A third civil suit has been filed against two former Luzerne County judges charged with taking bribes to send children to two juvenile detention centers.

The suit also names Greg Zappala, owner of the facilities Pennsylvania Child Care Center in Luzerne County and Western Pennsylvania Child Care in Allegheny Township, Butler County.

The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center filed the suit on behalf of 95 plaintiffs including parents and children who say they were wrongly locked in detention centers, some without benefit of counsel, for crimes as minor as stealing change from cars or shoplifting spices from a grocery store.

Two other suits already have been filed in the case earlier this month. Both were filed as class actions, but one was amended Wednesday to allow all 113 of its plaintiffs to have their cases evaluated separately. The change allows them to seek payment for pain and suffering or for individual damages.

"All the cases are so unique and involved such personal experiences, the victims didn't want to be judged as a class," said Mark Nevins, spokesman for the law firms that filed the amended suit, Cefalo & Associates of Luzerne County, and Caroselli Beachler McTiernan & Conboy in Pittsburgh. "They felt deprived of being judged fairly [in their juvenile cases] and now they want to be heard individually. They want their day in court."

Federal prosecutors say the former judges, Mark A. Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan, took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in the detention facilities. Both have pleaded guilty and are expected to be sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

Each of the three civil suits names more than a dozen defendants, including the judges and their wives as well as the detention centers' developers, operators and builders.

Mr. Zappala -- brother of Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. and son of former state Supreme Court Justice Stephen A. Zappala Sr. -- is a defendant in all three civil suits. He has not been charged criminally and is not expected to be, according to a source close to the investigation.

"The scope of the defendants' unlawful scheme is profoundly shocking," says the Juvenile Law Center's civil complaint. "Thousands of children, among the most vulnerable members of our society, were victims of unprecedented lawlessness that within minutes of their court appearances, swept them away in handcuffs and shackles and placed them in detention or other residential facilities for months for minor infractions. ... The abuse and trauma these children suffered at the hands of the defendants has dramatically changed the trajectory of their lives."