A Missouri judge has ordered an insurance company to pay more than $43 million to a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and incarcerated for nearly a decade.
In 2004, Ryan Ferguson was arrested in the 2001 killing of a newspaper sports editor in Columbia, Missouri, and he was convicted the following year. His 2005 conviction was vacated in 2013 after a key witness who had testified against Ferguson said he wasn’t involved in the killing. Prosecutors decided against trying Ferguson again.
Ferguson took Columbia and a group of police officers to court in 2014 with a federal civil rights lawsuit, and he was awarded $11 million, according to court documents.
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According to insurance trade publication Insurance Business, Ferguson took legal action against the city’s insurer, St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Travelers insurance company, because the officers could only pay $2.7 million.
Ferguson’s fight against the company spent years in state court. The officers also joined the lawsuit, claiming they experienced stress when the insurer wouldn’t pay out, according to KMIZ-TV in Columbia.
In November, a jury sided with Ferguson, and Judge Cotton Walker awarded more than $43.8 million to the plaintiffs on Monday, according to court documents.
“He was thrilled,” Ferguson’s attorney, Kathleen Zellner, told KMIZ-TV about her client’s reaction. “It was close, not entirely comparable, to when I got to tell him that, you know, the appellate court had overturned his conviction and he was going to be released. But this is a close second.”
The officers will get a percentage of the award, Zellner told the station.
CBS News has reached out to Travelers insurance company for comment.
