Jaycee Dugard loses bid to sue government over her 1991 kidnapping
Submitted by paula on Fri, 08/26/2016 - 10:54pm
Jaycee Dugard cannot sue the U.S. Government for failing to properly supervise her kidnapper while he was on parole, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
Dugard was just 11-years-old when convicted sex offender Philip Garrido kidnapped her as she made her way up the street from her home to her bus stop in South Lake Tahoe.
In San Francisco, the three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that heard the case voted 2-1 that while the crimes against Jaycee Dugard were horrific, the interaction of state and federal statutes did not hold the government liable for the incompetence of parole officers in such cases.
"While our hearts are with Ms. Dugard, the law is not," Judge John Owens wrote in a 14-page ruling upholding a lower court that dismissed the lawsuit.
Dugard sued the State of California and won her case and was awarded a $20 million settlement. She then sued the federal government separately since they were they ones who oversaw Garrido's parole beginning in 1988. She claimed that if the fed's agents had done their jobs, he wouldn't have been be free and able to kidnap her in June of 1991.
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