People across North Carolina who say they were wrongly arrested or held in jail too long because of glitchy court software could soon be eligible for payouts of up to $2,800 per arrest under a proposed class-action settlement with Tyler Technologies. The agreement, which still needs a federal judge's sign-off, would set aside up to $1.5 million to compensate people harmed by errors tied to the state's eCourts system, also known as Odyssey.
Attorneys filed the proposed settlement in federal court Monday, according to the Raleigh News & Observer, which reported the terms. The deal would resolve claims against Tyler Technologies in a lawsuit filed by a handful of plaintiffs in North Carolina's federal Middle District in May 2023, alleging that Tyler Technologies' court-digitization software contained errors that led to invalid-warrant arrests and excessive jail detentions; claims against Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry L. McFadden remain pending. As reported by CBS 17, the case, Chaplin et al. v. McFadden et al., was filed under case number 1:23-cv-00423 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
Tyler Technologies, the Texas-based software company hired by the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts, would pay up to $1.5 million to cover valid claims, and would separately pay attorneys' fees, expenses, claimant-notification costs and settlement-administration costs. According to The Assembly, the settlement's total value — including those fees and costs — could reach $2.14 million.
What Claimants Could Receive
Under the proposed terms, eligible people who were wrongfully arrested could receive $2,800 per arrest, while those held in jail more than six hours after meeting all conditions of release could receive $500 plus $350 for each additional hour, per CBS 17's reporting. Compensation would be capped at $5,000 per person. The proposed settlement names nine plaintiffs from across the state — one with a case in Harnett County, two in Mecklenburg County and six in Wake County — and would also allow other people who believe they were wrongly arrested or detained too long because of the technology to submit claims of their own.
Three of the named plaintiff cases involve alleged extended detention, while the remaining cases involve claims of wrongful arrest. The deal still requires approval by a federal judge, and any appeal deadlines would need to expire before it becomes final — a process The Assembly describes as involving a preliminary-approval stage, a claims period and a later hearing for final approval.
One Man's Account of Repeated Arrests
Raleigh resident Kevin Spruill said he was arrested on a Wake County felony warrant in February 2023 after a woman reported that her bank account had been used to buy $105.92 in groceries at Food Lion. Spruill said he paid for the groceries with his own debit card and was booked and released on bond that night, according to The Assembly. He said he was handcuffed twice more over the same warrant — once during a traffic stop in Zebulon and again when he appeared in court — telling the outlet that the warrant kept reappearing in the system even after it should have been resolved. “I just assumed it got lost in the shuffle,” Spruill said, per The Assembly's reporting. The Assembly reports that officers arrested Spruill three times in 2023 over the same warrant, which he said was no longer active.
The Roots of the eCourts Rollout Problems
North Carolina's eCourts system first went live in four pilot counties — Lee, Harnett, Johnston and Wake — on February 13, 2023, according to WUNC. Within weeks, the state's Administrative Office of the Courts had logged 573 application defects in the new system and reported that Tyler Technologies had resolved 393 of them by April 21, 2023, the station reported. A planned expansion of the system to Mecklenburg County on May 8, 2023 was postponed indefinitely because officials determined it wasn't mature enough to launch, per WUNC's reporting.
The stakes of those software defects were not abstract. Within four days of eCourts launching in Mecklenburg County, 66 people had been held in jail longer than they should have been because of problems with eWarrants and Odyssey, according to The Assembly's earlier reporting. North Carolina's Judicial Branch says the eCourts conversion was ultimately completed in all 100 counties as of October 13, 2025.
What the Settlement Does and Doesn't Resolve
The proposed agreement resolves only the claims against Tyler Technologies, CBS 17 reports; claims against Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry L. McFadden remain pending and are still moving forward separately in federal court. Tyler Technologies denies wrongdoing, according to the proposed settlement memo, while plaintiffs stand by the claims in their lawsuit. Both sides acknowledge in the memo that continued litigation would be lengthy and its outcome uncertain.
Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Gagan Gupta, Abraham Rubert-Schewel, Zachary Ezor and Akeeb Dami Animashaun; Gupta, Rubert-Schewel and Ezor are attorneys at Tin Fulton Walker & Owen. North Carolina's case echoes a similar dispute in Shelby County, Tennessee, where a class-action lawsuit alleging wrongful arrests and prolonged detention following an earlier Odyssey system transition settled for $5 million in 2021, according to The Assembly.
