The now infamous case of the crank guy at the Kerry Q & A. I see alot of comments on youtube and the like saying the guy should sue. On what grounds could he sue and how likely would it be that he’d win?
Excessive force
False arrest
1st amendment violations
[GD hijack]
The sad thing is a jury might agree with him :smack:
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I mostly pass on legal questions in GQ these days, so I leave that aspect of your
issue to someone else.
But I wonder how many threads we’d have in the the Pit by now if this had happened at a Bush event?
The board would not react differently if it was Bush. It’s not like he was thrown out for the T-shirt he was wearing. It might not have been necessary to rase him, but that’s got nothing to do with Kerry.
I really don’t think it’s a political issue, well not the question I’m asking. If it had happened at a Libertarian bakesale or a white nationalist fete I would style be asking the same question.
I don’t think the last two apply. The first amendment doesn’t give you the right to be disruptive, and false arrest implies that the officers arrested you without any evidence of a crime. However, I’ll agree on the excessive force claim. The newspaper articles I read have said that the officersdid not follow their own policy for the use of the taser, and I suspect that could be the foundation for a civil case.
The question from the OP was the grounds for a lawsuit, and then secondly which he would win on. In a case like this, I would assume he would sue on all three grounds knowing:
A) Only the first one has any hope of winning.
2) The last one means he could sue (and settle with) more than just the police
I’m sorry but I don’t follow. Who else would he sue on 1st amendment grounds? The state?
[Moderating]
Please refrain from irrelevant political comments in General Questions. If you want to comment on the legal issues involved, fine. If not, you can discuss this issue in the Pit yourself.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Yep, considering it was a UF official that had his mic cut off and asked the police to remove him.
Cite?
Under federal law, he’d sue the city (if they were city PD) and the officers the under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, known as a “1983 action,” for deprivation of civil rights under color of state law, with specific claims of excessive force and false arrest in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. This can be tricky, because in order to establish his cause of action against the city and the officers in their official (as opposed to individual) capacity, he has to further show that the constituional violations of the officers was due to a custom or policy in place that the higher ups either knew or should have known about. Just getting a “beat-down” isn’t enough; it has to be due to the policy and practices of the department.
He might also have some state law claims against the city and the officers such as assault and battery, false imprisonment, and negligent hiring and retention, but those would depend on to what degree the state had waived sovereign immunity. Some states don’t waive immunity for intentional torts, mine included.
As to “can he win?”, we don’t know enough of the facts yet to be able to say, but he can allege a prima facie 1983 action good enough to get him into court. It might not survive a summary judgment if his facts turn out to be bad, though.
The Supreme Court has addressed this issue repeatedly, upholding various states laws against “disturbing the peace” and defining areas of speech that are not constitutionally protected. The most well known example is probably Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, but I can point to numerous other, more recent examples if you like.
I would also note there have been several Supreme Court cases that upheld the rights of public schools to restrict the speech of their students, including Bethel v Fraser, Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier, and last year’s Morse v Frederick.
Please note that I’m not arguing that any of these cases are directly relevant to the OP, but examples of cases where the court has allowed that not all speech is protected under the first amendment.
I don’t think any of the cases you cited demonstrate that mere “disruptive” speech is categorically unprotected.
My vote is that it gets thrown out on immunity. The law gives public servants a good deal of leeway on what individuals can be held liable for while performing their public duties.
In my state, a cop can be pretty uncivil and unreasonable and be immune, and IIRC the Fed laws are also kinda loose.
I never said that. I’m citing them in support of the fact that disruptive speech is not categorically protected.
The first amendment does not grant citizens the universal right to say whatever they want at any time, in any place, and in any manner. To the contrary, the court has identified many types of speech that are not protected, and given states latitude to place limits on the time, place, and manner of content-neutral speech.
The issue of whether citizens have a right to be disruptive at a public fourm has been addressed repeatedly in federal court, such as in White v City of Norwalk or Luckett v. City of Grand Prairie.