Ex-con gets $1 million settlement after suffering six-day erection in solitary jail cell

A former inmate who was forced to suffer through a painful six-day erection which left him impotent, has been handed a $US750,000 ($1 million) settlement.

The New York Post reports that the hefty payout amounts to $US125,000 for each day of hard time served by Rodney Cotton, 51, who said he was treated "worse than a dog" at the Manhattan Detention Complex while enduring the uncomfortable side effect of an antidepressant medication.

Cotton said the lack of medical attention rendered him impotent.

"It just started hurting," Cotton told The New York Post on Monday of his ordeal, which began on July 4, 2011, near the start of a 2.5-year sentence for a parole violation. "And I’m like, what the hell is going on? It wasn’t going down."

Cotton had asked to be taken to a jail clinic, but a guard at the facility, known as The Tombs, told him he’d have to wait until after the holiday weekend.

Desperate, Cotton faked chest pains to get a doctor to see him, only to be given ice packs and Tylenol.

Days later, he was finally taken to Bellevue Hospital, and underwent surgery to relieve the swelling. The doctors said the stitches would dissolve on their own. They didn’t, he claims.

The stitches had become embedded in the skin, and no anaesthetic was used when they were being removed, Cotton said in his Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

Doctors said a lasting erection is a side effect of Risperdal, and a warning about it is listed on the website of the manufacturer, Janssen.

Cotton said he started taking Risperdal in 2003, the year after he finished a 12-year prison stint for manslaughter for killing a man during a 1989 fight over a sheepskin coat.

Now he’s going to take his money and move to Atlanta, Georgia, to be closer to his daughter. "I can’t fix my situation, but I can soothe it," he said.

A spokesman for the city’s Law Department, Nicholas Paolucci, said, "Settling this case was in the best interest of the city."

In the meantime, New York City has ended its contract with Corizon, the for-profit health care company that has drawn fire for the way it treated inmates such as Cotton.

Original report here

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