Federal Court Says City Of Baltimore Must Pay Resident Abused By Cops The Other Half Of Her Settlement
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For years, the city of Baltimore has handed out settlements to victims of government abuse. And for years, the city has forced them to remain silent about these settlements. The city tied every settlement to an extensive non-disparagement clause that effectively bought people's silence. If you can't say anything nice, you can't have half your settlement, as the old saying goes.Ashley Overbey chose not to remain silent. She sued the city after her call to report a burglary resulted in officers beating, tasing, verbally abusing, and then finally arresting her. She received a $63,000 settlement that came with strings attached. She yanked some strings in response to the city choosing to disparage her as "hostile" in its public statements about the lawsuit. After her public statements, the city decided she owed it $31,500 for opening her mouth.Her case made its way to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court was not amused by the city's multiple arguments in favor of its extortion tactics.[W]hen the government (1) makes a police-misconduct claimant’s silence about her claims a condition of settlement; (2) obtains the claimant’s promise of silence; (3) retains for itself the unilateral ability to determine whether the claimant has broken her promise; and (4) enforces the claimant’s promise by, in essence, holding her civilly liable to itself, there can be no serious doubt that the government has used its power in an effort to curb speech that is not to its liking. It's a First Amendment violation. And an obvious one at that. The case has returned to the lower court and the district court is far less receptive of the government's arguments the second time around. (h/t Baltimore Sun)On remand, the city argued it did not owe Overbey the other $31,500 it clawed back when she chose to speak up about the city's actions. Instead, it claimed the breach of contract claims were time-barred by the statute of limitations, leaving Overbey only the option of recovering nominal damages. And how nominal those damages are!From the decision [PDF]:Instead, it asserts the “better view” is that Ms. Overbey is only entitled to “nominal damages of one dollar” for an infringement of her First Amendment right to speak, “perhaps coupled with a formal declaration to that effect.” Wrong, says the district court. The contract was violated by the city, thanks to its egregious First Amendment violations. Subtracting half the settlement caused damages to Overbey equal to the half the city withheld for her violation a contract that was unable to be enforced Constitutionally.The City owes Ms. Overbey the other $31,500. By its conduct in unconstitutionally enforcing the now discredited clause, the City withheld half of the settlement proceeds. Thus, the civil rights violation caused $31,500 in economic harm. Overbey will also be collecting interest accrued since October 8, 2014. The court has further comments on the city's inexcusable defense of its inexcusable settlement policy.The City continues to defend its use of the non-disparagement clause and the “real and substantial questions presented” by facts that led to the settlement agreement in the first place. Therefore, it cites shock that “that the challenge would bear fruit” here and that the serendipity that allowed Ms. Overby’s claim to survive was akin to a “virtual lightning strike.” The seeming inference is that their illegal act should not be undone simply because no one thought, or even suspected, it was illegal at the time. Even if true, all this is beside the point. The City entered the settlement agreement it helped craft knowing that its severability provision contemplated this exact scenario: that a clause may be deemed “invalid, void and illegal,” and that it would subsequently be stricken from the agreement. Almost six years after the city decided to punish Overbey for her refusal to remain silent, it will finally pay her what she's owed. Fortunately, future plaintiffs won't have to put up with this bullshit.
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posted at: 12:00am on 07-Oct-2020
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UK Tribunal To Decide Whether Gov't Agencies Can Continue To Pretend There's A Residency Requirement For FOI Requests
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The UK's Freedom of Information law is pretty straightforward when it comes to residency requirements. There aren't any.Anyone can make a freedom of information request – they do not have to be UK citizens, or resident in the UK. Freedom of information requests can also be made by organisations, for example a newspaper, a campaign group, or a company. And yet, some UK government agencies have decided to read a residency requirement into a law that doesn't contain one. As Owen Bowcott reports for The Guardian, these seemingly illegal non-responses to requests are about to be tested in court.A combined hearing involving the Home Office, Metropolitan police, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and 13 separate cases is to be held at an information tribunal in London.At issue is whether applicants overseas are entitled to a response when submitting freedom of information requests to UK government departments and agencies. Nothing in the UK's Freedom of Information law appears to institute a residency requirement for FOI requesters. Nor does it hint at territorial limitations that could allow agencies to withhold documents from certain requesters. But the agencies handling these 13 cases seem to feel there is a residency requirement and they appear to be applying this novel interpretation to screw with requesters they'd rather not respond to.One set of requests deals with the UK's government's involvement with attempts to extradite Julian Assange for prosecution.One of the blocked cases is an appeal by the Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who works for daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano and writes about WikiLeaks.She has been pursuing information about how the Crown Prosecution Service dealt with its Swedish counterpart during initial attempts to extradite Assange to Sweden. So, it appears that at least one of the 13 cases is about documents being withheld because the agency doesn't want to release them, not because there's a genuine question about whether the agency is obligated to respond to non-UK residents. Meanwhile, the government says it's going to continue following the law… by not following the law in these 13 cases -- at least until the tribunal says otherwise.
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posted at: 12:00am on 07-Oct-2020
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