Hoping to ward off a federal appeal, the city of Portland has taken the unusual step of demanding more than $7,000 in court costs from an Occupy protester who lost a lawsuit seeking damages after taking a face full of pepper-spray during a chaotic anti-bank protest in late 2011.
Ben Haile, an attorney for Liz Nichols, confirmed the city’s maneuver, first reported by the Oregonian. But Haile declined to immediately comment.
Nichols was sprayed by Sergeant Jeff McDaniel while shouting Officer Doris Paisley, Nichols’ attorneys said. The attorneys said Paisley had driven a nightstick into Nichols’ neck. Nichols, filing her suit in 2012, sought tens of thousands of dollars on account of pain and suffering caused by an eczema flareup and depression. Nichols lost her case last year.
The Oregonian, in an update to its initial story posted this afternoon, quotes a deputy city attorney laying bare the city’s calculus.
Deputy city attorney David Landrum said he offered to drop the city’s pursuit of costs if Nichols agreed to waive an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He called Nichols’ attorneys with the offer.
“I said I don’t need to drag this money out of her,” Landrum said, noting that he knows Nichols is a college student at Portland State University.
Landrum said he didn’t hear anything for weeks, so he called back and got his answer: Nichols decided to appeal. So the city sought its payback.
The payment order from the city, for $7,116, could increase via interest.
Update 1:55 PM: Haile phoned back to confirm Nichols has filed an appeal despite the payment order.
“She believes there were some mistakes in the trial that are reasons the trial should be redone,” he says.
He also said there’s no recourse for challenging a payment order. (Never mind it looking like the city is preying on a poor college student. And never mind the question of whether the city could live without the $7,000 it spent defending itself in a case that was hardly frivolous. Because it can, especially in light of the millions it’s spent on legal fees in police-related lawsuits for the past two decades.)
Says Haile: “It is an unfortunate risk for seeking justice in the courts these days.”
I have a thousand dollars that says she should appeal. She got a wepay or something?
Yeepin’ yimminy. Somebody should put a bark-shock-collar on DT that goes off whenever he writes a ridiculous headline about OWS.
She went to trial, and lost. City is entitled to recovering legal fees. She wants to appeal, aka get a do-over, why should the city be generous to her? It’s her right to an appeal, and it’s the city’s right to recover legal costs.
Pressuring? Preying? Nice verbiage. This kind of hyperbole and blatant bias puts Denis’ reporting right on par with Fox’s Tea Party felatio.
“taken the unusual step of demanding more than $7,000 in court costs from an Occupy protester who lost a lawsuit seeking damages”
A private individual sued the city in a civil matter and lost. Prevailing parties in civil matters almost always get awarded their costs of suit (with well defined types of costs that can be awarded) and the court enters a money judgment against the losing party accordingly.
If it can save the equivalent of tens of thousand of dollars from an appeal in exchange for satisfying the judgment, it seems like a great financial benefit to do so. If there was no appeal, its unlikely the city would have pressed the matter.
Does the city have a policy on enforcing the money judgments it is awarded in civil matters that a losing party won’t voluntarily pay? Is it different in this case?
Here, it looks like the city took an additional step of importing the federal district court judgment into the state circuit court. This provides certain advantages (creates a lien on real property, arguably makes garnishments or executions on the judgment easier) and the deputy attorney probably thought it could be additional leverage.
Seems like a fairly appropriate response from both the City and Nichols.
Preying on a college student? As opposed to what, preying on our tax dollars, dollars she was already spending in her head the moment she caught a mouthful of hot shit?
She will not have to pay a dime of those costs. I am going to see to that. Join me.
You can’t get blood out of a turnip. The City would never pay if they were to lose, either. PSU Safety Patrollers repeatedly beat my knee with a baton, slammed me on my back and pepper maced me, directly in the eyes at point blank range, while sitting on my chest, simply because I wouldn’t let those security guards handcuff me in order to write me a ticket and let me go, and they won’t even acknowledge the substance of my complaint.
I should have have simply walked away, instead of just standing there, waiting for them to hurry up and write the ticket.
No hurry to pay, in any event. Those court costs charged to Liz, by the City, will be reversed on appeal.
She is a idiot. She was looking for a fight and got one, and now wants taxpayers to give her some cash.
She was looking for a fight? So she picked on a wimpy, little, milquetoast, piglet, who never would ever do anything to hurt, anybody?