CONCORD, NH — The judge overseeing a landmark civil case over abuse at a New Hampshire youth detention center has issued a preliminary order reducing the $38 million penalty against the state to $475,000. Rockingham County Superior Court Judge Andrew Schulman previously said reducing the amount awarded to plaintiff David Meehan by almost 99% would be “an unacceptable miscarriage of justice.” Schulman reiterated his belief in a decision made Nov. 4 but “reluctantly” agreed to the state’s request. He set the upper limit of the award and said he would make a final decision to that effect on Friday to avoid last-minute demands from lawyers.

Meehan’s horrific allegations of sexual and physical abuse at the Youth Development Center in the 1990s led to a massive criminal investigation that resulted in multiple arrests. The civil lawsuit, which aims to hold the state accountable, was the first of more than 1,100 cases to go to trial. Although jurors sided with him in May after a month-long trial, confusion emerged over how much money they could award in damages.

The disagreement asked jurors, “How many facts did the jury unanimously find the plaintiff proved by a preponderance of the evidence?” It includes a section of the decision form that asks: Jurors were not informed that state law caps claims against the state at $475,000 per “incident.”

Some jurors later said they wrote “one” on the verdict form to indicate they believed Meehan suffered a single case of post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from more than 100 bouts of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. The state interpreted the verdict to mean that jurors found him responsible for only one “incident” of abuse at the Manchester facility (now called the Sununu Youth Services Center).

The judge rejected Meehan’s requests to hold a new trial focused solely on determining the count of events or to vacate part of the verdict in which jurors wrote only one incident. He said a completely new trial remains an option, but Meehan’s attorneys have not made such a request.

Meehan, 42, contacted police in 2017 and filed a lawsuit against the state three years later. Eleven former government employees have since been arrested, but one has since died and charges against the other were dropped after the man, now in his early 80s, was deemed incompetent to stand trial.

The only criminal case to go to trial so far ended in a mistrial in September, when jurors deadlocked on whether defendant Victor Malavet raped a girl at a separate state-run facility in Concord.

Bradley Asbury, who pleaded not guilty to detaining a teenage boy while other employees sexually assaulted him in Manchester, will stand trial next week.