Check coming after 11 years

Talk about a past-due paycheck.

More than 11 years after filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of a handful of inmates at the Salt Lake County Jail, a Utah civil-rights attorney finally has an order in hand requiring the county to pay him close to $30,000 in fees and court costs.

The case was first filed in January 1994 as a challenge to the jail's blanket ban on newspapers and magazines but was later consolidated with other cases challenging reading-material policies at other institutions.

Attorney Brian Barnard, who represented all 14 original plaintiffs, and attorneys for the various institutions argued the case before the late U.S. Magistrate Ronald Boyce, who had the case under advisement at the time of his death in October 2002.

"It became a procedural nightmare," Barnard said. "Boyce was thinking about it for about two years before his death. Upon his death, it took awhile to get it sorted out."

Finally, the case was reassigned to U.S. Magistrate David Nuffer, who dismissed all claims but the one relating to the Salt Lake County Jail's now-reversed policy prohibiting newspapers and magazines. At the time, the jail's library had no newspapers or magazines, and inmates were forbidden from subscribing to the periodicals on their own.

Nuffer ruled the two former inmates who brought that specific claim were entitled to nominal damages for the unconstitutional policy, thus entitling Barnard to attorney's fees and court costs.

U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell ordered the county to pay Barnard $28,374.89 — half the amount originally requested for the past 11 years of litigation.

In his late-February order, Cassell noted Barnard's "dogged persistence" of the case which, the judge said, "ultimately led to the reaffirmation of important constitutional rights."

That persistence continues today, as Barnard has filed appeals of two issues stemming from the 1994 case and has also recently filed several more suits challenging policies concerning reading material at the Cache County Jail.

The northern Utah jail forbids its some 300 inmates from subscribing to magazines or newspapers on their own, opting instead to make reading materials available in the jail library and provide newspapers to inmates in their cells.