Couple wrongly accused of hoax in kidnapping by Harvard law grad settle suit for $2.5M
A couple who sued the city of Vallejo, California, for wrongly labeling their kidnapping claim a hoax have settled the case for $2.5 million.
Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn announced the settlement in their defamation suit last Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. “What happened to us should not happen to anyone,” they said in a statement. The Associated Press and the San Diego Union-Tribune also have coverage.
Harvard law grad and former lawyer Matthew Muller was sentenced to 40 years in prison last March for kidnapping Huskins from Quinn’s home in March 2015. Muller put Huskins in his car trunk and drove to Lake Tahoe, where he held Huskins for two days before releasing her. Vallejo police dismissed the case as a hoax.
Police focused on Muller when a cellphone linked to him was dropped in a different home invasion.
U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley had allowed the lawsuit to proceed last year. Nunley said the suit had alleged conduct by police that went beyond “investigating alternate theories, and expressing skepticism.” A reasonable jury could find the defendants “engaged in conduct that was extreme and outrageous,” Nunley said.
Quinn and Huskins are now engaged and are planning a September wedding.
