© Personal photo via federal court records Edmond "Eddie" Otis Studdard

Shelby County's government has agreed to pay $800,000 to settle a lawsuit involving Edmond "Eddie" Studdard, a man who was fatally shot in 2016 by sheriff's deputies.

The settlement was approved by the Shelby County Commission on Monday and ends the case. A civil trial that had been scheduled for later this month will not take place.

Studdard was apparently suffering a mental health crisis and had cut his wrists with a blade shortly before deputies shot him in Cordova in July 2016. One bullet hit him in the neck and paralyzed him, and he died in September of that year.

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His widow filed a lawsuit, arguing her slain husband was suicidal and only posed a danger to himself, not the deputies.

The Shelby County government sought to dismiss the case on the basis of a legal doctrine called qualified immunity. The concept protects law enforcement officers from legal liability unless they clearly violate the law or someone's constitutional rights.

U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla rejected the county's arguments in January 2019, citing prior cases that said police officers can't shoot suicidal people who aren't threatening anyone else.

Though McCalla allowed the lawsuit against individual deputies Erin Shepherd and Terry Reed to go forward, he agreed to dismiss the county government from the lawsuit, concluding that the plaintiffs hadn't proven their claims that the government's training of the deputies was inadequate.

Though the lawsuit was technically against only the individual deputies, not the county government, the government's attorneys continued to represent them.

An appeals court likewise ruled against the county government and allowed the case to move forward.

Then the county government asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case and rule on its behalf — but the court refused to take up the issue.

The notification of the settlement had been filed in court documents on Feb. 25, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its refusal to review the case.

A big settlement

The $800,000 sum is much larger than some legal settlements paid out by local governments in other notable cases.

In February 2018, for instance, the city of Memphis paid a settlement of $10,000 to settle a lawsuit related to the fatal police shooting of a man named Alexio Allen.

And the Memphis and Shelby County governments paid a combined $19,000 to settle a lawsuit by Manuel Duran, a Spanish-language news reporter who was arrested at an April 2018 protest and later transferred to immigration custody.

Reporters Katherine Burgess and Sam Hardiman contributed to this article.

Investigative reporter Daniel Connolly welcomes tips and comments from the public. Reach him at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Studdard case: Shelby County pays hefty sum to settle police shooting lawsuit