NYC Pays $55K to Settle Another 2004 RNC Lawsuit

The city is not only settling lawsuits against the police during the Republican National Convention--the city also settles lawsuits against certain civilians! According to the NY Times, last week the city's legal department paid $55,000 to settle a lawsuit from June Brashares. Brashares, the Code Pink protester who interrupted President Bush's speech (she was charged and found not guilty of charges like disorderly conduct, harassment and assault), sued because she was tackled and dragged by convention volunteers. The city paid up because of "indemnification agreement" where the city agreed to pay for defending any lawsuit naming the RNC. And apparently St. Paul took note and made the RNC take out an insurance policy "covering up to $10 million in damages for civil rights violations by the police, to avoid saddling taxpayers with legal costs." Photo: ireallylovecake on Flickr

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By Jen Chung in News on November 16, 2008 6:04 PM

Comments [rss]

ides_of_march

Why did you headline this as an RNC lawsuit? The plaintiff is from Code Pink, shouldn't it have read Code Pink lawsuit? Anything to smear the right wingers I guess. Nice work Pravda, I mean Gothamist.

Spirit of 76

And they wonder why the Republican party is shrinking. Between things like this and the "Kill him!" shouts, there's little doubt that party has been hijacked by extremists.

tingo

Haha.

fleshtone

OK, St.Paul required the RNC to buy the insurance policy. But with all the lawsuit payouts, I stand by my point.

fleshtone

St. Paul took out a policy to cover civil rights violations by their police? Amazing. It's almost like they knew their cops were going to lose control of themselves and forget their training, and forget they are dealing with American citizens in an ostensibly free country, but instead of dealing with that problem at its root, they just planned to mitigate the fallout. I wonder how common this is. Wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run for enforcement to learn to respect those constitutional rights in the first place? I don't think the country would fall apart if we started honoring the constitution.