CLEVELAND, Ohio — A former Cuyahoga County jail inmate filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday that says the county violated his civil rights when he was forced to choose between drinking moldy water that made him sick or severe dehydration.

Cecil Fluker, who previously filed a lawsuit against the county in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, says the county inflicted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of his 8th, 5th and 14th Amendment Rights. The lawsuit also says the county showed “deliberate indifference” to Fluker’s health and safety.

The new lawsuit also added Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish to the list of defendants that included county Sheriff Clifford Pinkney, former jail director Ken Mills and former Warden Eric Ivey.

Mills has since resigned and criminally charged on accusations that he lied about blocking healthcare at the jail. Ivey was demoted on Monday after one of two county investigations was completed and showed he violated the county’s nepotism policy.

The lawsuit was filed by his attorney David Malik. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and a public ethics investigation by a special master regarding the treatment of inmates at the jail.

Malik said he added Budish to the lawsuit because of a 2013 agreement between the county executive’s office and the county prosecutor that forced the prosecutor’s office to defend the county in lawsuits against the jail.

Malik said prosecutors, county officials and the county’s inspector general should have acted on what they knew or should have known was deteriorating conditions inside the jail, where eight inmates died in 2018.

“How does the county repeatedly defend these cases, with knowledge that inmates are in imminent danger and not report it?” Malik said. “It’s one thing when an accident happens and you have to defend it, but it’s an entirely different thing to defend it when you know inmates are in imminent danger.”

Fluker has become an outspoken critic of the jail, speaking at community meetings and in front of Cuyahoga County Council after a U.S. Marshals report found “inhumane” conditions at the jail.

Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan said the county has not yet been served with the lawsuit but will review it once they receive it.

The new lawsuit mirrors in most ways an amended complaint filed in county court on July 30.

Fluker was arrested on a probation violation on Aug. 30, 2017. While at the county’s downtown jail, he became sick from drinking dirty water and eating off cracked food trays covered in black mold, the lawsuit says. The trays leaked a dark liquid that smelled “like sewer water or feces.”

Fluker and correction officers filed grievances regarding the mold, but jail administrators never fixed the issue, throwing out the trays in December 2018 and January 2019, according to the lawsuit.

Mills, Ivey and Pinkney were aware of moldy trays but kept them in regular use, the lawsuit says. The county has also failed to disclose other reports from corrections officers as part of other lawsuits and public records requests, according to the lawsuit.

“The conduct of these three defendants shocks [the] conscience,” the lawsuit says.

Jail administrators also failed to provide Fluker and other inmates access to clean water, such as water bottles, the lawsuit said.

Fluker vomited regularly, developed a rash and anxiety after consuming the mold, the lawsuit says. He was charged $10 for treatment with Imodium and Zofran, the lawsuit says.

Fluker “felt so ill from the water and black mold that he felt as if he was going to die,” the lawsuit says.

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