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Seattle to Pay WTO Protesters for Wrongful Arrest Settlement Follows Court’s Ruling That Police Lacked Probable Cause for Mass Arrests Outside of 'No Protest Zone'
The City of Seattle has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle the wrongful arrest claims of 155 peaceful protesters and bystanders arrested during the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in December 1999. Three weeks earlier, on December 29, 2003, a federal judge held that Seattle police had no probable cause for the arrests. Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and its cooperating attorneys were scheduled to represent the arrestees at trial in this portion of the civil rights class action, Hickey v. City of Seattle, beginning on January 20, 2004.
The plaintiffs charged that the City violated their right to be free from unreasonable seizures when it herded, trapped, and arrested them on December 1, 1999, without giving them a meaningful opportunity to disperse. All of them were outside a "no-protest zone" in downtown Seattle created by then-Mayor Paul Schell in response to massive protests against the WTO. And all of them were booked using the same photocopied arrest warrant, listing an arresting officer who later admitted that – contrary to what the warrants state – he neither gave any warnings nor made any of the arrests. "This settlement is a real victory for civil rights and the Constitution," said TLPJ lead counsel Steve W. Berman of Seattle’s Hagens Berman. "It will deter the City and other municipalities around the country from ignoring protesters’ rights and the importance of balancing the desire for security against the legitimate exercise of fundamental constitutional rights." TLPJ originally filed the class action lawsuit in October 2000 on behalf of about 600 people who were arrested both inside and outside of the 25-block "no-protest zone," jailed for three to five days, then released and never convicted of any crime. The claims of most of the original plaintiffs were dismissed in the fall of 2001 when U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Rothstein ruled that the City did not violate the Constitution when it created and enforced a "no-protest zone" during a state of emergency. Those claims are on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Argument is scheduled for February 6, 2004. Judge Rothstein’s ruling, however, did not eliminate the claims of more than 150 plaintiffs who were outside of the "no-protest zone" when they were arrested. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman, who took over the case after Judge Rothstein left the court in the summer of 2003, held that these plaintiffs were arrested without probable cause. Judge Pechman labeled the police record-keeping in the case "atrocious." She noted that the photocopied arrest warrants used to round up protesters and onlookers outside of the "no-protest zone" contained several inaccuracies and could not be used to establish the individualized probable cause needed to justify the arrests. Although Judge Pechman held that the arrests were wrongful, she ruled that the issue of whether the City should be held liable for those arrests should go to trial. "We won half the battle for the protesters arrested outside of the no-protest zone when the judge vindicated our position that the arrests were wrongful," said TLPJ Staff Attorney Victoria Ni. "With this settlement, we now have held the City accountable for its violation of these protesters’ rights." The settlement is subject to Judge Pechman’s approval. In addition to Berman and Ni, the legal team representing the wrongfully arrested protesters and bystanders includes Seattle attorneys Tyler Weaver of Hagens Berman, Michael Withey of Stritmatter Kessler Whelan Withey Coluccio, John Muenster of Muenster & Koenig, Fred Diamondstone, and Ben Schwartzman; Yvonne Kinoshita Ward of Auburn, WA; Professor Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of Southern California Law School; and TLPJ Executive Director Arthur Bryant. TLPJ’s legal briefs and the Court’s order in Hickey v. The City of Seattle are posted online at www.tlpj.org. | |
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Marchers peacefully protest WTO
in Seattle in December 1999.