Baltimore County appears close to settling a five-year-old lawsuit that former inmates in the detention center filed arguing they were entitled to minimum wage for working in the county’s waste and recycling center.

The settlement, which the plaintiffs’ attorneys say has been agreed to except for an official county signature, provides the inmates who opted into the class-action lawsuit with $1.46 million in reparation funds for their labor at the Cockeysville recycling center. The plaintiff’s attorneys said they have been waiting since April for a signature on the agreement.

Baltimore County also would agree to pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees, which amount to $2,310,900.

Those settlement costs would bring the county tab to nearly $8.3 million, including $4.5 million the Baltimore County Council already approved the county’s Office of Law to spend for a private law firm, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, to litigate the case.

Had the county paid the inmates the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour instead of $20 per day, it likely would have spent far less. The county discontinued the program after the lawsuit, so it no longer uses inmate labor at its recycling facility.

Howard Hoffman, attorney for the former inmates, said that Nelson Mullins has cost the taxpayers even more money by dragging out the settlement for eight months.

“The County seems determined to only run up further legal fees by ‘dancing on the head of a pin’ by dithering on terms large and small,” Hoffman wrote in an emergency motion filed Friday asking the judge for a prompt signature deadline for the class settlement agreement. “The only party benefitting from any of this is private defense counsel — not county taxpayers, not class counsel, and certainly not the Court."

Hoffman added in an email to The Banner: “The real problem has been getting the County to move this forward in any timely manner.”

Asked about the settlement, county spokesman Dakarai Turner would only say: “The Executive Office is doing its due diligence and will respond accordingly.”

In a response to Hoffman’s motion, though, attorneys Jeffrey Johnson of Nelson Mullins and Jennifer Frankovich of the Baltimore County Office of Law said that the county “is reviewing the settlement agreement and intends to execute it in short order.”

They asked the judge to deny Hoffman’s emergency motion, and contended the plaintiffs were just as responsible for the delays as they were.

Among the issues: Victims of crimes committed by two members of the class wanted to be included in the settlement, and plaintiffs’ attorneys wanted jail staff to help any members still incarcerated to complete the paperwork so they could partake in the settlement.

According to emails between the attorneys and U.S. District Court Judge Erin Aslan, Hoffman was to receive his attorneys’ fees 30 days after settlement; the parties had expected that to occur by the end of April. According to Hoffman’s emergency motion, the parties were negotiating over minor details and the county should have gotten the settlement order signed months ago.

Under the settlement, $40,000 from the fund will directly benefit the lead plaintiff, Michael Scott; another $45,000 will be split among six named plaintiffs. The remainder will be split among 44 former inmates who worked at the recycling center.

The inmates’ case has seen many twists and turns. Scott, the lead plaintiff, was released long ago, as were many of the other inmates.

Paying workers less for the same jobs is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. But the question became, were Scott and his fellow workers inmates or employees?

A federal judge ruled in 2023 that the Fair Labor Standards Act’s purpose is to guarantee minimum living standards, which the inmates already received at the jail. The judge further deemed that the inmates’ work at the recycling facility served both economic and rehabilitative purposes.

Hoffman disagreed, saying the inmates received no “valuable job training” and worked as deeply discounted garbage sorters. He appealed to the 4th Circuit Court, where he prevailed, with the judges questioning both the rehabilitative element of the job training and whether Scott and his fellow inmates should have been classified as employees. The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court.

“Congress may well not have had workers like Scott in mind when it enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act,” the judges wrote. “But ... it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.”

The county filed a petition seeking to have the nation’s highest court review the 4th Circuit’s decision. The Supreme Court declined.

The inmate case is only the latest to rack up substantial fees.

In 2024, the council approved spending $2.5 million more on legal fees for private attorneys on issues as varied as a redistricting map case, legal work for the Department of Aging, labor negotiations, and Public Information Act disclosures. In contrast, Anne Arundel County spent only $180,912 in fiscal year 2024 and $410,136 in fiscal year 2023.

So far in 2025, excluding this settlement, the county has spent far less. According to fiscal notes filed with the council, the Office of Law has been authorized to spend up to $75,000 each on two firms — one to work on redistricting and the other to work on environmental matters. It also spent about $200,000 combined on legal fees for its outgoing inspector general and a private settlement in a lawsuit she filed against a former employee.

This article has been updated to reflect the response from Baltimore County in court to the plaintiff’s emergency order.