Portage County settles lawsuit with inmates over recorded attorney-client calls
Kevin Murphy
MADISON - Portage County’s insurers will pay $90,000 to settle a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of county jail inmates whose phone calls to their attorneys were recorded between 2012 and November 2015.
The suit alleged that recording calls inmates made from cellblock dayrooms violated state law against improper electronic surveillance and the right to privacy protected in the U.S. Constitution.
According to documents filed in federal court in Madison:
A phone system was installed in the jail in 2007 to record phone calls from the cellblocks “unless the phone number being dialed had been designated as private.”