Family Takes Settlement in Fatal Injury by Deputies

The family of a black man whose neck was broken by sheriff’s deputies agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the county to avoid prolonged appeals, including one on grounds of adverse anti-law enforcement publicity steming from the Rodney G. King police brutality case, attorneys said. The amount of the settlement was not disclosed.

A Superior Court jury had already awarded the family of Otis Robinson $3.16 million, but Superior Court Judge Madeleine Flier had not formally accepted it.

Robinson was arrested in 1985 after a traffic accident by Los Angeles police officers, who turned him over to county deputies at County-USC Medical Center. At the hospital he was lying on a bed, handcuffed and in restraints. Deputies and a male nurse had tried to force him to a sitting position, according to testimony. At that point his neck had been broken, but a doctor examined him and sent him back to the Men’s Central Jail. He wasn’t treated until the next morning and died hours later.