4 ms·

Can you sue someone simply for the violation of your constitutional rights? In this case, the defendant had to pay fines, was a victim of false arrest, spent 25

by netfire 11y ago

Can you sue someone simply for the violation of your constitutional rights? In this case, the defendant had to pay fines, was a victim of false arrest, spent 25 days in jail and changed jobs to avoid driving through the town. What I'm asking is, if you hadn't suffered such injustices, and had just been pulled over and let go without a fine or charges, would you still have grounds to sue the city simply over the violation of your constitutional rights? (that is, just for the unlawful seizure under the 4th amendment) How much damages would be appropriate in such a situation?

callesgg 11y ago
I would assume so. Your rights are your rights. In my mind a few 1000$ but i dont actually know. In practice the proceeding legal battle would probably not be worth it.
tsotha 11y ago
You have to be able to show you've suffered an injury (in the legal sense) that gives you standing to sue. Just getting pulled over and let go might count as such an injury, but how much can you reasonably expect in compensatory damages? It's not worth the time and money.
- netfire 11y ago
  Yeah, perhaps a better solution might be to have the federal or state government impose fines on local city governments for incidents where citizens' constitutional rights are infringed. I'm not as interested in personal compensation for the injury as I am making sure that cities and police can't violate citizen's rights without consequences that ensure that the activity isn't repeated. The fact that this city was collecting 61% of their annual revenue through regular police stops (many of which seem to be unconstitutional) is alarming. There has to be a better solution than to just appeal or sue for compensatory damages, which in most cases, will have little to no affect on the city. Even the $30K damages in this case seems small compared to the more than $1 million they collected in 2006 alone. It seems like they should be subject to substantial fines, if not jail time for the officers or judges that are involved in these stops and cases. It just seems wrong that a city can arrest and jail someone for almost a month for not paying a $1,580 fine, but no one in the city government gets jail time for violating the constitutional rights of thousands of citizens, while making millions from their disregard of the law.
deleted 11y ago
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by netfire 11y ago

callesgg 11y ago

I would assume so. Your rights are your rights. In my mind a few 1000$ but i dont actually know. In practice the proceeding legal battle would probably not be worth it.

tsotha 11y ago

You have to be able to show you've suffered an injury (in the legal sense) that gives you standing to sue. Just getting pulled over and let go might count as such an injury, but how much can you reasonably expect in compensatory damages? It's not worth the time and money.

netfire 11y ago
Yeah, perhaps a better solution might be to have the federal or state government impose fines on local city governments for incidents where citizens' constitutional rights are infringed. I'm not as interested in personal compensation for the injury as I am making sure that cities and police can't violate citizen's rights without consequences that ensure that the activity isn't repeated. The fact that this city was collecting 61% of their annual revenue through regular police stops (many of which seem to be unconstitutional) is alarming. There has to be a better solution than to just appeal or sue for compensatory damages, which in most cases, will have little to no affect on the city. Even the $30K damages in this case seems small compared to the more than $1 million they collected in 2006 alone. It seems like they should be subject to substantial fines, if not jail time for the officers or judges that are involved in these stops and cases. It just seems wrong that a city can arrest and jail someone for almost a month for not paying a $1,580 fine, but no one in the city government gets jail time for violating the constitutional rights of thousands of citizens, while making millions from their disregard of the law.

deleted 11y ago

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