ST. LOUIS • A federal civil suit alleging assault and excessive force by three police officers in St. Charles County during a 2009 arrest has been settled.

In total, Phillip Alberternst, 46, of Warren County, is to receive $70,000.

Lawyers for St. Charles County agreed Feb. 2 to pay $65,000 to settle the case against sheriff's Deputies William S. Rowe III and Christopher E. Hunt, without admitting any wrongdoing. A Lake Saint Louis officer, Dion E. Wilson, was scheduled for trial in the lawsuit Monday, but his case was settled for $5,000.

Rowe, 34, Wilson, 38, and an O'Fallon officer, Deric Dull, 34, are scheduled for trial next month on misdemeanor criminal charges in the incident of third-degree assault and making a false report. Dull was dismissed from the civil suit last year.

Meanwhile, this month prosecutors upgraded related charges against Hunt, 37, to felony burglary. He also faces misdemeanor charges of property damage, assault and making a false report.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Alberternst's lawyer, James W. Schottel Jr., called it a "pretty substantial settlement, considering the damages were only an ER visit."

The suit alleged that Alberternst offered no resistance when officers from the Warren County Sheriff's Department, the East Central Drug Task Force and the St. Charles County Regional Drug Task Force arrested him on Feb. 5, 2009, at a friend's trailer in Middletown, Mo.

Alberternst was wanted on felony charges of endangering the welfare of a child in Warren County and manufacturing methamphetamine in Lincoln County. In court filings, he said one officer put him in a headlock and punched him while another kicked him.

Lawyers for the officers said that Alberternst had to be restrained, and that officers delivered a series of calculated strikes to pressure points to get him to comply.

Earlier this month, Joseph McCulloch, an attorney for Hunt and Rowe, called the criminal case an "assault on police officers trying to do police work."

All the officers were cleared by their departments after internal investigations.