SCRAM Bracelet Lawsuits: Injuries, False Positives, and Device Costs

SCRAM bracelet lawsuits have come in three distinct waves: product-liability cases alleging the ankle monitors cause wounds, rashes, and infections; class actions claiming the devices generate false-positive alcohol readings from everyday substances; and disputes over the hundreds or thousands of dollars wearers are billed for court-ordered monitoring. Most of the litigation has landed in federal court in Colorado, where manufacturer Alcohol Monitoring Systems, Inc. is based.

Injury Lawsuits Over Wounds, Rashes, and Infections

The most prominent recent case was filed on August 28, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. Joseph Terrell Nelson, Jr., a South Carolina resident, sued Alcohol Monitoring Systems on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of everyone sentenced to wear a SCRAM monitor.¹ The case was docketed as No. 1:23-cv-02194.²

The complaint said the device was poorly designed and caused the plaintiff deep open wounds on his ankle, a severe rash, and a diagnosis of cellulitis, dermatitis, and a bacterial infection.³ It asserted four claims: negligence, negligent failure to warn, strict liability for a defective design, and a request for a declaratory judgment that SCRAM Systems had a duty to produce safe products.¹ The amount in controversy exceeded $5 million. The plaintiff sought actual, statutory, and punitive damages along with an injunction requiring improved safety protocols.

The parties settled before the court ruled on motions to dismiss. A notice of settlement filed on January 16, 2024, stated the parties had “agreed upon terms to settle this matter in its entirety.”³ The terms are confidential; no dollar amount has been disclosed. The case was dismissed with prejudice on February 15, 2024, with each side bearing its own costs.²

A second injury class action followed. On August 28, 2025, a plaintiff identified as Portis filed suit against Alcohol Monitoring Systems in Colorado federal court, docketed as No. 1:25-cv-2697. The complaint alleges prolonged skin contact with the device caused pressure-related injuries, infections, and irreparable leg damage. The lead plaintiff says he was hospitalized in November 2023 with “acute on chronic pressure injuries” and told by doctors that continued use risked systemic infection.⁴ The suit seeks to represent a nationwide class of individuals with similar injuries and is in its early stages.

False-Positive Claims and the Science Behind Them

A different kind of lawsuit has gone after the device’s accuracy rather than its physical effects. In 2017, Roseanne Hansen and Jennifer Oh filed a proposed class action against SCRAM of California, Inc. and Alcohol Monitoring Systems in the Central District of California (No. 2:17-cv-01474). They alleged the monitors were “inherently prone” to false-positive alcohol readings set off by everyday substances like hand sanitizer, fragrances, cleaning products, and gasoline, and pointed to cases where SCRAM flagged drinking while a simultaneous breathalyzer showed zero alcohol.⁵

In September 2017, Judge Christina A. Snyder granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the second amended complaint without prejudice, giving the plaintiffs 21 days to amend. They instead voluntarily dismissed the case on September 26, 2017. No replacement lawsuit has been publicly reported.⁶

Individual criminal defendants have raised the same accuracy problems to challenge SCRAM readings offered against them in court. A 2021 article in The Champion, the journal of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, catalogued the recurring weaknesses:⁷

The fuel cell is not specific to ethanol from ingested alcohol. Hand sanitizer, fragrances, cleaning products, and even decaying fruit can register as drinking.
Condensation or water exposure can damage the fuel cell. SCRAM’s own patents have acknowledged the need to address moisture buildup.⁸
Differences in skin hydration, temperature, and thickness mean the same amount of alcohol can produce different readings on different people.
Prosecutors often lack documentation that a device was properly calibrated during the relevant time.

Courts have split on how much weight to give these problems. In People v. Carrillo (Scarsdale Village Court, N.Y., 2019), a defense expert testified that the SCRAM report showed a jagged “saw-toothed pattern” inconsistent with real alcohol consumption, and ignition interlock data showed zero blood alcohol; the court found the prosecution had not proved drinking. The Supreme Court of South Dakota in State v. Lemler, 774 N.W.2d 272 (2009), went the other way, ruling that environmental interference was a jury question rather than a reason to exclude the data. Indiana’s Court of Appeals in Mogg v. State, 918 N.E.2d 750 (2009), admitted SCRAM data for probation revocation under a relaxed reliability standard but cautioned that it was not declaring SCRAM reliable for all purposes.⁷

Lawsuits Over Who Pays for the Device

SCRAM monitors are usually ordered by a judge as a condition of pretrial release or probation, and the cost falls on the wearer. That has driven a third line of cases.

In State v. Hardtke (2015), the Washington Supreme Court held that when pretrial monitoring is provided by the state, costs charged to a defendant are capped at $150 under state law, a fraction of the nearly $4,000 the defendant had been billed. The ruling left unresolved what happens when a private vendor provides the monitoring.⁹ In People v. Hakes, 32 N.Y.3d 624 (2018), the New York Court of Appeals ruled that courts can order a probationer to pay for SCRAM as a condition of probation, but if the person claims inability to pay, the court must hold a hearing and try to fashion a reasonable alternative to incarceration.¹⁰

Collection litigation has run the other direction too. A 2022 Injustice Watch investigation reported that in Cook County, Illinois, the vendor CAM Systems had been operating without a formal contract since January 2021 while more than 200 people were ordered to wear the devices. Defendants paid between $12.40 and $24.40 per day, roughly $500 a month, and CAM Systems had sued at least 40 people to collect unpaid debts totaling over $165,000.¹¹ A single associate judge, Gregory P. Vazquez, was responsible for 44 percent of active SCRAM assignments as of mid-2022, sometimes ordering the device for defendants who did not face alcohol-related charges.¹² A subsequent Cook County Auditor review covering January 2017 through December 2022 found CAM Systems had billed 1,491 individuals a total of nearly $4.9 million, with usage ranging from two days to over 2,100 days, and that county offices had relied entirely on the vendor’s own reports.¹³ Commissioner Bridget Gainer told the Cook County Board that “private profit has no place in the criminal justice system” and introduced a resolution calling for a full audit and an independent study of whether the devices work.¹⁴

If You’re Currently Wearing a SCRAM Device

None of these cases automatically does anything for an individual wearer. The Terrell settlement is confidential and dismissed the claims of the named plaintiff only. The Portis case is new and unresolved. The Hansen false-positive class action was dismissed and never refiled. A wearer who has been injured, who believes a reading is wrong, or who cannot afford the daily fee has to raise those issues in their own case, through their own attorney, in the court supervising their release or probation. The appellate rulings in Hardtke and Hakes describe the kinds of arguments that have worked in some jurisdictions, and the Champion article collects the scientific grounds on which SCRAM readings have been challenged.

1
ClassAction.org. Terrell v. Alcohol Monitoring Systems Complaint
2
CourtListener. Nelson v. Alcohol Monitoring Systems, Inc.
3
ClassAction.org. SCRAM Systems Lawsuit Alleges Alcohol Ankle Monitors Can Cause Rash, Infection
4
ClassAction.org. SCRAM Lawsuit Claims Ankle Monitors Can Seriously Injure Wearers
5
Top Class Actions. Alcohol Monitoring System Generates False Positives, Class Action Says
6
PlainSite. Roseanne Hansen et al. v. SCRAM of California Inc.
7
UC Berkeley Law. Challenging SCRAM Continuous Alcohol Monitor Evidence as Unreliable and Insufficient
8
UC Berkeley Law. Challenging SCRAM Bracelets
9
WashingtonDUI.com. Hardtke Case SCRAM Limits
10
New York Courts. People v. Hakes
11
Injustice Watch. SCRAM Cook County Lapsed Contract
12
Injustice Watch. SCRAM Cook County Board Hearing
13
Cook County Auditor. SCRAM Letter Report
14
BridgetGainer.com. SCRAM Devices Come Under Fire From Cook County Board