The city has settled another police brutality lawsuit, this time from a Pigtown man who said two Southern District officers beat him up last year and broke his jaw.

Jon Black-Thaxton will be paid $55,000 to drop his suit against Officers Damond T. Durant and Allan D. Neita under an agreement approved without comment by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the Board of Estimates yesterday.

On September 9, 2013, the two officers decided to arrest Black-Thaxton in his home on Carroll Street after his girlfriend reported that he had assaulted her.

According to the settlement sheet, “The facts surrounding the arrest are in dispute. The plaintiff went to Maryland General Hospital after the incident and was diagnosed with a bilateral broken jaw.”

Because of the lack of an independent witness (the former girlfriend has moved out of state) and “objective injuries suffered by the plaintiff,” the city settled the case after Circuit Court Judge Stephen J. Sfekas denied its motion to dismiss the case and approved a civil trial.

Mindful of Mercy

In another matter, the spending board approved a $8 million renewal of a contract with Mercy Medical Center to provide occupational health clinic services for city employees.

The original $16.2 million contract was approved by the board on November 24, 2010, and includes extensions that will last through 2020. Yesterday’s award is for the period January 2015 to January 2017.

Two former top aides for the mayor are now Mercy executives. Deputy mayor Christopher Thomaskutty left City Hall in April 2012 to become Mercy’s chief of staff, and longtime Rawlings-Blake spokesman, Ryan O’Doherty, followed him in July 2013.

O’Doherty is currently Mercy’s director of external affairs and strategic communications.

Both men were in attendance at yesterday’s meeting but did not formally speak to the board, which approved the contract renewal unanimously.