed. When the appeal was denied, he took it to the Citizen’s Policy and Complaint Review Counsel at the County’s Commission of Correction, but he later said he didn’t know if he ever got a response.

After his transfer back to DOCCS custody in 2015, Donohue was again treated with psychiatric medications but not pain medication. As PLN reported, DOCCS implemented a policy that added multiple layers of approvals to every prisoner’s request for pain medication, leaving many to suffer so badly that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York eventually issued an injunction against the policy. [See: PLN, Mar. 2024, p.36.]

Donohue then filed his pro se 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suit, lodging deliberate indifference claims under the Fourteenth Amendment against Manetti and his employer, as well as then-Sheriff Michael Sposato and his jailers. The County Defendants were dismissed on Feb. 24, 2016. See: Donohue v. Manetti, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 22565 (E.D.N.Y.). The district court appoint pro bono counsel in 2017, which the Plaintiff later replaced. After a failed attempt at mediation in 2020, the parties continued discovery until August 2022, when Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment. On March 31, 2025, the district court largely denied the motion, sending the case to trial. See: Donohue v. Manetti, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61547 (E.D.N.Y.).

That began on June 22, 2026, with Donohue represented by attorneys Albert D. Manuel, III, Cobia M. Powell, Lorraine R. Bishop and Frederick K. Brewington of the latter’s eponymous firm in Hempstead. When jurors finished deliberations two days later, they agreed with Donohue that Manetti’s refusal to treat him with needed medication for nine months amounted to something akin to torture. Finding both the doctor and his employer liable, they awarded Donohue $150,000 in total compensatory damages, plus $250,000 in punitive damages against Manetti and $3 million in punitive damages against Armor Correctional Health. See: Donohue v. Manetti, USDC (E.D.N.Y.), Case No. 2:15-cv-00636.  

Additional source: Newsday