Defendants, portions of malicious prosecution suit dismissed
A former prison guard who was acquitted of smuggling drugs into the prison has agreed to drop Fayette County and the former district attorney from a malicious prosecution lawsuit he filed.
Tim Hamborsky, 51, of Connellsville, through his attorney, John P. Smarto of Greensburg, agreed to drop the county and Nancy D. Vernon from the suit, but former prison warden Larry Medlock and drug task force detective Thomas O’Barto will remain as defendants in the federal suit.
U.S. District Judge Terrance McVerry on Monday granted the motion to dismiss those defendants, as well as to withdraw portions of the complaint that deal with fabrication of false evidence and municipal liability. Smarto also agreed to dismiss a count of malicious prosecution against Medlock.
Marie M. Jones, who represents all of the defendants, agreed to give Smarto time to amend a claim of conspiracy between Medlock and O’Barto and “plead more clearly how the conspiracy continued through the (time) of the trial of the criminal charges of the plaintiff.”
She also agreed to withdraw a motion to dismiss the suit, which was pending.
In his suit, Hamborsky had alleged that Vernon, O’Barto and Medlock knew that an inmate never asked him to bring drugs into the lockup, but set him up on Nov. 5, 2008, to take a plastic bag that contained chewing tobacco, four Vicodin pills and money into the prison had worked in for 22 years.
The inmate, Erin Spade, told authorities that Hamborsky would smuggle the drugs and tobacco into the prison for him. Tobacco is prohibited in the prison.
Hamborsky was acquitted of all charges by a jury in April 2010.