Nick DiCello is a partner at Spangenberg, Shibley & Liber, LLP in Cleveland, Ohio, where he has practiced since completing a federal clerkship in 2004. As a trial lawyer, Nick handles and tries many different kinds of cases. For the last 10 years he has headed up Spangenberg’s civil rights practice and has received Best Lawyers’® Lawyer of the Year award in the area of Civil Rights twice over the past 3 years.

Nick litigates, argues and tries civil rights cases, primarily in federal court, in Ohio and around the country. Nick’s cases and the stories of some of his clients have been featured on the Today Show and on the cover of the Huffington Post. He has argued extensively in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in civil rights cases, primarily arguing against the application of qualified immunity. Representative cases include a $4 million settlement for the family of a mentally ill man who was pepper sprayed and strapped into a restraint chair in a Florida jail, resulting in his death, a $4 million settlement for the family of a 28 year-old man who died after he was held down prone for more than 20 minutes while in the midst of a medical episode in a county Jail in southern Ohio, a $2.6 million settlement on behalf of the family of a schizophrenic 32 year-old man who was beaten and restrained in a restraint chair in a county jail and died, and a $1.65 million settlement for a man who was shot in the back while trying to flee a drug bust in West Virginia.

Nick has argued numerous cases at the Sixth Circuit and defended against a petition to the USSC. Several of Nick’s cases have furthered the protections afforded citizens during encounters with police and have limited the use of tasers, deadly force, and prone restraint by officers under certain circumstances.