A federal court has rejected the appeal of two corrections officers and a jail superintendent accused of violating the rights of an inmate from Massachusetts by sending him to solitary confinement for weeks without first granting him a disciplinary hearing.

Inmate Jason Surprenant, of Lowell, Mass., successfully sued the Hillsborough County Jail for more than $20,000 in June 2004. Surprenant said he had been falsely accused of trying to take an officer hostage and then beaten while being taken to a restrictive housing unit. Once there, Surprenant said it was weeks before officers informed him of the accusations against him. He argued that he was punished before getting a chance to defend himself.

Corrections officer Cesar Rivas -- who claimed Surprenant was part of a mob of two dozen inmates who tried to take him hostage -- was ordered to pay Surprenant more than $5,500 in damages. A lower court ordered Terry Pendleton, the jail's former disciplinary officer, to pay more than $15,000, and ordered jail Superintendent James O'Mara to pay $1.

Surprenant, 31, now is serving an up to 20-year sentence for a drug conviction. He was awaiting trial in that case when the incident occurred in July 2002. In the ruling, the court found no merit in the defendants' request to have the decision overturned. The court agreed with the jury's finding that Rivas made up the hostage-taking story to get the inmates punished immediately.

With no videotape of the alleged hostage taking, the trial pitted the word of inmates against that of corrections officers. Inmates testified Rivas was approached by one inmate who wanted to talk, not a mob. The jail's chief of security testified he was aware Rivas may have lied as recently as a week after the alleged hostage taking. Capt. David Dionne also testified officers were aware that such an accusation immediately would land inmates in "the hole."